That brought tears to my eyes.
Enuf sed.
<sniff>

well, now I feel better. I had tears in my eyes, but I wasn't sure if it was that good or if I'm an easy cry.

Okay, I am an easy cry . . .

Glad you liked it.

Where can I sign up... I need a new publisher... I loved it... very ncely done... and you were so worried!

*gives him a hug.....

V.

Of course I was worried. I worry alot (if you hadn't noticed). I know I shouldn't, but knowing and really knowing are a long way apart for me . . . Ah, well, the three most important things at this point are practice, practice and . . . what was it again? Oh yeah, practice :)

*laughs and gives him a hug....

V.

*waves paw* I'd like to sign up too.

This is great piece, it rouses emotions for sure. I like the detailed level of your descriptions.

No crying from me though, though I'm a more difficult cry. I wonder how you'd hold up to my "Meeting an Old Friend" prompt. THAT one made me cry as I wrote it.

Glad you liked it, I was actually thinking about some of the artists I have read about here and what they were going through to get their work published and it sort of ran into the prompt inspiration and stuck :)

Crying is, of course, a very individual response and I'm probably a little tender right now. Anyway, I've been going through folks back galleries as I have time, so I appreciate the warning, I'll bring lots of tissues . . . . .

I really like this one. You can feel the intensity of feelings between them all the way to the end. Very nice work.

Thank you. I wasn't sure if what I was feeling would come across, since I was feeling it ;) Glad you liked it.

I liked it, too. My only nits are 1) I wanted to know the species right from the start (this is just a pet peeve of mine -- my default position on a character is "human" until I'm shown otherwise, and in this case it's the fourth paragraph before I realize I've been envisioning the character completely wrong), and 2) a couple of the speeches ran a little long for me, without being broken up by the other character or some kind of action.

Very nice work. I started off agreeing with her grandfather, but maybe that's because I didn't finish college myself. ;) But by the end, I understood them both.

*nods head* I'm sure it comes from writing bass-ackwards. I'm writing it in the opposite direction than it will be read :p
and yeah, long-winded . . . scriptwriting and blocking movement and reaction . . . "Cut 20% and bring it back" *goes back in with scissors and polish*

Oh, very nice! Everything fits together quite well, and that's something I enjoy seeing.

I have one criticism, which is that I think you should frame this as a furry story within the first paragraph. Nothing of the sort is mentioned until the 'bunny picture' line, and it was fairly jarring. Long ears, whiskers, just some mention of anthropomorphism will be enough to orient the reader to the context right off the bat.

True, true. My only defense is that it was in the first paragraph when I started out :p I went back to put in more description to set some stage for the action to come and I shuffled that too far down . . . *reshuffles*

I liked the "thinking better while moving around" and "being less of a target that way" reasoning..makes sense for who they are.

Thank you. I'm always relieved when someone who doesn't live in my head thinks something I write makes sense :)

Great story.^^ I completely agree with everyone's praise. There is one issue I think is a problem though.

Your flashbacks. At the part where Mary and her grandfather first say hello and sat down I was hooked by the revelation of the characters' relationship and immediately wanted to know more. You then interrupted that scene and went to the nurse's thoughts. You kept it short so that probably would have been fine but then rather than getting back into the scene, it goes into flashback about the knee surgery and the history of his personal belongings.

This kind of thing tends to be jarring because it takes the reader out of the story. Interrupts the forward motion. My suggestion would be to either put the all that information in before the character scene starts, or try to find away to take bring the same info out in-scene. (through dialog, character action, etc.) Show instead of tell, in other words. :)

I don't blame you at all though. Flashbacks are always tricky. Most of the writing books I read advise against them altogether, at least not near the beginning of a story. This issue and more are covered in deatail in a very good book called "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers", by Renni Brown and Dave King. It's relatively short (260 pages) and packed with advice on how to expertly polish a first draft. I recommend it.

Very true. To tell the truth it was sort of jarring to write as well. Forward motion was not much to be had :P Unfortunately, the part that I liked was the later exchange that did come out in-scene, and the rest was put together to hang it on. I'm not entirely sure upon re-reading that it all belongs in the same story, or at least not the same part of this story.

If I am later inspired, I would like to show more history of this family, but it's just getting more garbled at this point. Sort of that one more brushstroke that makes a beautiful stormcloud a muddy mess :)

This is actually pretty good. You get a feel for how the characters are thinking, which is something many writers don't accomplish. It's also interesting, your somewhat minimalist description of the characters. It feels to me that you give just enough about the characters that I can imagine what they look like, but you also allow a lot of leeway for interpretation. Plus, the description doesn't get in the way of the plot, something I am all too familiar with from my own writing. :P

That said, I'd have told Mary that I'd only open the trust if she promised to finish school. XD I can say from personal experience, being a business major myself, that she'd be missing out on a lot of things that might be essential to properly running a business. :P But that's just my opinion.

I'm glad it manages to strike a good balance for you. I wish I could say it was just my good pacing, but I've had a hard time with a couple bits because I forget that the reader can't see them walking around in my head and so I have to remember to put some bits on paper to get it across :P

Frankly, I agree with you on finishing school, although an argument might be made in a longer (and better researched) work that the opportunity was too good to pass up *shrug* I have been toying with the idea of continuing the tale, and of course, not all stories end happily . . . . probably not anytime soon tho

It works out very well, really. I like a little slack in my stories, to posit things that may be true that the author does not want to specify. :)

I hear that a lot of people have that problem. :) Being word-oriented myself (I don't really see what I'm describing, but rather maintain a sort of stream-of-consciousness paragraph that tells me approximately what I should say), I can't really relate, but I do know that I sometimes have to remind myself to disrupt the flow of words from the descriptions so that I can advance the plot. :P

About finishing school vs. jumping at the opportunity: Sometimes, a niche market will still be ripe for the taking long, long after it's discovered, simply because nobody wants to spend the resources to exploit it. Even if the big companies are not there, but are in a similar market, people won't jump in for fear of stepping on the big guys' toes, because you're risking a lot of money if the big guys suddenly decide to step in and squash you. Therefore, you want to be as prepared as you possibly can, and that includes knowing how to manage a company. :P

But enough rant. :P I think that this story has some wonderful possibilities for a sequel, and I would definitely be eager to see any future developments of this plot. :)

Great short story. Interesting, sweet, touching. The grandfather and the granddaughter could relate despite their age difference. I really enjoyed reading this.