I’m visiting last years Nano project again this year, in some hopes that I’ll finally finish it. Let me know if you want to join @ren-c-leyn on the tag list for this project!
Sometimes the Witch wishes it was like what it was in the books. That she was swept away to a magic school with comedic ghosts and talking paintings and fanciful names for everything. Boarding school with never ending food and dangers that are always circumvented by pure willpower. She never has nostalgia for this fictional hypothetical, except when she’s standing in front of Amelia’s door.
Amelia lives at the bottom of the large hill, in a house that construction companies keep meaning to tear down, but always seem to forget about at the last minute. The old Victorian home would sell for a fortune, despite the constant shadows from the hill, simply for it’s woodwork and veranda alone. Even in the disarray it’s in now, with it’s flaking paint on the posts and the dust crusting up the windows, it would have real estate agents drooling if they’d ever manage to notice it. But not many people do, real estate agent or otherwise. They walk right by without ever having the inclination of turning their heads, mainly because Amelia does not like guests, no more than the Witch enjoys being one.
But this is a meeting that has been put off for too long. Or, the Witch thinks, standing at the bottom step as the pointed towers and stained glass details loom above her, not long enough. But it’s too late. She’s looked into the eyes of the house, and Amelia knows she’s here. She’d never hear the end of it if she backed out now.
She tugs on the edges of her gloves, purchased from the money the Moth gave her. A coat next, she thinks, but gloves were a priority, especially when she realized the house she needed to visit. One errant finger on the railing, and the whole building would be talking to her. Amelia would be broadcast into her head from a mile away. She can hear the woman trying now, chastising her for taking so long, she assumed, but refuses to let her in. This was one conversation they could have in words.
More nano project! Please remember this is a first draft, and very much reads like one. If you want to join/leave the tag list let me know! @ren-c-leyn @silvertalonwriteblr @abbystardis
“This is in no way how I expected it to play out,” the Witch laughs.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Vera separates herself just enough that they can look at each other. She sniffs, wipes her eyes, but more happy tears leak right back out. Taking three deep breaths, she says, “Ok. Ok, I’m ready now, you can ask me.”
The Witch resists the urge to lower her head to laugh, not wanting to miss a moment of the way Vera is looking at her right now. Picking up the box and looking into Vera’s eyes she asks, “Vera, my love. Will you marry me?”
The Witch has, for all extents and purposes, recorded this moment in her mind. Every time she watches it, it is the same. But here, this time, the Witch loses her breath for something less than a second. In a moment smaller than a blink, the world shifts.
The color has changed. The warm and cheery fire, the cold sunlight filtering through grey clouds, the hearty brown of the store, it has all dimmed and faded to something lesser, fainter, frigid and dull. While the Witch is still kneeling, Vera is back on her chair, and while there are still paths made by her tears, she is neither smiling, or laughing, or crying. Her face is as blank as a statue, serene and stern.
The Witch frowns, and it feels unfamiliar. This isn’t how it happens. “Vera, my love,” she tries again, the words feeling stuck and heavy. “Will you marry me?”
“But my dear,” Vera asks in a voice as stiff and flat as she never was, “How can I do that? You’re so cold. You are far too cold.”
The Witch’s mouth hangs open. What was going on? Vera says yes. They kneel in front of the fire together and Vera says yes and they hug and kiss and cry and everyone who comes into the shop for the rest of the day leaves with a burning sense of joy in their chests that lasts a full week. It was the happiest memory the Witch had, and after Vera died, the saddest. But it was never like this.
“You are a house in winter with all the windows broken.” This blank Vera reaches down and cradles the Witch’s chin in her hand. “You let the wind whip through you without protest. You bare your legs to the snow and sharpen your voice on frozen steal. How could I say yes? Do you want me to freeze?”
“This isn’t how it happened.” The Witch is unable to speak in anything other than a whisper. “You—this—it’s all wrong. Vera, what’s going on?”
“How did you get so cold, my love?” The term of endearment sends a shiver down the Witch’s spine. She’s never heard those words from Vera’s mouth sound so meaningless. “When did you step away from my fire?”
“I—I didn’t,” the Witch tries to say, looking at the dying coals in the fireplace next to them. When did that go out, she wonders, but she knows. It went out the day that Vera died, and was never lit again. “You stepped away from me. You’re the one who left.”
Vera shakes her head back and forth, the curls that reach her midback barely moving, still as anything else about her. “Death might have removed me from this early, but you’re the one put yourself in the cold. You can come in anytime. Come out from the cold and warm yourself by the fire.”
“But it’s gone out.”
