The Importance of Feedback

Something I have learned from my pretty much constant seven-month jump into the world of fanfic is that I cannot write in a vacuum. I'm my own worst critic, after all, and what I think is absolutely terrible may not be half bad, and what I think is nothing special may very well in fact be something special. (Seriously. "Can You Help Me" is at, of this writing, 86 favorites. I am completely confounded as to why.)

So I am once again offering something up for constructive criticism. Below is my rewritten prologue for The Witch of November. I wrote it in about forty-five minutes, so it's not polished and pretty but it's not worth taking the time to polish it up if it's not accomplishing what I need it to do. Does it grab you? Does the dialogue sound like you imagine two young women from the late 1870s would sound? Does it make you want to know what these two women have to do with the Witch in the title? Basically, does it do what a prologue should do?

Please help me out here. I want to get working on this sucker again, but it's so hard to do that when you think what you have is terrible and not working.