nanowrimo_lj | Daily Excerpt Post

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Daily Excerpt Post - november 12th

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I don't have much of an excerpt to post today, except my new favorite line that I've written so far is "Sit on it and spin, donkey fetus."

I can't stop laughing at it.

That is beautiful.

Thank you! I am having fun with it.

I'm on a crowded train for six hours...and that just made me smile, so: bravo, bravo.

In the garden ,Louis watched her as she skipped carefree as a butterfly from one flower to the next, singing a charming little song as she went. Her notebook scattered carelessly on the floor as she gambolled in the sunshine.
It would be a shame to disturb her. She’s having so much fun, it makes me feel young again just to watch her.
She turned and spotted him, dropping instantly into a graceful curtsey. “Oh sire, forgive me. I did not know you were there-“
He smiled kindly at her, noticing the becoming flush on her plump youthful cheeks, the pout of her little red rosebud of a mouth. Oh, how he longed to plunder it, like a fruit so ripe and untouched to be corrupted by that first succellent bite. “Please Mademoiselle de Scorailles, there’s no need to apologise. I was so enjoying watching you playing and singing in the sunshine that I’m sorry you stopped. You gladdened my heart.”
“I did?-“ she gave him an artless smile, her blue eyes sparkling. “Oh Sire, you’ve made me so happy-“
“Angelique-“ he mumured in a voice full of longing, wrapping his arms around her trim little form and drawing her close to him.
She gave him a look through her long fluttering golden lashes full of innocently flirtateous promise.
“I love it when you say my name like that, Sire-“ she sighed, her voice a husky murmur.
“My sweet angel, take pity on me. Make me happy by granting me a kiss.”
“But , my Lord –“ she stammered, enjoying the courtly game she found herself in. “You are a King, the greatest in the world. You have everything your heart would desire. How can a humble girl like I make you happy?”
“You could make me oh so happy! If you only knew-” he sighed starting to lay tender exploring kisses on her exposed nape and throat as he held her round the waist. Her helpless sighs of longing excited him further, making him want her with an intensity he hadn’t felt in years. How delectable she was!
“Angelique , forget about my throne and all my power. If I was a man , a simple man who asked you to love him for who he was , could you do that? Could you find it in your tender heart to love me?”
She looked up at him shyly, eyes darkened with lust. “-Sire, I think I already do...”
Overcome by his desires , his hand impatiently undid the red bows at her bodice, yearning to access the firm youthful flesh on show.
“Sire, you mustn’t-“ she sighed gaining control of herself at last.
He stopped, perplexed by her change. “-What, why not?”
“It’s too sudden, too soon. I’m overwhelmed by my emotions-“ she looked up at him, eyes full of promise. “Please, this isn’t a no, but I need time....give me the chance to say yes!"

As soon as he had gone, she hugged herself with excitement and glee. He wanted her, he really did! Thank God, she hadn’t given in to him straight away. Only a complete idiot would do that. What kind of a hold would she have if she did, as deliciously tempting as it was when he was so ardent? No, Angelique knew she wanted more.
I won’t be satisfied until I am the maitress en titre. When I am the greatest woman in the land. Look at how everyone treats Athenais. Better than the poor forgotten Queen! I might not be the most intelligent girl in the land but I am no-one’s fool!

“Don’t interrupt, man: I don’t like being interrupted. No, the point is that Underdown’s too busy to take care of this” – he made an expansive gesture that swept in the entire rose garden – “as well as I’d like it to be done. So, having watched you for a bit, I decided that from here on this is your responsibility. You’re going to have other chores in the grounds too, naturally; but this rose garden is yours to care for now.”

Edward nodded, both pleased (he was considered good enough to care for the, what was it, very heart of the Realm?) and anxious (what if he screwed something up really badly?).

“Bear in mind, Hogg,” said Lord Robert, his voice low and warning. “If anything happens to my roses, you won’t be leaving my Realm any time soon.”

