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Anna Soldenhoff

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2025

Stories (11)

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58 Followers

206 Following

11 Stories

356 karma pts

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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 ...

5 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...

21 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...

9 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...

17 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

The Cypress Manuscript

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #310

It was the kind of story she never meant to tell—let alone publish.When Petra Barić uploaded the manuscript to Amazon KDP late one sleepless night, she assumed no one would read it. She even used a pseudonym—"Mira Dalma," a name that held just enough shadow to comfort her. The book's cover was an abstract blur of sea green and rust red, a template she'd tweaked half-heartedly. The blurb was vague, poetic, promising introspection and mystery, revealing nothing of its actual content.And that content was… raw."The Cypress Manuscript" was never ...

22 likes

The Inherited Sentence

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #310

The midday sun scorched the ancient stones of Dubrovnik's Old Town as Eva Perković dragged her suitcase down a narrow alleyway off Stradun. Her sandals slapped against uneven flagstones, her shoulder ached from her laptop bag, and sweat rolled freely down her back."This is it," she muttered to herself, stopping in front of a modest stone building with wooden shutters painted sea blue.It had taken her years — and the complete meltdown of her life — to get here.Once a rising star in the Croatian literary world, Eva had published a debut novel ...

38 likes

The Years the Tide Took

Anna Soldenhoff

Submitted to Contest #309

The sun was dipping low over the Adriatic, its last amber rays scattering like brittle shards of glass across the water. In Cavtat, the small Dalmatian town where time often felt like it was folding over itself, Lara stood at the edge of the old stone pier, watching the sea swallow the horizon. The scent of salt and pine was heavy in the air, but inside her, an emptiness echoed louder than the waves crashing against the shore.Her fingers clutched the thin silver chain around her neck, cold against her skin. It was the only thing she had left...

11 likes