Nanowrimo 2020 Day 12 - Word Count and Favorite Bit (Patreon)

Today I added 1941 words to Match.God, bringing my current total word count to 27,077!

With just a little bit of light left from the setting sun, Hannah stepped through the back door and into the backyard. Fireflies danced across the open, grassy field, lighting up wildflowers as they floated by. There was a smattering of trees surrounding the yard, some of which appeared to be blooming. Fruit trees, maybe? Hannah couldn’t tell in the low light.

She smiled at the porch swing that hung from the eves of the house. She found herself taking a seat despite the high likelihood of mosquitos, her toes giving her just enough traction to get a good rocking going. She stared out into the yard, taking in the smell of fresh air and springtime flowers.

Then, she spotted something out in the middle of the yard she hadn’t noticed previously. Considering the dark color of the shape, she wasn’t surprised she hadn’t seen it before. It was an archway of some kind, almost like a gate. Why was that just out in the yard?

And why did she feel so cold looking at it?

Hannah shook her head, standing up from the porch swing. Well, there went that plan.

She wandered back into the house, unable to shake that cold, dread-filled feeling. She settled on the couch, pulling at the blanket that hung over the back. She wrapped herself in the blanket, hoping to chase away the cold.

Desperate for a distraction, she pulled out her phone, finally taking it out of airplane mode. Doing so, she was immediately bombarded with hundreds of notifications. Most of them were from the group chat Vanessa had set up. Hannah pulled her blue-light filtering glasses from the top of her head, settling them on her nose. Time to see what was up.

Scrolling through the chat – which was mostly pictures from the other girls of the various destinations they’d landed in and emoji reactions from the others in response – Hannah realized she never let anyone know she’d arrived safely. To alleviate such an oversight, she took a rare selfie of herself bundled up in her blanket.

‘I’m safe,’ she wrote. ‘And cold here in MA.’

She sent the selfie, and was immediately showered with affectionate emojis. Vanessa sent like, five red hearts and a smattering of heart-eyed emoji faces. Lindiwe sent a kissy face, whatever that meant, and a yellow heart emoji. It seemed each of the girls had picked a specific colored heart that was Theirs. Vanessa was red, Lindiwe was yellow, Clara was green, and Lamia was blue. That left a few colors for Hannah to choose from, but it seemed pretty obvious, given the situation, which one she should use.

Hannah responded to their outpouring of affection with a singular black heart emoji, smiling to herself when the others responded with laughing emojis.

The back door opened, pulling her attention away from her screen. Death sighed audibly as he wandered through, looking a bit more tired than he had previously. Hannah got an idea, holding up her phone towards him.

“Hey, Death?”

Death looked her way, giving Hannah the perfect candid shot. She giggled at his curious expression in the photo, quickly sending it off in the group chat with a simple skull emoji as a caption.

“What are you doing, Ha-yun?” he asked, leaning over the back of the couch to peer at her phone.

“Letting the others know I’m okay, and that I arrived safely,” Hannah said, watching more emojis roll in along with candid photos from the others of their partners. Except Nessa. She had to send some perfectly lit selfie that she clearly took like, fourteen of before she had one she was satisfied with.

“I see,” Death said. He paused, looking her over. “Is there a reason you are bundled up in such a way?”

Well, Hannah had been distracted from that dreadful cold sensation from earlier. “Oh. Um. I did some exploring like I said. And I found my way outside. I was sitting on the swing, you know, and I saw…something out in the yard. A gate…thing? I don’t know. I felt weirdly cold when I looked at it.”

Death’s expression fell, his lips drawn tightly together. “That is the gateway into my garden. Where the souls of the departed are kept.”

Hannah swallowed thickly. She almost forgot, in all her excitement, that Death was, in fact, the god of death. She was, at any moment, no more than maybe two hundred feet away from the literal gate into the afterlife.

“No wonder it gave me the heebie jeebies,” she muttered, rubbing at her arms.

“Yes,” Death agreed. “I do not suggest you wander through it. I do not know what would happen if you did.”

“Avoid the rod-iron gate in the middle of the of the backyard. Got it.”

Death stared at her for a long moment, his expression softening. He reached up, tucking a little bit of Hannah’s hair behind her ear. His fingers brushed against the frames of her glasses, causing him to pause.

“I did not see you wearing glasses before,” he said.

Hannah, who had frozen like a deer in the headlights the moment Death’s hand approached her face, couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, yeah. I wear them when I use my phone or computer. They block blue light, so my eyes don’t hurt and stuff. You know, since I’m on the computer so much.”

“I see,” Death murmured. He pulled his hand back, shaking his head slightly. “My apologies, I was going to ask if you would like me to draw you a bath. But it seems I was distracted.”

“Could you?” Hannah asked. “I was trying to get it to work for me earlier, but I couldn’t get it to the right temperature.”

Death nodded, extending his hand like a regal gentleman asking a lady to dance. “Shall we?”