Vera, or whatever looks like Vera, smiles, and it breaks whatever the Witch has left in her chest. The motion is slow and robotic, nothing like Vera’s easy laughs or grins or giggles. Stiffly, she smiles with all her teeth, and says, “But you are a witch. And you can start it again.”
I have too many, but this is just a quick update on my various works so you can see what you might be interested in, and I can remember all of them. Let me know if you want to join any of the tag lists!
Walk
My main WIP and what you’ll see most often, Walk is an action/adventure trilogy in a near dystopian future transformed by the accidental release of a ‘virus’ that grants superhuman abilities to certain members of the population. While hundreds are captured and contained, some manage to escape into the forest, where a chance encounter shows that the hate and mistreatment of the infected aren’t based in fear, but greed. A band of unlikely heroes must overcome their different backgrounds, world views, and senses of morality to work together and stop the mistreatment of those like them.
Check it out if you’re into... Found family! Super powers! Dismantling systematic oppression! Strong female characters that have personalities! Morally gray characters!
WIP Page | Excerpt | Tag List: @aruzeus @madammuffins
Cold Bones Dance
Started as a Nano Project, now my favorite distraction. A magical realism novel where unsatisfied skeletons rise from the dead to complete their unfulfilled purpose-if the moth memory keepers can help them figure out what it is. Being a skeleton is never easy in the best of times, but when this one rises, the moths can’t even figure out his name, let alone his story. Pared with the prickliest moth of them all, the Skeleton must find a way to convince a grieving witch to use her powers to help him. Making his journey harder? A Holly Tree (Whose Name Is Death) won’t stop trying to tempt him back underground, and a stray dog who really, really wants to chew on his leg.
Check it out if you’re into... Hopeful takes on grief! Slightly dark comedy! Slice of Life world building! Subtle magic! The calm use of passive voice! Small bay-side towns!
I....have yet to make a WIP Page for this. But here’s the Tag, where there are some summaries and excerpts for it | Tag list: @ren-c-leyn
Knifepoint
I’m really not good at naming my action/adventures, am I? In this created world, three countries are constantly on the brink of war. While in a time of peace, everyone knows its only a matter of time before one country attacks. When three unintentional representatives from these countries collide (quite literally) and discover a plot to sow conflict and restart the centuries old war, the spy, the healer, and the blacksmith have to overcome their differences, prejudices, and language barriers to do what they know is right.
Check it out if you’re into...Created countries that don’t count as fantasy because there’s no magic! Political intrigue! Linguistics! Enemies to found family to lovers! Romantic tension between two women sword fighting!
WIP Page | Excerpt
The Forgotten Grave Society
In a small town in a small state, on the first day of summer vacation, three girls find themselves in a graveyard. After discovering they all share the same pull towards the quite, peaceful place, they agree to meet there every day, to remember the long forgotten graves and learn about one another. But it turns out the graveyard holds a secret. Spend too much time with the dead, and you might just start to see them. An artist, an athlete, and a scientist must use their skills to save the ghosts-and themselves.
Check it out if you’re into...Young girls with a variety of skills working together! Various theories of the afterlife! Lighthearted conversations about dead people! Some pleasantly creepy moments! Talks about the difficulty of navigating middle school! Ghosts!
WIP Page | Excerpt | If you had asked to be tagged in this in the past, I’m sorry! I lost that tag list with my last notebook, let me know if you want back on.
The House with Too Many Doors
Magic can only be found when someone makes such an impossible series of mistakes that it’s discovery become inevitable. Such is the luck of Avi, who gets lost in a forest and stumbles on a strange house: A tall skinny barn with 3 doors on each side. Avi soon learns from it’s inhabitant that each door opens up a completely different house, and one of them could release a danger that has been locked away for years.
Check it out if you like...Middle grade magic! Creative use of architecture! Emotional health strategies! Gender neutral characters! Monster fighting!
This one also lacks a WIP page. We’re getting there. In the meantime, have the tag. | Let me know if you want to join the tag list!
God on a Blank Page
Welcome to the distant future, where all information is taught through recorded lectures on headphones, writing is dead, and cathedrals were emptied to make room for the gods of the dominant polytheistic religion. When the sullen daydreamer is forced to go to temple with her family, she spends her time in the abandoned alcove of the blank-faced god, the god of nothing anyone can figure out. She assumes she’s safe there, to pursue her ‘what-ifs’ in peace, but when the god starts talking with her, she finds she has work to do.
Check it out if you like...Southern Gothic Futurism! The rediscovery of creativity! Learning to think from other people’s points of view! Unreliable narrators! Cryptic whisper gods!
