Nefertiti Fenison

I don't know if you guys who have read Our Invisible Threads notice yet, but a lot of sentences in the story begin with "For the first time since [insert a specific period]" and there's a reason for that. Johan and his friends really are experiencing many things for the first time. I think that's the beauty of being young.

Wouldn't it be ironic if a Water Rat can't swim but has a child who loves water?

I just realized that "When you try your best but you don't succeed..." song fits the atmosphere of the second half of OIT Chapter 12.
          
          Also, kind of possible that Petrus was born in 1972. That makes him what, Gen X? Between Boomer and Millenial?

Still on the topic of my protagonist's name: there is an old Indonesian song called Johan Kemerdekaan and it roughly translates into "Championing Freedom", so interpret the ending of the story as you wish <3

Today's trivia: Johan sounds like a Germanic name, right? But trust me, it is an Indonesian name. If you type "johan" into the official website of Indonesian dictionary (Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia or KBBI), you will see that johan is synonymous with "pemenang", meaning champion.
          
          Also, "kejohanan" is a word that means championship.
          
          Just thought y'all should know (especially my readers who might get upset by the time they get to chapter 12. I assure you, we have a champion).

Trivial fact of the day: pink snow in the Italian side of the Alps is caused by algae. Also, glacial algae exist, like in Greenland. Algal growth might or might not be related to the rate at which the ice melts and the sea level rises (correlation doesn't always equal causation, so I'm still learning more as I read up on this topic. Yeah, I didn't know prior to my hiperfixation about oceanic studies that algae can grow on glaciers too, how weird is that?!).

Since I have new followers who might not know yet that I've been on here for five, almost six, years: Hi, thanks for stopping by and checking my stories. If you like Johan and Kenta, I want to let you know they originally were side characters from Looking For Hope (written in 2020). They gradually became more interesting to me than the actual protagonist of LFH and so I kept developing their own plot lines. In 2024, I had the epiphany that the sci-fi setting no longer served them well, so I moved them to a contemporary setting and that was how Our Invisible Threads was conceived, although I didn't post its first chapter until May 2025.
          
          Anyway, you can totally read OIT without knowing anything about LFH but you're welcome to read LFH first if you're curious about how the concept of Johan and Kenta have evolved. It's kind of like Cardcaptor Sakura vs Tsubasa Chronicles of the Wings, to give you an analogy: same author, similar designs, different timeline.
          
          If there's one thing that has been consistent, though, it's that Johan has always been a big brother to Nardho and Nardhia from the very start. I think that's kind of the role he got locked into since I frankly believe it suits him a bit too well. As for Kenta, yes he's been consistently gay since the very beginning (he's the guy in red in my profile picture, drawn lovingly by Christina Silva).

Update: Coralline algae can be purple, apparently, depending on the species. Well, that answers my question. ONC 2025 prompt #28 is a good one. I someone put a gun on my head and threatened to shoot unless I agree to write something using that prompt, I might write something about Johan wanting to know if that specific Coralline algae is endangered and whether he could try growing a sample in a lab to study factors that inhibit its growth as well as factors that accelerate it. Might also study what kinds of fish have symbiotic relationships with said algae.
          
          The problem with that prompt for me is that I don't really know how it can be developed into a full-blown novella because I'm not sure what kind of conflict might arise. Unless if that species is, like, illegal to possess and studying it requires special license.

I went through some ONC 2025 prompts just because I wanted to know if I could have been persuaded to use some if the deadline didn't turn me off from trying. I found some I quite like as a slice-of-life writer, in no particular order:
          
          The one about finding purple water and being sucked under the sand. That sounds like a scenario Johan might accidentally find himself in. Chandresh would be like "I told you not to step foot in unfamiliar water!" and Kenta would be like "But where is your sense of whimsy?"
          
          The one about integrity and truth.
          
          The one about magic being a form of science 
          
          The one about a single night changing everything.
          
          The one about Spotify songs predicting the future.
          
          I feel like if I were a magical realism kind of writer, I would be tempted to combine all of the above into a weird story. I say "magical" because I'm not sure what would make water look purple. I know there are some algae that can make water look pink, but purple? I gotta Google it.
          
          Seeing last year's prompts makes me wonder what this year's prompts would be like. Good luck to everyone participating.

I'm not the type of writer who can get motivated to write a whole first draft of a book in three months, so I salute those of you who have done so or are planning to do so. Let me know if you're joining ONC 2026 so that I can be your cheerleader!