I like this chapter more than I did the prologue, even though technically even less actually happens. Ciera, with her phobias, somehow earns my sympathies and I keep hoping she’ll do something to get past them.
There are still a lot more words here than you actually need, I think. Summary, Ciera goes to work. Do you really need 3300 words for that? Aside from showing us Ciera’s frightened disposition and her mental friend, this chapter doesn’t feel necessary at all. If you start in the library Ciera will be just as frightened and Onmk will still be in her head.
Now, while I find Ciera more relatable than Destra, both women can be defined with a singular description. Destra hated men, Ciera is afraid of people. They follow those baselines so rigidly it’s all they seem to be; Destra hates, Ciera fears. This makes them feel, to me, rather one dimensional.
What I noticed most is mostly technical in nature, and since you’ve said English isn’t your first language I’ll spent some extra time here. You have a lot of long sentences. The first two together clock in at 87 words! You focus a lot of these sentences on Ciera being afraid, doing things because she’s afraid, a mention of work, then another thing about why she’s afraid. And the majority has you telling us this instead of showing it.
Some grammatical errors, I don’t usually mention specifics unless they’re consistently used wrong. For instance ‘loose’ instead ‘lose’. You also did that mistake in the prologue.
An odd construction of dialogue attributions is when you have “wanted to say Ciera”. Very Yoda, it is.
Still a lot of passive voice, “hands were clutching” instead of “hands clutched”.
When you have Ciera and Onmk (such an unfortunate name to have to pronounce) talking to each other you mention at the start that she’s replying mentally, rather than verbally, but the distinction becomes lost quickly. Especially when you have Ciera, the driver, and Onmk speak.
All throughout the chapter you use colons where you don’t need them, I counted a full nine occurrences. I’m hard-pressed to remember a book that had colons and/or needed them. A period followed by a new sentence is all you need, or if you must some dashes or semi-colon.
I think you could probably cut this chapter and present the reader with the salient points elsewhere. Remember, the first chapters are especially important to grab the reader’s attention. This doesn’t mean it should be full of action, but it does mean what happens is meaningful and draws us in to the characters. I can’t stress this enough, we need to feel for the character and get to know her. While I am a little sympathetic towards Ciera you don’t flesh her out much – she’s afraid, has a voice in her head, that’s it. For 3300 words, that’s not much at all.
Other than that, try to watch out for passive voice and using too many words. If you feel you have to explain something or clarify something, look again to see if you really need the explanation as much as you think you do. I think you’ll find that most often you don’t actually need it.