Edward couldn’t help gulping. He wasn’t exactly intimidated by his – his master, but he had to admit that Lord Robert had such a commanding presence that it was hard not to be affected by it. “I’ll do my best, sir,” he said in as firm a voice as he could muster.

“You’ll do bloody better than your best,” Lord Robert huffed. “I doubt your best is worth a great deal.”

“I will,” promised Edward, trying to ignore the seething resentment that had suddenly erupted inside him. He realised that the Lord of the Realm, according to time-honoured practices no doubt, had every right to insult and degrade him; but to someone used to life with normal people, in the comfortable anonymous chaos of the city, being forced to bear insults like this was a distinctly nauseating feeling.

“Right,” said Lord Robert, frowning at Edward. “Get on with it, then, Hogg. I’ll be on my way.” He took one more long look at Edward: an uncomfortable sort of look that made Edward sure he was being sized up. Then the Lord of the Realm turned on his heel and retreated along the path that led to the rose garden gate.

[I am finally getting to the good bits in my novel, yay!]

Bishop looked at her, with a strange expression on his face. “Of course I feel bad for what I had to do. I feel bad every time I have to do something like that. But emotions get in the way of what must be done. So I put them away. It is logical that I killed Tara’s parents to survive. It is logical that we had to do it to make sure you arrived here. Everything comes down to logic in one way or another, Alice, and there is no place in logic for emotion.” Alice remembered that she was technically in a mental institution, though it was made to look more like a home, and she wondered: if this was Bishop at his best, treated and recovered, what he had been like before.

It was so easy to forget Katherine when he was with Elise. It always had been. Afterwards, when he was alone with his guilt, it battered him senseless. When he thought of the man he’d become, he was ashamed and repulsed. He promised himself that he’d put a stop to it, that he’d find the strength to end the second life he had began with Elise. But when he tried—and he had tried—he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t sever a relationship that had become as important and vital as a limb.

At first, it was the incredible sex that drew him back. Soon, he was addicted to the passion, the chemistry he’d never felt with another person… it was like a drug, and without it, he couldn’t function properly. Eventually, he had realized he was in love with her. And he’d known he was doomed.

He could feel his resolve crumbling piece by piece. As if by their own will, his arms rose and wrapped around her; hers flew around his neck as the first sob escaped her throat. Malcolm was near to crying himself, out of the fear that he was wrong about the woman in his arms, out of grief for the woman she might have killed. But his wife was gone… could he give up the woman who now owned his whole heart because of a suspicion, small and hard in the pit of his stomach, that she was lying?

This is a true story, because for the life of me there is no way I could have made something like this up on my own, even if I wanted to. Actually, I still don’t believe most of it. I think it all started one night when I was talking to my friend Jasmine about how our friends Paul, Eddie and Frank all met during one magical summer when they all started smoking pot, had all gotten arrested, but still managed to remain good friends. Like brothers.
“What’s a magical summer?” Jasmine asked as she turned her purple Mohawk at me with a quizzical grin on her face. I think I said something like: “It’s that one summer that’s a rite of passage, where everything is special and the world isn’t the same afterwards. Like the movies but in real life.” Jasmine turned her head upwards and contemplated what I said.
“I’ve never had a summer like that.” She said. I thought for a moment and noticed that I could see the constellation Orion from where I was standing. The universe always seems so small in Los Angeles, the tiny pieces of glass in the sidewalk are all the stars we usually see in this brightly lit city that’s like a night sky flipped upside down. The sky we see from our starry sidewalks is covered with orange blankets of streetlights and clouds at night.
“I’ve never had a summer like that either.” I was walking her home that night and I hadn’t really thought of what we talked about. It was just one of those things that people mention, but they say that sometimes the door to heaven is open and when that door is open God is listening.
“But I’d like to.”
I guess I was asking for it.

