(Short summary of the story so far: Kerra, Shandi, and Everen are telepathic triplets living really far in the future in the last city on Earth, the underground city of Abyssia. Everen has been sent on a mission to colonize another planet since Earth is uninhabitable. Shandi went up onto the surface and died but Kerra can communicate with her in the afterlife. Kerra thinks their mother Ruth was murdered (though the police think it was suicide) so she's been investigating that. Everen has been investigating a string of murders on her spaceship and has recently made telepathic contact with aliens on the planet they're intending to colonize. Those aliens told Everen that the captain of the ship did it. Everen captured the captain but got seriously injured doing it. Maru and Drigg are Kerra's friends and Maru is Drigg's grandmother. They work in a bookshop. Also, Shandi's old gang are also friendly with Kerra, though they do not appear at all in this chapter. Read the last chapter for a bit more context for the beginning of this chapter!)
[author's note: I don't remember if Kerra has mentioned any of what's going on with Everen to Shandi. So I'm just going to assume she hasn't.]
--
Kerra sunk into her couch and took a shuddering breath of relief. She had just come back from Dark Lake Books where she had handed over a thank you note to both Drigg and Maru and then proceeded to break down on them for the second time in as many months.
They'd listened as she'd told them all about her friends from before stasis and how she tried to never think of them anymore because it hurt too much. They'd listened as she sobbed about how every single person from her old life was gone now and she was entirely alone, a broken relic of the past. They'd listened as she railed against whatever it was who had caused her to have this life. And when she'd wept, Maru made a cup of tea and Drigg patted her back so lightly it didn't cause her any pain.
"That is so tough, Kerra," Drigg had said. "I'm so sorry. Thank you for telling us it. It must have been hard to carry those feelings alone."
"Isolation is one of the worst feelings," Maru had said. "We are not and cannot be the people you lost, but we are and will continue to be right here by your side."
And they had been. As Kerra picked up the pieces of herself, peeled herself off the floor, and accepted Maru's tea, they had stayed. They'd even offered her a bed for the night, or, when she'd shook her head, to walk her home. She'd accepted that offer.
In front of the door to her apartment, she'd steeled herself and told Drigg in no uncertain terms that she was not and would not ever be romantically interested in him or anyone. She'd felt like it was a strange, almost anti-confession that would seem to him as if it had come out of nowhere, but she'd been worried for a while that he was only being nice to her out of an expectation of eventual requited feelings. She really liked him and didn't want to break his heart. So it had been time to make her feelings clear.
For a moment, a look of disappointment had flashed across his face, but he said, "I figured. That doesn't change anything at all. I still want to be your friend. I like being around you."
Kerra had snorted. "Even when I'm sobbing on your floor?"
"Even then," Drigg had said with a smile.
In all, Kerra was doing much better. She was still feeling kind of melancholic, but she knew she'd have to spend more time constructing her own closure for all the relationships in her life that had ended too soon. For now, she decided she'd work on one of the relationships she could still do something about.
She took deep, calming breaths and focused on Shandi, calling her sister toward her. Soon enough, when she opened her eyes, everything was blue and Shandi was before her, looking worried.
"Are you okay?" Shandi asked.
"I've been worse."
"What happened? I saw you crying in that bookshop."
"Would you believe I just really miss you?"
Shandi snorted. "I'm right here. What's to miss?" It was clear she'd meant it lightly, but Kerra could hear some bitterness in her tone.
"It doesn't matter. It's just I realized all at once that with you and mom dead, there's no one left on Earth who knew me before."
"Oh," Shandi said. Her posture stiffened. Shandi wasn't good at talking about emotional things, Kerra remembered.
"Also, I got really scared because it felt like Everen nearly died too. I still don't know what happened. Just a lot of pain."
"What kind of pain could the perfect space princess be experiencing in a spaceship? I figured they'd have rounded all the sharp corners and everything." Shandi looked actually baffled.
"Wait, have I not mentioned the murders that happened on her ship?"
"What!? No! That's wild, how could you keep that from me? That's way more interesting than watching you live your little life."
"Hey now," Kerra said, embarrassed, "I didn't know that Everen didn't tell you herself! It started happening before you died."
Shandi looked at her feet. "Everen and I didn't talk much."
Understatement of the year, Kerra thought. She got up from her couch and walked to the kitchen. It was weird how Shandi followed her without moving her feet, as if the afterlife was some kind of old augmented reality vision that was just layered on top of reality. "Okay," Kerra said, as she pulled tomatoes, cheese, and sausage out of her fridge to start making dinner. "I'll tell you everything."
