One Last Epilogue

[KamiKaze]

Chop. Chop. Chop.

Felicia sunk the knife into the sandwiches, again and again.

Maybe she should have done this sooner, before Yumi came over. It was nice to feed friends, she just didn’t think to make something beforehand. But she was taking care of that now, so at least she thought of it at all.

Nothing extravagant. She didn’t want to keep her waiting, after all. Just some tuna salad on wheat bread, cut into squares. It was simple, easy to make. Also, she’d remembered that Yumi was a little more sensitive taste-wise.

One more slice.

Clean the knife and put it back.

Gently stack them on a blue-lined plate.

And take them into the living room.

“I’m done. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Felicia placed the plate on the wooden coffee table. The living room was simple: gray sofa and loveseat facing the still television set, a coffee table with stacked coasters, papers, and notebooks, a few shoes and other objects here and there. And Yumi.

She sat down on the brown carpet.

“So, uh… have you thought it over? The story, I mean.”

[Aura]

Yumi flipped through the pages of what Felicia had written. To be honest, it was a little exciting, but also kind of overwhelming. Felicia trusted her enough to get her opinion on her work, and she knew that Felicia had been working on it for a good while, so she felt even more pressure to try to make sure that her critique was as good as it could be.

"Th-thanks Felicia." She said eagerly as the plate of sandwiches came to the table. "I was kind of rereading a f-few parts that I thought were really good, so I could keep it f-fresh in my mind, you know?"

She wanted to choose her words very carefully. Too harsh and she could hurt Felicia's feelings, but if she's not critical enough, then she wouldn't really be helping anything. She thought that Felicia's work was generally very good, so she wasn't too worried about being overly harsh. But at the same time, she already had other things on her mind that were distracting her as well, so it was harder to figure out what to say.

"S-so, um..." She began with the realization that she didn't know where to begin. So in response, she looked to Felicia for guidance. "Do you want to hear what I liked f-first, or what I thought needed s-some more work?"

[KamiKaze]

Felicia smiled a bit.

“That makes sense.”

Really, getting critiqued was hard. Critiquing can be hard, too. Putting into words what you felt about it, both the good and bad parts. And getting critiqued? Well, you never know how things may come off.

Felicia remembered how her heart sunk a bit once she got that rejection letter. It wasn’t worthy of being published, they told her. Too many plot holes. It seemed fine, good enough for her to send it in. It wasn’t like she hadn’t shared it before, either. So to have someone just reject it like that…

Right. Today’s story. Felicia’s was a traditional vampire short story. Nothing fancy, but there were other ideas she wasn’t able to slot in. Maybe she’d tackle vampires again, who knew? Why vampires, though, was simple. Vampires were interesting monsters, they just weren’t utilized well in current fiction. Twilight was good in theory, but it had a boatload of problems. And, well, she wanted to make hers a little spookier. More… vampire-like.

She liked writing about them, though. It was a bit of change from her usual dragon fantasy stuff. She found out all kinds of things about them that she wasn’t able to use in this one. For example, did you know that you can stop a vampire by spilling mustard seeds? It was an interesting tidbit, and she had to make sure to find a way to insert it if she ever tackled vampires again. They can’t touch silver, either. The “cannot enter without being invited” rule can be played around with, too.

“Oh! Maybe the good stuff first?” Felicia said, rubbing her sleeve a bit. “It might help a little.”

[Aura]

"Okay, good parts." Yumi repeated, going back to Felicia's work to give it another look in hopes of finding some direct examples to point to.

She really did think that Felicia's work was good, so she was happy to go over the parts that she liked first. Plus, she felt like Felicia would really appreciate knowing what she was doing right. Because once she knew that, she could probably expand on her strengths and make the idea as a whole stronger. Sure, that wasn't the whole picture, but it was a really great starting point.

"S-so I really like how you're doing more of a classic vampire thing instead of what everyone else is doing th-these days." She began. "You know, making all of the vampires really handsome and s-stuff like that. The s-shapeshifting for their human disguises is a really nice touch too, and it ties into th-their theme of being deceptive."

She flipped through a few pages, looking for something that would help her detail her next point. "It's really cool how you talk about the way th-they move around at night and dodge the s-sun in the daytime. It really makes them s-sound clever and creative, which makes both the good and evil vampires s-seem more impressive and dangerous."

Yumi found herself talking a lot about the vampires, but she couldn't help it. She loved fantasy, monsters, and everything related to them. So naturally, it was the first thing that she gravitated towards about Felicia's story.