The landscape stretched as far as he could see, with mountains that looked more appropriately like gargantuan boulders nested among rolling hills. Moss covered their scarred faces and each was capped at its summit with white snow. Trees dotted the ground sparingly in some places, and in others crowded together like miniature forests. Everything was covered in a patchwork of greens, from vibrant emerald to pale jade, and countless shades in between. Clouds drifted so close that Sana felt he could reach out and touch them, and distant mountain peaks were swathed in their wispy underbellies. As the sun climbed, casting the last of the shadows off the land, Sana saw more than the one tower. One was mounted on a boulder face and another sat in the middle of a crowd of trees; both bore a close resemblance to the Iron Keep in scope and form, but both looked unfinished, as if the builders had suddenly abandoned their work. There were more such towers scattered over the country--several more, each less complete than the last--although Sana would never seen them.

Edited 2008-11-12 16:22 (UTC)

I went inside and got another beer and went out to the porch again and breathed as deeply as I could of the warm summer air, clear and sweet and soft, and tried to smell every small thing the smell of summer contained: cut grass and clean hair, smoke and the gentle, close smell of the sky as it crept lower in the dark, and the hard sharp smell of starlight, a cold light for you there in the warm darkness, and gasoline, and honeysuckle, and beer. I sat down and breathed deep of the summer night and took away the ten or twenty things I could identify and still smelled the one or two thousand things that I did not have a name for and never would.

I summoned up all the smells I remembered from childhood and the dark time that seemed to come before childhood, before everything else: the smell of lemon and Osage orange, of red Texas dirt, of desert wind and cactus flower, of the salt flats, of pitaya and prickly pear fruit and all the things the desert bore up when there was nothing else to be borne, of the water that flowed deep beneath the sand, of wild honey; of all the wild honey, sweet and thin and dark with desert spice, that I had ever eaten, in every state, every city, every stretch of badland between one rich deep vein of money and another; of perfume and blacktop under the sun and hotels and motels and wallpaper and all the various flowers in the walls of those abandoned places, the flowers of mattresses and carpets and walls that had all been as real to me as any real thing: honeysuckle, sweet jasmine and woodbine, calla lily and catalpa and bird of paradise and all the things so varied and beautiful I did not have a name for them, not then or ever; I thought of the scents of all the places I had known before, of the places and the flowers and the deserts and the women, and the men.

Gah, jealous again. I really want to read the finished thing, seriously.

And I would be honored if you would read it. Although, I think I'll be lucky if I've gotten very far into the second chapter by the time NaNo is over--I've written over 30,000 words so far, but all in the first chapter. (Luckily there are only going to be five.) Shall I send my draft of the first chapter to you when I finish it?

That'd be lovely.

When I woke up, it wasn’t darkness anymore, and I was in the planet I once dreamt of as a child. I cannot describe its beauty. All I knew was that the beauty that lay before me was the kind only a dreamer could dream of, and it had ever existed, would’ve been demolished by the mass of vermin who’d rather go by the name of people.

I was walking down the familiar path when I came across the man I called the KADHAB. He walked by me as if he hadn’t recognized me at all. I was wondering why he was here, it was my world, my planet, how dare he barge into it?
I ran after him and touch his shoulder, but instead of my body touching something solid, it passed right through him like he didn’t exist.

“What! Who?” I managed to blabber.

He continued to walk as if nothing of that ever happened.

His pace suddenly quickened, and since I was walking behind him. I had to sort of run in order to keep up with him. He turned down the bifurcated river path, and I followed. He jumped over the rocks, and I followed him lose behind. He then jumped over the Low Mountain and sank deep down into the ground.

A surprise came to us one night as we lay, nestled against each other, in the bitter cold of the dead planet, searching for shooting stars.

“Look! Over there!” Jenny excitedly pointed out. I thought I saw a flash of orange, but by the time my eyes were able to focus where she indicated, the meteor had already disappeared. Not barely enough time to make a wish. But at least I knew what I would have wished for. There was only one thing I wanted in the entire world.

Recollection of a faint memory. Aren’t all memories faded and rotten in one form or another? As a child, gazing up at the night, locked out of my house, alone in a field. Tears streaking down my face. Leaves of the shrubs brushing against my arms and legs roughly. No place to go. I had looked up and seen a shining, moving thing with a tail. Something inside me remembered that I was supposed to make a wish. I did not. Because I would have wished for hope and there was no hope.