When the penne was boiling and the bolognese simmering, Shandi was pacing around. "You think the captain hurt her?"
"It's the only thing that makes sense," Kerra said, giving the pasta one last stir.
"And aliens? What even?"
"I know, I know!" She dumped the penne into a colander in her sink and steam rose to envelop her head.
"Listen, this is all super weird, you realize that, right?" Shandi sounded serious.
"Obviously!"
Shandi continued to pace. "I mean, what are the odds of so many people related to the three of us being murdered in just a couple months?"
"Do you think they're connected somehow?" Kerra asked. It was something she had never considered.
"Maybe," Shandi stopped in her tracks and faced Kerra who was pouring slippery noodles back into the pot. "I'm gonna try talking to the other guy here in this space."
Kerra put a helping of pasta on a plate and covered it in bolognese. "What would he know about any of this?"
Shandi shrugged. "He isn't super talkative, but he has been helpful in showing me how to get your attention and explaining what this place even is. Maybe he'll know something. But I only get to see him sometimes."
Sprinkling parmesan on top of the sauce, Kerra furrowed her brow. "What do you mean? He isn't always right there next to you?"
"No, I only run into him occasionally. I think he's following someone else around like I follow you, but he won't say who. I can see him from pretty far away though. Like, obstacles don't get in my way. Do you think you could like, take some elevators around Abyssia and go around to different areas so I can see if I can find him?"
Kerra considered this. "Yeah, sure. I don't have much better to do, although if it turns out Everen's captain has been caught, I'm going to have a lot of extra work. But a walk should do me good."
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,805 Reviews
Hi there Rook! Lim here with a slightly chaotic review.
Prose
Something I enjoy about reading your chapters is the poetic cadence in your prose. The second paragraph that repeats “They’d listened . . . They’d listened . . . “ pulled me in despite how condensed and summarized the whole scene was.
I really liked this line. It’s very descriptive while still being subtle about their care for Kerra. (At the same time, does Drigg have super strength or something? Or has he just patted her back really hard before?)
Dialogue
In terms of the two main interactions that happened here, I kind of found Kerra talking to Shandi more natural. Just as a note as to where I’m coming from: I just really like it when a story tries to avoid making a value judgement on how characters interact, and what actions are ‘good’ versus what actions are ‘bad’? I feel that it falls into black-and-white thinking and as a reader I just like being allowed to make up my mind as to whether I find a character to be a good friend, etc. But of course I understand that a value judgement makes perfect sense for some stories, maybe if it’s the message/ theme. I’m not going to go too much into it, but this does colour my reviewing opinions, so take them with a grain of salt if you are going for making this evaluation of character relationships a major point of the story.
Reading the first part of the chapter felt a bit like reading a summary? A very well-written summary, but I was still wondering why those conflicts were introduced at all in the previous chapter if it was all going to be seemingly resolved here. (Unless this is a red herring, and it’s not actually resolved . . . ) Curiously, there wasn’t very much dialogue there. I wondered how Kerra introduced herself into the bookshop, what she said, how she said it, and how the scene played out in general.
While I can tell that this interaction was a positive thing for Kerra, the dialogue with Maru and Driggs had a lot of these statements that were very direct. Somehow I feel like outside of certain contexts, people don’t generally talk like this, even when they’re being open and honest with each other? That could just be me though. I also didn’t really get the sense through their dialogue that Maru and Driggs were two different people, or that they were both different from Kerra. It could be because they have very few lines in this chapter, though.
Because of that, I ended up liking the interactions with Shandi better.
This exchange has got a lot of personality. Shandi doesn’t give the prescribed response to emotional vulnerability, and that makes her seem more real to me. She’s indirect, she’s saying more than what’s in the words themselves. Another thing is that this sort of ‘imperfect’ dialogue conveys their dynamics a bit better.
For instance, Maru and Driggs (just in this chapter though) come across as being the same age as Kerra, despite Maru being much older and being Driggs’ grandmother. They both speak and act very similarly, with the only sign of difference maybe being Maru going to make tea, which in my mind, right or wrong, immediately makes me think 'old woman'. (Unless being similar is actually a character quirk of theirs that’s mentioned earlier on, in which case it wouldn’t be a problem!) Meanwhile, Shandi’s offhand response to Kerra and Kerra’s own way of protesting her sister’s behaviour shows more that they’re intentionally depicted as being of the same age, and find each other to be equals, if that makes sense.