[KamiKaze]

Good imagery. Classic vampires are good. The shapeshifting touch was good, too.

So it was good, then?

Really, Felicia should feel proud. Yumi liked it. Again, Felicia had gone for more classical vampires, not the dark and mysterious types seen nowadays. There were good vampires, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have the instincts. Still, though, the fact that they could become full-blown killers but didn’t was what separated them from the truly evil ones. Any vampire could change their appearance to blend in, but there were still tells that any person familiar with vampires could spot.

Still, she wasn’t just being nice, was she? No, Yumi was a friend, and had an idea of how she wrote.

“Ah, so the way I’ve been describing things is fine?” she asked.

Sometimes her writing could get a little purple, but that’s not too bad. It’s good to be able to describe things in detail, but some find it a little annoying.

[Aura]

"Yeah, your descriptions are really good!" Yumi wholeheartedly agreed. "I really like it when I can picture a scene in my head, s-so when you give me all th-these details to work with, I can really get a great idea of what it looks like, you know? It's nice."

Ironically enough, despite all of the praise that she had for Felicia's details, that actually led into her first real complaint about the book.

"But, um... you might want to keep in mind how much you put into one s-scene." She pointed at a particularly long paragraph. "S-see, when you write so much at once, it kinda turns into a big wall of text, and it looks s-sort of intimidating to a lot of people. Not to mention, it doesn't look that great to your eyes to have a big chunk of words right there, you know?" She hoped that this was coming across in a useful way, and not like she was just nitpicking.

"S-so yeah. Your details are really, really good. Just maybe f-find some of those big paragraphs and make them a little s-shorter, or break them up a little into smaller paragraphs." She removed her finger from the paper and looked back up at Felicia. "Do you s-see what I mean?"

[KamiKaze]

Ah, there it was.

The paragraph was too long, too wordy. Difficult to read. She’d gotten so caught up in description that she didn’t think to split things up. Jesus christ, Felicia, don’t you think? Don’t you think to edit before showing other people? Don’t you think to show people such-

No, stop that.

She knew she had a habit of going down that rabbit hole. It was difficult to stop, but it was good to at least try. Yumi meant well, she just pointed out something that could be improved. And if she hadn’t spotted it, who knew how long it’d be there?

“Of course,” Felicia said, smoothing out a lock of blonde hair, a small smile on her face. “Maybe, for this one, somwhere around…”

Her own finger pointed to a specific mid-point between the paragraph, right around the line about the room and a sequeing line about someone in it.

“Here?”

A general rule was to make a new paragraph when talking about a different subject. It was a good rule, but sometimes you forget when writing. Well, that’s what editing and proofreading is for, right?

[Aura]

Yumi put her own finger on the paper and traced the paragraph down to where Felicia was pointing. She was a thankfully fast reader, so she had no problem getting through what was written all the way down. She reached the point that Felicia had chosen, and went a bit further to see where the paragraph moved from there.

Her lips moved silently as she read along, and she looked up with a positive smile. "Yeah, th-that seems right! It's about where you s-start talking about something else, so it looks like a good place for a new paragraph." She took her hand off of the paper. "T-there's a few other places where you kinda did it again, but s-since you know what to look for, I'm pretty s-sure you'll be able to fix it."

She tapped her fingers on the table. She still had a lot to say about Felicia's book, but she also had some other topics that she wanted to discuss. She just didn't want to end the critique before Felicia was ready. "Um... is there anything else you wanted to hear?"

[KamiKaze]

Ah, that works then. Just go through, and find places to split up the paragraphs. Maybe go in with a pen, and note where you can break something up. That was simple, and frankly, if the only negative thing Yumi had to say was about the density, it was probably fine. Maybe sort out word choices, while she was at it. Like, change some words and phrasing to something simpler, stuff like that.

“Well, I don’t want to dominate too much,” Felicia said in thought. “Maybe if you’re ready to talk about yours a bit? Unless you have some further thoughts.”

Maybe something on characters? She knew how she wanted it to end the second she began writing, but maybe she needed to make stuff more clear. See, Felicia knew that she wanted the story to end with a sacrifice of sorts. A bittersweet one, where some characters were alive, but some weren’t. But they didn’t die without a reason. And they weren’t forgotten, either.

But Yumi might be ready to talk about what she wrote a bit. Let’s see.

