The drawing Xyrop made for you is lovely and it's a perfect fit to this story.
You put in too many adorable moments to fawn over, Felix!
All of the blushes, the pouncing and playful tussling, the teasing, the little smiles, their race on the stairs and the snowflakes scene and the bunny and....
You showed how precious the memory and their bond is with those details. Even going in knowing that this part of the story has already come and gone, you've the reader hoping right from the get go that there is a happy 'ending' and that there are more of these stories to come for Saddie (Goat), Ashley (Ashuri) and Red (that amazingly cool imp)!
Normally, I'd say that I'd personally prefer a bit more details of the speaker when there are multiple speakers and lines of dialogue (which was well done, especially between the three friends) to be better able to visualize how each character was speaking. (Tone of voice, where their head was tilted, how they were holding themselves, where their eyes were focused, etc.) But for this, as it was a memory, and as you wrote in these fine details in the places that were between Saddie, Ashley & Red, it furthered the thoughts from your intro. That as time goes on a memory changes and the less important parts to a person tend to become 'hazy'. The memory wasn't thought on so much because of the goal of the mission to get the scepter but of the friends and how they did it together.
The action kept the story fun, my favorites being the mad flight on Red and the assault on the door as I pictured the scene from the other side of it and the three being framed in the empty doorway. 😂 I also was happy that you didn't have them split up to cover more ground as it wouldn't have (1) made for more scenes with them together and (2) as you said, the whispers scared even the land-pirates so they were better off as a group.
"I'm Ashley, or Ashuri for Saddie, here... We wrecked your place basically."
Great line to explain both their expressions and their remorse for the destruction. (Plus imagining her saying it had me laughing, as that's what they did!)
-To your ending message, thanks for the heads up to your increased workload. I suppose it's a mark of respect to the quality of what you do, that they want more and not less from you. 🤗
P.S. Congrats for receiving a vote from the Curie community on this terrific story! (What's your pick of victory song?)
UwU ~ Thanks for the compliments and thanks for reading! I know, that drawing was priceless when Xyrop made it. Also, not sorry for all those “hnng” moments. Look: I had to it to ‘em, both ye readers and the characters. And to do so, all of them were necessary, for the balance and stability of this depressed site called Steemit. Anyways, I didn’t exactly plan on mudering someone through cuteness! Oj nie...
This is the Policja, surrender now the Weapons of Mass Hnng!
Yah’ll nae take me alive, Policja!
Anyways, while I’m on this underground tram escaping the Policja, comms m-may ge-ge-get jammed. Anywho, I guessed it worked with doing those actions to capture the essence of the adolescent relationship between the two. (For explicit clarification, Ashley in her first-ever appearence in a game was declared in the USA to be 15yrs old by Nintendo of America. So, with my first published story with her, I decided to mark that as her canonical age at that point of time within my Monoverse, multigalaxy setting. So this taking place before the Spirits’ Cave Course where Ashley and Saddie definitely split at that point (for which I shall forever leave in the dark as to why), it makes sense why I would say adolescent.) Only expect more when it gets to their teens; which may or may not reflect a relationship I see with two of my childhood lesbian friends. (However: if one wants to make comparisons rn, I wasn’t Red nor are the characters fully reflective of their actual personalities nor an omission to their actual abilities. Though it is sad I haven’t found a witch that can hex things, that’s friends with an imp and is gay with a thief/pirate.)
I agree on the essence of memories, that conscious-unconscious entity. I think we can’t do much more justice than we have already on the matter. And I got a heart to give at least a “bittersweet” or “pyrrhic loss” endings to characters in my stories. I never could find any satisfaction in them not doing anything to change what they struggled, nor making the enemies gleeful when they are slain and, I, choosing instead to make the enemy humiliated to have even gotten the victory with all their loses. In a World where the Media can spin the tales of tragedies for the one’s struggling to change society and the status-quo always firm and erect in spite of heavy losses on their end, we need to have the responsibilities as writers to show how every struggle has its bittersweetness for the struggling and humiliation for the “victors” that klooped the lights out of the struggling “loosers” of conflict. More-so a social responsibility as well as James Baldwin outlines well.
I shall repeat in essence the same witb dialouges as well, which may haunt you when it comes to one of my future prompts. Let’s say it’s all dialouge as a starter. I can hear already half of the regular #finishthestory crew freaking out, I swear it isn’t because It isn’t relaying that information to me. However, It is still rocking in that Blue Government suit, black tie, slim suitcase and having that nice birb kestrel on Its shoulder.
I totally agree on the comments relating to the action part. I hate the split-up trope usually found in horror stories, for military and storyline reasons. First military: a squad, the smallest detail before we get to two-person details, will never split up, even in “relatively” safe environments; there’s always a battle-buddy even in the case of split-ups, but more people sticking together means the mission can get accomplished faster and troop welfare isn’t compromised. Second for story reasons: it’s always a convient medium to kill off characters and get cheap scare scenes when collective scarring can totally reveal how truly scary a place can be and how powerful entities can be; to split them up is to show the group’s stupidity and literal hacking off of the Whole which now the moreness of this Sum is annihilated and nobody can play-off each other to better each other. (Funny my first story on Steemit was literally a military infiltration story for @dirge’s halloween contest a half-year where they come to see the Compound as [expunged, requesting data... ... ... permission denied, generating access link to override explanation... ... ... access granted, click here to access data]. Man, I keep constantly shifting my respect to the narrator’s voice.)
Yeah, lil quirks do add up to nice things like that. Hopefully, since I finally can exist finally (my speciality when no-one else can pull it off: the double usage of words when one can suffice it). Anyways thanks one more times for the compliments. My victory jingle basically.