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Hello. This is my review.

In the beginning

What I found most interesting about this was the ending, it didn’t feel like a complete ending, it felt like the end of chapter or perhaps the end of a prologue. I wouldn’t object to a continuation. While I know you said that you probably won’t edit this, but I will still note mistakes and missteps I found and try to tie them into greater suggestions and things to watch out for. Starting, aptly enough, at the beginning I found your comparison between an Airport and a castle to be slightly awkward, It was okay in the beginning, but I felt you stretched it a little when you compared the airplanes to horses, nevertheless I applaud your effort, extended metaphors are things I have a difficult time grasping and rarely do, so good on you for trying (the best way to get worse is always not practicing). On the more boring side of this, you put a semicolon (“so large, like a castle;”), where there should be a colon (“so large, like a castle:”) semicolons connect complete clauses, essentially you’re just welding sentences together because they are closely related, do not fear the semicolon though, they are quite useful when used correctly. Next is the entire second paragraph, your meaning here was scrambled by overlong phrases and strange descriptions (that one involving the Roman army comes to mind), the fourth paragraph also suffers from this problem, with descriptions like “while his paper, takeaway coffee cup...” this passage has an awkward rhythm; I would suggest removing the “paper,” so it reads like “while his takeaway cup...” we don’t really lose much description as most take out cups are either made from cardboard, paper, or styrofoam. Another description like this is “ She looked at him for what felt like the first time she had ever done since that rain-soaked park a lifetime ago.“ this description has a contradiction in it (“she looked at him for what felt like the first time since”) and really should just be rewritten. One final bad line I would like to mention is “fool’s gold pledges” it seems like you were trying to do some wordplay here, put came off as awkward and tonally dissonant.

Not done yet.

Splitting this into to paragraphs so as not to crush you under an avalanche of overblown vocabulary, I will focus briefly and on one of my pet peeves: word choice. You use the word ‘languished’ to describe someone’s hair, languish roughly means ‘to lose energy’, the remedy to this is simple: a dictionary. In this same description I also found a bit of hyperbole I quite liked: “twisting its curls, kissing ever strand”. At risk of sound like an imbecile I will end with a complement on the pacing, it was not not too slow and it was not too fast, so good job on that.

Look forward to seeing more from you!

This was my review. Goodbye.

Grammar
1.

Across from her, Alex was lazily sliding a callused finger over his phone.

Her tea sat untouched while his paper, takeaway coffee cup and been drained hours ago.

Samantha had always hated airports. So large, like a castle; with as many twisting corridors and forgotten doors to add to the likeness.

Though this may have been caused more by the fact that she didn’t have a passport.

Her leg bounced up and down as she tapped her fingers on the crumb strewn table of the café. Across from her, Alex was lazily sliding a callused finger over his phone. Her tea sat untouched while his paper, takeaway coffee cup and been drained hours ago.

She looked at him for what felt like the first time she had ever done since that rain-soaked park a lifetime ago. His skin was transcribed with a passage of tattoo’s whose secrets he had whispered to her as if the ink that stained his skin was the most precious thing in the world. His hair languished over one side of his head in a tangle of blackened knots.

She beamed falsely at him while he handed her their false papers.

She watched as it was carried away and become enveloped by the bulging boxy luggage scanners.