Thomas Ray

Well written, my fellow writer. While I don't agree with every point you made, I can accept this for what it is, and that's a wonderfully written story. Musing? Story? I'm still not sure, but yeah. Nice job.

It's not too bad! It got the idea across, at least, and it's better than any f my poetry.

To start, I really liked this! It was, and is, a really good draft. I only have a few questions, and I hope they don't come across as overly critical.
How close is Sarah to her grandfather? If they're really close, which is the idea I got, then why did he give her the sphere? He knew there were dangerous people after it, so why did he give it to her. Similarly, I feel like Sarah should be mourning her grandfather more strongly if they were really close. The sphere should make her think of her late grandparent.
Did she see her dead grandfather?
The sphere seemed to have a personality, at least to me, and I think it could be really fun if it was a little more characterized. Seriously, I liked the sphere a lot. A little more development to the characters would be beautiful, and would make grandfather's death all the more tragic, which I would like. Maybe more time to meet the characters? For a draft the characters were really good, though.
Keep going? I would read more of this. Sorry if any of that was blunt or offensive, it's a little hard to convey any idea of tone or emotion through the computer. I did really like this, and it would be really fun to read an edited version of it.

I will say, we spent a strange amount of time talking about mushrooms, and it feels very different from the rest of the story. At the end, it says "Before they knew it, they were inseparable friends", but we didn't see that process (which is fine, because the story is going to be relatively short, and you can't show everything) but we DID see mushrooms, which left me confused.
Maybe I missed something that gives the mushrooms meaning. Maybe I'm too hung up on them. Either way, I like the tone of this, and the pictures you chose have the cold, airy, but still stable vibe of the story.
To be clear, I actually like the mushroom conversation (except for the obnoxious technical names) but I do question its necessity in this story. Ya gots ta be intentional about what you show, and if we're hung up on plants while brushing by character development, it can leave the reader feeling cheated.

There's a power in this poem that many people rarely feel inside themselves. The cages we live inside sometimes turn out to be harder to escape than we thought, and we take it to mean that we ourselves are weak, when in reality, it's admirable that we can even stand under the weight of our personal problems.
I think the mindset presented in this poem could be a good alternative.

Kind of like how if you look at someone and assume they're struggling you'll be right, you can look at a problem or realistic story and assume it has been or will be a reality at one point.
If the darkess and depression in this story exist just because, it may do more harm than good to the readers. I mean this in the best way. With extreme sadness, you can bring characters through storms (and therefore readers) but unless there's a note of hope, or even a semi-happy ending, it won't quite be an honest story at all. Emotionally wrecking myself at the hands of a story should leave healing potential, or I'll be left wondering if it was worth it.
I think this has enormous potential and wish you luck on whatever you decide to write. (Whether this story or a different one.)

Hm. This is why I don't want to have a girlfriend. I like having friends.