What’s that? Another missing WIP page? I’ll get right on it, here’s the tag. | Be the first on the tag list, when a special prize! (the prize is a huge thank you in all caps)
I’m always open to questions, comments, or criticism, so stop by my ask page if you’d like. If you also want to check out the characters of (some) of these WIPs, my character page is here.
Read an early excerpt of this chapter here. Let me know if you want to be tagged! @ren-c-leyn
He tried to gasp as he pulled his head out of the ground. Although he found he could, it didn’t feel like he expected. Probably, he realized as he pushed his upper body through the dirt, because he didn’t have lungs anymore. He didn’t have any organs or muscles or skin. Piece by piece, as his bones revealed themselves from his hole, he found only a skeletal frame, with hints and memories of tendons connecting them together.
When he emerged, he could only stare at himself. Sitting cross-legged on the disturbed dirt, he turned over his arms, his legs, looked around to his back, felt the hardness of his face. He touched each exposed tooth, the empty sockets of his eyes, the holes where his ears and nose would have sat. There should have been something disturbing about it, looking at the unfamiliarity of the skeleton that you’ve always possessed, but no matter how hard he tried, he just could not remember what he looked like.
Once this fact was established, he realized there were other things he couldn’t remember, either. What he did for a living, how hold he was, his parents—he couldn’t remember his name. He couldn’t even remember his name. For a moment, he even forgot how to breath, but without lungs, this wasn’t as much of a problem as it could have been.
For anyone that’s been following the drama of me taking a break from my main WIP...this is what I’m working on now! A magical realism story about grief, death, and second chances.
A Skeleton rises from the grave with no name and no memory of who he is.
A Moth, vying for a promotion, is given an impossible mystery that could ruin his career for eternity.
A Witch, mourning the loss of her fiance, forsakes magic.
A Holly Tree, Whose Name Is Death, is determined to get the Skeleton back in his grave.
A Dog, hungry and homeless, enjoys chewing on the Skeleton a little too much.
The five weave in and out of the other’s lives, each one affected in ways they never could have anticipated. Even after death, it seems, life goes on, as long as you decide it will.
Let me know if you want to be tagged in this! I’m going to start posting short excerpts (a couple of paragraphs at most) every Tuesday and Thursday, so let me know if you want in on that!
On the day the Skeleton woke up, the air was stiff with an early chill, fiery leaves clung to trees, and scarves had just been located in the backs of closets. Pumpkins sat abandoned next to trashcans, and the ground was almost covered by brown foliage and abandoned acorns. The sun was shining out bright, but the rays brought no more warmth than a street lamp. It was a fall day that many would remember as perfect. Unfortunately for the Skeleton, the memory of the weather was overshadowed by having to dig himself out of his own grave.
He had been tossing and turning in there almost since they put him in. Many Skeletons are restless sleepers. As they dream their memories, they’re bound to come across a few that makes them squirm, or furious, or discontented. But only a few are so plagued by a purpose they’ve left unfulfilled that they have no choice but to wake up.
The problem with waking up from a dream, though, is it’s usually very difficult to remember.
The Skeleton looked at the bones that made up his hands and wondered what they had looked like with flesh and skin. It would be easier to be a ghost, the thought. To have a form that’s never belonged to him, that’s new, rather than to be totally unrecognizable in a body that, technically, he’d always carried with him. He curled his fingers one at a time into a fist, marveling at the shadow tendons that held them in place. He must have seen other skeletons when he was alive, but even if he did have a memory, it was unlikely that he ever got an opportunity to study one this close.
He was still opening and closing his hand when the Moth fluttered over to land on the arm of the bench.
“Have you processed?” The Moth asked in a tone that implied he thought the Skeleton already had too much time.
The Skeleton looked around the cemetery. They were out of sight of the hole he had crawled out of, for better or for worse, but he could see other disturbed graves. A fresh one, two that looked half caved back in, and one—one was a recently made mound of earth resting in front of a tall stone. A body freshly dead, or a skeleton who was able to get back to sleep. This Skeleton looked back down at his hands. How would he ever figure out his purpose, let alone achieve it, when he didn’t even know his own name?
The moth flapped it’s wings in place and muttered something about ‘grave dirt in the ears’. “Skeleton? The whole processing stage. Have you done it?”
“Sure,” the Skeleton said, placing bone fingers on bone thighs. The moth flew towards the cemetery entrance, and the Skeleton found itself following.
“Great. I did some research, while you were…”
“Processing,” the Skeleton supplied.
