Nanowrimo Bits - 11/19/19 (Patreon)

A snippet from today's Nanowrimo - 

“What is it?” she asked, attempting to dust herself off and only making herself more dirty. “What did I find?” 

“A book,” Ashe said, passing over a small, leather-bound book. 

Flannery opened the book, expecting to find the title of the Brothers Grimm’s book on the pages. Instead, she found the flowery handwriting of a young girl, and a table of contents.

“Matilda’s stories,” she read aloud, unable to stop herself from smiling. “And look here, all of our stories are there: Cinderella, Snow White, Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood. We’re all there.” 

She flipped through the book, her brows furrowing when she found all the pages completely blank beyond the title page and the table of contents. The odd thing was, she could see where things had been written – a splatter of ink in the bottom corner, the doodle of an apple on the margins. Someone had written in this book, but the stories themselves were gone.

“I don’t get it,” Conor said. “Are you sure this was the source of the magic?”

Flannery nodded. “It’s the only thing around here that didn’t have a magical aura. The ground, the ruins, they all have magical auras. Why doesn’t this?”

“What are you saying, Flannery?” Ashe asked. 

“The act of creating worlds, and putting those worlds to the page, bringing them to life with inked words,” Flannery explained, running her hands over the blank pages with some small bit of reverence. “I think that’s plenty magical, don’t you? This little girl poured her heart into these stories, you can tell, and she buried them here for whatever reason. That tree got planted over them, and it absorbed the magic she left behind, and as the tree grew, so did the magic. We weren’t called here because of the Grimm brothers’ stories. We were brought here because of Matilda’s! Who else would give Cinderella stained glass armor but an imaginative little girl who wanted her princesses to be knights as well?” 

“So…we’re not the Grimm brothers’ characters?” Conor asked, still a little confused.

Flannery shook her head. “I thought it was weird that Kai was the little mermaid when that’s not even a Grimm brothers story. But if you’re a little girl writing fanfiction for all your favorite fairy tales, you’re not going to care who wrote which story, you just care that you love them and want to write your own versions where Snow White’s stepmother loves her and Little Red and the Wolf get to be friends at the end.” 

“Then why did I run away from my stepfamily?” Ashe asked, her voice quiet, almost embarrassed.

“Because the root of the story is the same as the brothers’,” Flannery explained. “The Grimm brothers didn’t originally write these stories either, they just collected and translated a whole bunch. We feel the root of the stories deep down, but we also embody the changes Matilda made, that the world made as it kept spinning after she passed. You felt Cinderella’s fear and trauma deep down and ran from it, even if you didn’t want to admit what was happening.”

Ashe nodded, understanding. “I think I get it. But then, how does this help us against Jacob and William?” 

“Knowledge is power,” Elwood said. “Knowing that we’re not born from just their versions of the stories will help fight against their influence.” 

“I think it’s more than that,” Flannery said, closing the book. “But I’m not sure what that means just yet. I have a gut feeling, but that’s about it. Regardless, let’s get this back to town, and let everyone know what we figured out.”