In general, I really like reading the dialogue between Kerra and Shandi. It felt very natural and showcases both characters’ personalities well.
Okay so with how close these two sets of lines are to each other (one right after the other) and the paragraphs about how Maru and Driggs reacted to Kerra crying earlier on, I kind of get the sense that they’re being compared? So Shandi’s communicative behaviour is being evaluated against the one modelled by Maru and Driggs as being well, uncommunicative. So when Kerra says “I’ll tell you everything”, the message I’m getting is that Kerra the character has moved past that now. Like going from perhaps a ‘communicating like Shandi’ stage towards a ‘communicating like Driggs and Maru’ stage, and that is the narrative/thematic progression happening here in terms of her character arc.
As a side note, it was kind of weird for me that Kerra reacted with so much emotion to this notion of people she knows being gone earlier, but here she just kind of carries on like a super sleuth. I think it could make sense if she’s trying to put her feelings away for now to focus on solving a problem, and I think it could be a good opportunity to show that side of her through dialogue, if that is the case. Maybe a moment of silence as Kerra lets the deaths sink in again, but then her abruptly shaking her head and continuing this little investigation?
Overall
This was an interesting chapter, though I can’t quite place it in the overall story arc because of my lack of context. In terms of the relation to the chapter right before it, like I said, I get the sense that Kerra’s confrontation and Driggs and her confiding in Driggs and Maru here is either a red herring to show her issues haven’t been truly resolved, or that these feelings of hers aren’t important to the story later and so they’re being discussed and wrapped up here. The dialogue between Kerra and Shandi is really well-written; the dialogue with Maru and Driggs is also well-written, only it doesn’t have nearly as much unspoken information about character dynamics and their overall context to me as compared to the former.
Hope some of this is helpful – feel free to ask me if anything I said was unclear or you’d like more feedback on a different aspect (I know I rambled a lot about dialogue in this chapter haha ^^’)
Cheers!
-Lim
Thank you for the review! these are really helpful comments! I think this has cemented my plans to redo the first bit of this chapter in the regular tense that the story is in. It seemed when I first wrote it like something that wasn't super important to actually see play out, but when you were comparing these interactions I realized that foils are important for events/conversations too and not just characters! This and the last chapter were a bit weird because I'd written them over a year after the chapter that preceded them so I was trying to reaccquaint myself with the story myself haha.
as for a quick answer to a small note, kerra has a condition the makes any physical touch painful. it's something I think I might change in future edits for a number of reasons, but for now, that's what's going on with that one line!
anyway, this was very helpful, thank you for putting your time and effort into this and for saving me from the green room haha
Glad to hear it helped! Yeah, I can def relate to skimming over things when writing, as they don't seem that important at first, but later turn out to be. And yeah it's hard to get back into a story after taking long breaks from it. Good luck with the writing! This is a really interesting story c:
C O N N E C T I O N <33
Omg you have no idea how excited I was to get the tag for this <33 I'm SO READY to get back into this! Let's go...
Bless you for the recap
This feels a bit random, ngl. Like, I get why she's doing it, I think your explanation makes sense. But she wasn't really thinking about it before then? Like she was sobbing (I assume because of her mother?) and then Drigg walks her home and then suddenly she's thinking about romantic involvement with him? I feel like I would have liked to see more of a build up to it. Have her mulling over it as they walk back -- maybe over-analyzing his comforting of her or something to make it seem more natural that she feels the need to do this. Rather than just coming out of nowhere, you know?
The exchange that followed was adorable though <3
I know this is the ShOw DoN't TeLl critique, but I think this would be a really good place to show a bit more characterization for Shandi instead of just "looking worried". I know part of this is just because it's been so long since I've read, but I don't fully remember what she looks like. Plus you could include body language, facial expressions, etc.
Aha, the nonchalance of this is amusing "oh you know, before your death, nbd"
C o n n e c t i o n
~
I like this chapter! It was nice getting to see a bit of vulnerability from Kerra and the support of Maru/Driggs -- and also getting to see Shandi again. Their dialogue felt a teeeeeeensy bit forced, but that could be just because I am out-of-practice at reading their tone.
I also love the idea of Kerra having to walk around so Shandi can see -- it's a nice interpolation of their two stories and I have high hopes means we're going to see more sisterly interaction, which I'm here for. All in all, an excellent continuation! I'm SO happy you're writing on this again ^-^
~Shady