[Aura]

"Um... not really much else." Yumi admitted. "Th-the only other thing was maybe making the way the vampires s-speak a little more distinctive?" She offered another bit of advice. "Because s-sometimes the evil vampires would kind of all s-sound the same. The good ones were a little hard to tell apart s-sometimes too because of that." She fidgeted her fingers, knowing that this was a bit more harsh than her last criticism.

She tapped her fingers on her own notebook, impatiently awaiting Felicia's input. But first, she had to make sure that she had already given all that she could in regards to her friend's story. She kept looking at Felicia, hoping to draw some sort of reaction from her face, but not quite able to tell one way or another how she felt regarding the latest comment.

"I hope th-that's not too harsh. I just thought you would want to know." She continued, a bit quieter than her previous comment. "If you make the cast a little more diverse in personality, I really th-think it would put your story over the top."

[KamiKaze]

Felicia frowned in thought a bit.

Oh, oh dear.

That won’t do at all, if she couldn’t keep her voices straight. Voices were… hard. Figuring out how a character sits? What they like and dislike? Their pasts, their presents? What their hobbies were? They were actually pretty simple. Nailing how a character speaks, though… yeah.

It would probably be a good idea to comb through and differentiate a bit, of course. See how each character phrases things. Of course they’d have different voices! Some of them were centuries old! Why didn’t she think of that?

“Ah, I get that. Since, like… some of them have been living for so long, it has to influence their speech in some way.”

It was sound advice. It wouldn’t just help the characters, it’d probably help the setting, too. Give it more of a… feel, she guessed.

But something else came to mind.

“Hey… um, Yumi? How are you feeling?”

She seemed anxious.

[Aura]

Yumi hoped that she was being constructive enough. She really wanted Felicia's book to be really good. The idea of being able to buy something that one of her friends had made was really cool to think about, and she really hoped that one day it could happen. And if she could help with that in some way, then she would be more than happy to do so.

But wait, Felicia wanted to talk about her now? Yumi felt anxiety starting to creep in. She did have something that she wanted to tell Felicia. It was one of the reasons she had come over, in fact. But she hadn't planned on getting called out before she planned to mention it. BUt she was always bad at hiding her emotions, so maybe it wasn't such a surprise.

"Yeah, um... I kinda wanted to tell you s-something. Something important." She said, her voice softening along with her nerves. "Can I talk to you about it?"

[KamiKaze]

Oh, oh no.

Yumi did have something on her mind. Maybe she could help? Perhaps she could look into something, or see what could be done. Or something. Either way, it was best to see what she had in mind.

“I’m listening,” Felicia said, smoothing out her blonde hair again.

Hopefully it wasn’t too huge.

[Aura]

Yumi took a breath. She was still second-guessing herself. She wasn't totally sure if she was ready for this. She had already talked to her family, but that was different. She knew that she could always rely on them. They loved her, no matter what. It was talking to other people about it that was the scary part. She couldn't tell how they would wind up reacting. Maybe she shouldn't have brought it up at all.

... No, no, she was trying too hard to discourage herself. This wasn't just anyone from school that she was talking to. This was Felicia, her best friend. If there was anyone that would understand her, she would be the one. That was why Yumi wanted to talk to her in the first place, because she knew that Felicia would be supportive. But at the same time, her nerves refused to leave her alone.

But the longer she waited, the more her anxiety would set in, so she had to just come out and say it.

"F-Felicia..." She paused for a second to make sure that she was ready, and she finally decided that she was.

"I like girls."

[KamiKaze]

Oh.

Felicia knew what that meant, and she knew she had to be supportive. She knew how difficult it could be.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t dealt with something similar. It wasn’t like she hadn’t dealt with the same self-doubt, of questioning, of wondering how people would react. It wasn’t like she didn’t have to worry about her questioning being blown open for everyone to know. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what it all felt like.

Thing is, that also made it difficult. She’d experienced the same song and dance. Talking about it could be hard.

Felicia had to stop for a moment to think it through. She wondered what Yumi wanted to hear. Then, she figured something.

Yumi probably wanted to hear the same thing she had wanted to. Maybe not exactly the same thing, but a similar theme.

“Hey…” she began.

Yumi needed support. She needed to know she was accepted. That she wouldn’t judge.

“I’m here for you, okay? It’s something I’ve been through too, and…”

Felicia shuffled a bit, looking for Yumi’s reaction.

“You’re my friend. I wouldn’t change that.”

She smiled, in an attempt to be reassuring.