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Anna Soldenhoff

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2025

Stories (18)

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71 Followers

222 Following

18 Stories

523 karma pts

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The Shadows Behind the Olive Trees

Anna Soldenhoff

The cicadas were still buzzing when Nika drove her little blue Fiat along the winding coastal road to Orebić. The sun dipped low, gilding the Adriatic with a copper sheen, and the ferry to Korčula shimmered in the distance like a toy boat. Nika lowered the window and inhaled the sea-salt air, savoring the breeze before it was stolen by another humid night.At thirty-three, Nika was restless. She had returned from Zagreb to Pelješac after her father’s death, inheriting a small stone house and a neglected olive grove. The grove was wild now, ta...

3 likes

The Keepers of the Stone

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #321

The sun in Dalmatia does not gentle the earth; it hammers it. It beats the ancient limestone to a blinding white, bakes the red soil to terracotta, and turns the Adriatic into a sheet of shattered sapphire. For Mara, returning to the village of her childhood after two decades in the soft, grey light of London, the intensity was a physical blow. She’d come to empty her late grandmother’s house, a task she’d approached with the brisk efficiency that defined her life as a financial auditor. It was a matter of ledgers and logistics, of sorting t...

8 likes

Where the Paths Don't Hold

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #320

The Adriatic sun, a merciless disc of white gold, hammered the ancient limestone of the Dalmatian coast. For Luka, returning to the village of Mošćeni after two decades felt like stepping into a photograph that had been left to fade in a drawer. The identical sun-bleached stone houses clung to the hillside, the same sapphire sea whispered against the pebbled shore, and the same scent of pine resin, wild rosemary, and salt hung heavy in the air. It was a place of stunning, immutable beauty, and for Luka, it was a gilded cage whose door he had...

12 likes

When the River Fell Silent

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #319

The first thing I remember is the taste of limestone. Not a taste on a tongue, for I have never had such a thing, but a taste in my essence. It was the incredible, clean, mineral shock of water forcing its way through ancient stone, finding a fissure, a weakness, a new path. I was that path. I was that pressure. I was the sigh of the rock and the chuckle of the stream that was born from it, high in the snaggle-toothed teeth of the Sniježnica mountain.They call me a vila. A nymph. A spirit of the water. I am the consciousness of the aquifer t...

24 likes

The First Choice

Anna Soldenhoff

The Adriatic sun, a brutal, brilliant diamond in a vast blue vault, hammered the ancient white stone of Split. It baked the marble of Diocletian’s Palace, flashed off the windshields of cars crammed along the Riva, and filled the air with a heavy, salt-tinged lethargy. For Luka Perić, standing in the shadow of the black granite sphinx that had seen it all for millennia, the heat felt personal. It was the weight of expectation, of history, of his own perpetual, simmering disappointment.He was late. Again. His scooter, a temperamental vintage ...

6 likes

A Key to the Past

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #318

The Adriatic sun, a merciless, brilliant disc, hammered the ancient flagstones of Split's Diocletian's Palace. The air shimmered with heat, and the cacophony of a thousand tourists filled the scene. Luka Krstić, a guide for 'Dalmatian Dreams Tours', raised his voice above the din, a well-rehearsed melody of facts and anecdotes. "And here, in the Peristyle, the Roman emperor would have been greeted as a god. Notice the perfect alignment of the sphinx, brought from Egypt over seventeen centuries ago…" His eyes, the colour of the sea before a s...

12 likes

Knock at the Door

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #317

The sun had just begun to dip behind the limestone cliffs of Cavtat, painting the sky in molten gold and amber, when Ana noticed him. She had come down to the small, stony harbour to escape the stale air of her apartment and the ceaseless hum of her own thoughts. The town was quieter now, the tourist buses gone, leaving only the low cries of gulls and the gentle slap of waves against the boats.He stood by the edge of the water, motionless, his figure almost blending with the shadows cast by the tall cypresses lining the promenade. Ana first ...