“Processing,” the Moth agreed. “It’s fortunate, there’s a rather powerful witch in this district who’s rumored to be able to return memories. Used to have a pretty popular shop, but it’s been closed for nearly a year. If we can track her down, we might actually have a shot at fixing this mess…”
The moth kept going on about address records and death certificates, but the skeleton wasn’t listening. He was looking at the tallest hill in the cemetery. No graves had crept up that grassy slope yet. Instead, a single Tree overlooked the fields below. The Skeleton had first noticed the Tree when he sat down on the bench. Despite his lack of memory, he recognized it as a Holly Tree. An old one, too. It was almost three times as tall as the Skeleton, with twisting branches looking like they were trying to grab at the very air itself. The skeleton didn’t pay it any sort of significant attention. When you wake up from the ground as a skeleton, find out that your memories were lost in a bureaucratic mishap, and are informed that you have to track down a witch that lives who knows where, you have other things on the brain. But now, nearly at the gate, the skeleton could see the Holly Tree from another angle. He was surprised to find that the back of the tree was hollow and broken. Dead on the inside, branches burned or cut away, and yet the tree was still growing on one side.
“What’s up with that tree?” The Skeleton asked, but the Moth was all business.
“Neither of us seem very apt for driving, at least not until some more of your muscle memory comes back,” the he said. “Until then, we’re going to have to hike a bit.” And the Moth set down the street with a quick pace.
They were only a few steps out of the cemetery when the Skeleton noticed a large group of people with posters and signs filling up the sidewalk, overflowing towards the fence. As the pair approached closer, the group grew quieter and quieter. The skeleton felt all eyes on him. He stiffened as the moth sighed.
“Sorry, there’s no getting passed these people,” he muttered. “Just ignore them, and don’t let anyone grab you.”
“What?” the Skeleton asked, but it was too late. They were nearly on top of them, and the Skeleton could now recognize the signs and posters for what they were. Huge head shots one some, smiling faces with flat eyes. Others supplied names and birth and death dates. They pointed them at the skeleton.
“Are you George?” One woman desperately moaned. “Are you my George?”
“He’s the right height for dad,” someone whispered to their neighbor.
“What’s your name!” Several shouted. “Tell us your name!”
“His grave was unmarked!” the Moth shouted. “He’s not from this district, he just died here.”
Several people frowned and rested their signs on the ground, but a few held them even more forcefully towards him.
“You still could be! You could be my brother!”
“Does the name Justin ring any bells?”
“Just look at it—does it look familiar?”
The skeleton wasn’t reborn with a heart, but he felt something under his ribs break. Despite the impatient fluttering of the moth around his face, he looked at each photo shoved under the hole where his nose used to be. “I’m sorry,” he told each one. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
One by one, they grew disappointed and let him take another miniscule step closer to the freedom of a sidewalk unoccupied by these terribly sad people. When he had told the last one— “I wish I could, really, but it doesn’t—I don’t feel anything, no—” he felt like he was finally able to fill the gaping hole of his chest with the air that he didn’t technically need.
“Who were those people?” He asked when they were out of earshot.
“They call them weeping widows, if you’re being nice. If you have less patience, the name ‘Banshees’ has been thrown at them more than once. They’re just sad people who spend all their time hoping the next skeleton that walks out will be their loved ones. It’s pathetic, and illegal, inside the cemetery. That’s why they were out here.”
The Skeleton looked over his shoulder and saw many of the weeping widows looking back at him. But that’s not what made him stop in his tracks. Behind them he saw the half dead Holly Tree. And while the eyes of the widows felt heavy, the eyes that bore straight into him came from the impossible tree, rooted in the sidewalk behind the sad crowd. Tree’s don’t have eyes. Tree’s don’t watch people, and yet the Skeleton and the Tree stared at one another. He could feel it thinking. He could almost hear it thinking.
And then it was gone. The skeleton could no longer blink, but he still couldn’t explain how the Tree disappeared in an instant. He looked past the group, looked across the street, looked into the cemetery, and found the Tree on the same hill it should have been on the whole time. Of course it was, the skeleton told himself. There’s no where a Tree could go, even if it wanted to.
“I hate to remind you, but we are on a schedule,” the moth snapped.
The skeleton turned back around, placing one bony foot in front of the other. Even when they turned a corner and both the cemetery and the weeping widows were out of sight, the skeleton could feel eyes on each vertebrae of his back. Whether they were human or not, he didn’t turn around to find out.
How’d I end up pulling two Five cards in a row? Well, things are slightly less depressing for the next entry. Slightly. If anyone wants to join the tag list for this project, let me know! @silvertalonwriteblr
