>>44613865Alright alright, feedback time!
Honestly, all around a good first chapter, sets up the tone for the story nicely. There are a few things I feel I need to comment on though.
First small thing that caught my eye was the repetition of Jared's name. While you do make use of "he" and "him" to break it up, I would suggest to also keep in mind the length of the paragraphs. With how short they are, even only mentioning his name once per paragraph can get repetitive for the reader. Just something to keep in mind, it's not a big a deal desu.
Second would be the paragraphs themselves. While formatting is completely up to the author, I would personally group them up a bit more. Just personal preference here, honestly, as I like seeing bigger "blobs" of paragraphs instead of continuous one/two sentence ones. Again, up to you as the author.
Third, was this:
>The small creature had lost its mother to some unknown terror of the forestThe prologue actually establishes that the mother died in a fight with Mossback tortoise pack, the species which is detailed in
>https://rentry.org/NorthernMossbackLike first and second point, just a small tidbit, but caught my attention anyway. As for the draconic species which the pup belongs to, while I have yet to make an entry for them, you can, at least visually, assume it's basically a Zinogre, just without the lightning and stuff.
And lastly, while I haven't explicitly said it in my piece, it would have happened some ways off /uuu/ forests, deep into the tundra swamps of /nasa/. So the relationship between Jared and the pup would probably already be established before they reached the forest I would assume, although that can be altered for the sake of your story. I wouldn't want to completely dictate it based solely on an short old piece of mine.
And lastly lastly, the dream segment. I liked it a lot (hell, I could almost hear Fauna in her lines...) but I believe the delivery of it could be made more...impactful. Dialogue is a powerful tool, and one that can enhance the experience of the reader. In this specific case, I would have personally retold the dream through Jared's words, perhaps he woke up as if from a nightmare and Cass asked him what was wrong. This way we have a unreliable narrator that only remembers bits and pieces, shrouding the subplot into a veil of mystery. Him looking into the stream could then be used to further showcase how it got into his head, with, and I'm just spitting something random here, a patch of underwater greenery looking like beautiful verdant locks for a moment or something like that.
Overall, I really liked the first chapter, despite what my previous points might make you believe. I am looking forward to where you take this from here on out!