23 likes

The Silence of My Voice

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #316

I never thought silence could feel like a punishment. Yet here I am, in a villa perched on the cliffs above Cavtat, listening to the Adriatic stretch itself endlessly before me, and realizing that the silence I have chosen is not freedom—it is a sentence.I used to sing. Not casually, not for the faint appreciation of a café crowd. I sang in halls where chandeliers glimmered like captured stars, where the audience held its breath at every note, and I gave them all I had. My voice carried joy, sorrow, longing, despair—everything a heart could ...

11 likes

Beneath the Cypress Shadows

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #315

I arrived in Dubrovnik at the end of September, when the air had that peculiar mix of summer's fading warmth and autumn's crisp promise. The tourists had thinned; the Stradun was quieter. The locals, freed from the constant rush of summer, moved more slowly, chatting in doorways, their voices mingling with the scent of coffee drifting from the cafés. I had come here not as a tourist but as a translator on a short freelance contract. A week of work, maybe two, helping a small museum near Cavtat prepare an exhibition for English...

18 likes

Paws of Fire

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #314

I'll say it right from the start: **I do not do well in heat.** I am a delicate tabby flower, designed for lounging gracefully on window sills during mild spring mornings or doing Olympic-level pouncing in cool autumn breezes. I was not—let me repeat: **NOT**—built for 34°C with humidity levels so high even the curtains gave up and stuck themselves to the walls like sweaty towels. But do my sisters listen to me?Nooooooo.Because Spurka thinks she's some kind of dark, mysterious jungle panther who thrives in tropical conditions, and Kitka—don'...

22 likes

Lavender Season

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #313

It started with the scent.A gust of late summer wind rolled down the slopes of Hvar's hinterland and drifted into the small coastal town of Stari Grad, stirring dust, salt, and memory. But above all, it carried the unmistakable scent of lavender—thick, sharp, and nostalgic. It crept through the open shutters of Kuća Šime, the old stone house on the edge of the olive grove, and settled over Lina's skin like a question she hadn't asked in years.She stood barefoot in the kitchen, her fingers deep in a bowl of dough. The texture was sticky—wrong...

20 likes

Split Frequencies

Anna Soldenhoff

The sun rose, flooding the Dalmatian coast with gold and indigo. The city of Split stirred like a sleeping giant, waking slowly, drowsily. From the hill of Marjan to the gleam of Diocletian's Palace, life emerged in cautious morning rituals—bakers with flour on their forearms, old men sipping espresso and arguing about football, and ferries yawning into motion across the water. The city was itself. It always had been.But beneath the calm veneer, something new pulsed in the veins of this ancient land.In the port, hidden behind the bulk of a r...

8 likes

Salt in the Circuit

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #312

The sun broke across the Adriatic like spilled honey, light glinting off the sea with a shimmer that made the stones of Split's old city glow. Tourists ambled between the marble columns of Diocletian’s Palace, licking gelato, snapping photos, brushing past the quiet ones who didn’t belong to any crowd.There were two figures on the Riva that morning, sitting across from each other on a bench flanked by lavender bushes and the soft rustle of palm leaves. One had a notepad in hand, the other a small, silver earpiece tucked behind their ear, bli...

18 likes

The Day the Angels Quit

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #311

The sky rained feathers the day the angels decided to quit.It wasn’t gradual, like a fading light or a whisper slipping into wind. It was sudden, vast, final. At 4:17 p.m. Zagreb time, the clouds opened — not with thunder, not with fire, but with a hush. A hush so deep it silenced traffic, halted footsteps, and left a little girl holding her mother’s hand at the tram station, blinking at the first white feather that drifted down onto her outstretched palm.Then another.And another.And then it was a blizzard of softness, a snowfall of resignat...

35 likes

Fold the Right Shirt

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #311

The first time Paula met Miro, he was throwing breadcrumbs to pigeons like a pensioner auditioning for sainthood. He wasn't a saint, not even close. He was barefoot, sunburned, and had a face that looked like it had been both kissed and punched by life.She had just sat on the stone bench outside the Franciscan Monastery in Dubrovnik, where the sea wind smelled of rosemary and tourists, and a cat was trying to unzip her backpack."Careful," Miro said, pointing at the feline thief, "that one took my last sandwich yesterday. Prosciutto and all. ...

18 likes