Nanowrimo Bits - 11/21/19 (Patreon)

A snippet from today's Nanowrimo -

It was the middle of the night, and Flannery couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned, staring out at a moon that was stuck between a half moon and a full one – waxing gibbous, she thought it was called. She felt anxious, just absolutely full of pent up, nervous energy. She sat up, bringing her knees up under her chin. She couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong. Even before, when she actively feared what the Grimm brothers could do to her, she hadn’t had this hard of a time getting to sleep. She stared out the window, watching clouds pass in front of the moon. It’d be full in a few days. Full moons were supposed to be magical, right? Full moons and new moons. 

Was that what the brothers were waiting for? The full moon? But why? Did they think it would give them more power? Wouldn’t it do the same for Flannery and her friends if that were the case? Flannery buried her hands in her hair, tugging a little. She felt so frazzled, even with everything she’d discovered. The fact they were Matilda’s stories was supposed to make her feel better. But…she didn’t actually know what Matilda wrote. She’d been pulling things out of her ass, assuming that things like Ashe’s magical armor and her friendship with Conor were due to the fact Matilda had written them that way. But what if she was wrong? Ashe said she was intuitive, but that didn’t mean she was always right about things. 

She got up from bed, padding across the wooden floor as quietly as possible to keep from waking up her grandmother in the room underneath her bedroom or Conor and Elwood in the living room just below the loft. She reached her desk, laying her hands on the leather cover of Matilda’s book. She wished she could reach out to her like she could Little Red. But Matilda wasn’t a character, but a real life person who had passed decades ago. And Flannery wasn’t about to attempt a séance or pull out a Ouija board, in case messing with the spirit world came with as dire consequences as the movies implied. 

Yeah, Flannery didn’t watch horror movies for a reason.

She picked up the book, moving to sit with it in the window seat, bathing the both of them in moonlight. She stared at the book, flipping it open to its mostly blank pages. Only the doodles and ink splatters remained. She closed the book with a frown, pulling it close to her chest.

“I don’t know what to do, Little Red,” she whispered. “I don’t know how to save us.” 

She felt something warm and comforting fall about her shoulders. She closed her eyes, seeing Little Red’s warm cloak wrapped around her. Flannery smiled. Her previous self was a sweet kid, comforting her like this. 

She opened her eyes, staring at the cover of Matilda’s book once more. She leaned down, resting her forehead on the cover. She closed her eyes, pushing her aura into the book.

“Matilda, if you can hear me,” she whispered. “I could really use a hand here. I want to show Jacob and William that we’re your stories, not theirs, but I don’t know how. Got any ideas?”