Sea Butterflies

Everyone's already commented on the issue of the story arc being either insufficient or incomplete, so I won't go there. Stylistically, this piece worked well for me. I enjoyed your world-building, and, being a hopeless first-person-POV addict, I liked your narrator's voice. There are, however, a few moments where you almost break character and start sounding more like the author rather than the narrator.

One is when he/she talks about the work of their maker: "She spends most of her time dealing with the structure of plants and animals and reconfiguring them to survive in the post-human ecosystem of Earth." When the story starts, my first impression of the narrator was one of a fairly primitive creature. As the story went on, that got gradually got dispelled, and we could see that he/she received quite a bit of education from their maker. But not quite enough to come out with the above-quoted sentence in the scope of regular narration, I feel.

The second time is when the narrator quotes the maker's speech about photovoltaic modules. That piece of dialogue is far too long to be remembered word by word, which is what direct quotation implies. Later, you convey their conversation more elegantly -
"She said the humans from before ‘almost destroyed the planet, inside and out but they realised that by leaving the surface to recover, with only a few left behind to tend to the reconstruction-’"

You also slightly overuse the word 'microscopic'. True, it only came up twice in the story, but it's a prominent enough word for a short enough piece, especially when it's easy enough to find a synonym. This may be sheer nitpickery on my behalf, but I feel that the narrator's voice would benefit from more varied word choices, without going too much into technicalities (like I said above, making them sound properly scientific breaks character).

Aside from the POV issues, which, I feel, are minor enough to be fixed in a single round of editing, I really enjoyed your style. I liked your descriptions, I liked the idea of the post-human world left for gradual restoration, the interaction between the maker and the narrator (who, by the way, didn't read as either gender to me; it felt like they were made without a concept of a gender as such). Whatever you intend to do with this piece - incorporate it into a bigger story, or flesh it out to stand on its own - I think that you've got a great world and a great voice to work with.

Cheers!

P.S. Should you have the time and inclination, I'd appreciate it if you dropped by to have a look at my story, A Song For My Brother. I think you and I have some things in common, stylistically.

I think the idea has some potential, but as most other commenters have said, it seemed too much like an unfinished piece of a larger whole. And I also see that is what you were working with. The problem for me is that this is a competition for a finished piece and this really isn't. There isn't a lot of conflict, and no real resolution. In the context of the larger piece you imagine, perhaps it would work. Do keep working on it. The basic idea is interesting.

While I agree with other reviewers that it felt like a snippet of a larger story, I did find myself teleported to this dystopian world while reading it. I enjoyed the descriptions (the multicolored sands of the bay) and the language, and I was surprised to read the main character wasn't female. Gender is never mentioned, but I suppose I automatically thought of a mother somehow since the main character is nurturing & helping other creatures flourish. Interesting! 

I do like the story idea, but wish there was just a bit more to the ending. The story and idea have a lot of potential. Good luck with your revisions! 

You have a very poetic, almost ethereal quality in your writing that I found really engaging. The narrator (I also assumed female) is very good, as are the glimpses of the Maker. I agree that it is missing a story arc, which does give this an incomplete feeling. Despite this it's a lovely read, and I hope you stick with developing this.

A perfectly balanced creature in a healing world.  The idea of humans engineering someone who is nearly the embodiment  of Gaia is an interesting one.  Very well done!

Adrik, I really enjoyed reading your story. It was beautifully written with such visceral description and leaves me very intrigued. It reads as a wonderful tease into a larger story. Well done and keep writing!! Thumbs up!