“I am afraid for you.” She whispered as if not to disturb the universe. “I fear that one day you would become entangled in that past of yours, where I can’t touch nor rescue you, and you will be lost to me forever. You look so far away sometimes, and I wish you could just look at me and know that everything is, and will be, all right.”

I felt a foreign warmth spreading from my chest, traveling up my neck and down my shoulders, then arms, and my hands that are freezing because I neglected to remember I had pockets. She could not take away my pain, but she was the only one to try. What do people call it these days? Savior complex? She had it in her and was determined to cure me of my worries and from myself. She didn’t succeed, but she was never to know that.

“Did you know that shooting stars aren’t really stars?” I changed the topic, uncomfortable with her too intimate words. She knew, and maybe she also knew that I needed to speak, I needed noise to distract me, so she let me continue. “They are grains of sand burning up in the oxygen-filled atmosphere. So here we are watching for dust.” I grabbed a handful of the soil from the ground where we lay. “Dust like this. There are enough of it here in my palms to satisfy the hopes and dreams of an entire civilization.”

(FWIW - I am not very far along in my novel, but thought this was pretty good.)

I was put to work in the kitchen scrubbing pots and doing other menial chores. I did not mind it, but Daria was an exacting mistress. If she thought she saw a spot of dirt on anything I was cleaning she would cuff me and make me do the chore again to her satisfaction. Lyiera was put to work in the kitchen making bread or helping the cook with meals. Once Arcel saw how clever Catalan was in fashioning things for our little shed, he decreed that Catalan would earn his keep by doing repairs around the house. There were a number of thing that needed repair as the sons fought with each other and the daughters were prone to throwing things when they got into a temper, which was often.
I quickly learned to keep out of the way of Arcel and Daria, as well as their children, as was possible. The few times any of the children were near me when I was alone, they pushed and shoved me, trying to make me cry. Fortunately, I was able to sense them if they lay in wait and usually managed to skirt the area they were in. That I was faster, taller and stronger than most children my age was something they never took into account and also worked to my advantage. The one I had the most problems with was the oldest boy, Ran, who was about five years older than me and as much of a bully as his father.
We had been there about three months when I was working in the garden one day. Daria, who had a fondness for opiates, was 'resting' in her chambers; the girls were, for once, quietly playing in the great room, while the boys were somewhere with their cronies. Arcel and Catalan were meeting with one of Arcel's clients while Lyiera was shopping. I sensed Ran coming into the garden but decided to ignore him and continue with my chores. Until I felt his hands on my hips and his throbbing member against my buttocks. It was not until later that I found out that my Tellurian heritage provided me with the means to do what I did next – I gathered all of my mental indignation and 'pushed' against him. He flew away from me, landing on his now naked backside, the offending member woefully flaccid and a look of pure fear on his face.
“I'm going to tell my parent's what you did!” he hissed at me.
“And I will tell the Seraphim Guard on the other side of the garden wall what you just tried to do to me! In spite of my halfcaste status, the Great Lords look very unkindly on a rapist! What do you think your father will do when he comes home to find seraphim in his house?” I kept my voice low as well.
Before things could escalate further, we heard the squeals from the girls welcoming Arcel home. As Ran pulled his clothes together, he glared at me. “I'll remember this, you sneaky little halfcaste!”
“As will I, sir!”
He went to greet his father and noted that there was a Seraphim Guard in the street, ostensibly doing the usual rounds of the neighborhood, but, as I later overheard, giving Ran the fish-eye as he passed. After that he gave me a wide berth, but still egged his siblings on whenever he could.

The water was pale purple, the setting sun reflecting in it such a deep orange it was almost the color of fresh blood; like the dribble oozing from the gash in young Zak's cheek, trickling down to his upper lip. He sniffed, trying to stop the flow without wiping it with his hand. Amongst a cluster of lykmos trees that grew along the lake edge, he sat with his knees drawn up, picking up stones and tossing them across the water. The shouts that came from him were wordless, full of rage, each stone hefted with more force then the last.

