Just got done with another short story draft
It's 14 pages long. Oh, the editing and the revisions, oh no.
I was not expecting it to be this long. Granted, its the first draft. With some future edits and revisions, it might get a little shorter.
What's different for this draft this time is that from my last story, Altostratus [1][2][3][4][5] (if you want to read), I tried not to do too much front loading of the exposition of the setting and lore of my worldbuildin in this story, then I focused on character acting more in the story, like what does character A do or character B do, and then I actually explored a few implications for this story while living some parts up for the reader to ponder about.
I feel that this is an improvement over Altostratus, just need some cleanup on the grammar and spellchecking, and consistency with the worldbuilding.