One struck a cluster of aquatic birds and they spread their wings and rose skyward, squawking as they flapped away. In the air around him, the creaking song of native insects continued their chorus, oblivious to the disturbance. Somewhere in his head he knew he should be walking back to the shuttle station now, before it got dark and became difficult to find his way through the hiking paths. Finding the will to rise and walk away was more difficult then he imagined, though, and the twin, red moons were piercing the cloak of night before he’d made it halfway. The darkness surrounded him, swallowing him like a voracious predator. Stupid, coming out here by himself late in the day. He was never going to find his way back to the sectors.

I'll set this one up - Dr. Ply is a recent zombie victim. I wanted to try and be original so I wrote a bit from the point of the zombie. FEEDBACK!

Dr. Ply stood up.

He knocked away the two beings to his left and his right, before heading out of the first door he could see. He knew, for some reason, he had to get to the nurse’s station. But every step he took, every bone-cracking, rib moving step, made him lose his way. After ten steps, he had forgotten the nurses station all together, and just walked in the direction he felt like it.

He felt hungry. But he passed a snack machine on the corridor knowing full well it wasn’t confectionary that would satisfy him. His lurching gait became more frequent, almost like walking with a limp, and soon, he was gathering speed. He knew, at this speed, he would soon find some prey. And he did. A woman he almost recognised, wearing a uniform he knew he had seen before.

Despite this, the hunger inside him beat down the memories of before, and he sped up in his movement towards the nurse. He heard a scream, and then he was on the floor with the nurse in his grasp. He went for the throat, he went for the stomach, he went for the head, he went for every inch of flesh and muscle he could find.

The woman was still struggling underneath him, screaming something about a Dr. Ply going insane. Dr. Ply. Those words stirred something in his mind, but again, the hunger prevailed against the other thoughts.

The body of the woman became still underneath him, and he set to work on the abdomen. Instinct told him that his hunger could be best quenched from here. But the feeding frenzy was interrupted by shrill noises from his left. He turned, angry that he had been disturbed, and saw another woman, wearing an outfit identical to the other one.

His anger and hunger knew no bounds, so he leapt towards the noisy creature. He had leapt with all of his might, but missed the woman by a short distance. He saw that she was trying to escape, but he saw that the pointy things on her feet were slowing her down. He knew his new-found speed could easily help him to his next meal.

He had reached the woman in a matter of seconds, this time biting new areas such as the legs and arms, to see if any satisfaction lay within. He couldn’t find any there, so instead he went straight for the abdomen, which he knew was fruitful.

Strangly, this woman hadn’t stopped moving after he had torn into her stomach and opened the ribcage. She was still making the high-pitched wailing noise that had first alerted him to her. He remembered that going for the throat had made the other one quiet, so he did just that, and within seconds, his second prey was still. He gorged on her, and noticed that his first catch had risen to her feet, and was trying to walk, gaining speed in the way he just had. She was out of his eyeline almost instantly, but he knew she wouldn’t be any trouble.

After he had finished with his meal, he stood up. The hunger was still there. Eternal hunger, which had to be satisfied.

Once the sun came up and people began to stir, Harris couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer and decided to try rousing Porter. He found the sergeant sitting up in the hammock with an abashed look on his face. “Hit the sauce pretty hard last night, did I?” Porter asked, nudging the empty jug with his foot and scrubbing at the back of his neck.

Harris, frankly amazed that Porter was even coherent, nodded. “You were out cold when I came back with Kenny and his friends.” He couldn’t help grinning. “Thanks for letting me go with them. Crabbing is fun, although” his face fell into mournful lines “I don’t understand why they made me throw back the baby gator I found. Gee, that would have made a swell pet! I like reptiles, you know?”

Porter laughed. “Harris, you can’t make a pet of everything you find in the swamp! How’s Alex?”

“Oh, that faith healer says he’s going to be just fine, given time. Had a bad night, but he’s sleeping now. So’s Mr. Aubert. Poor dude really looked wiped out, like he needed the rest.”

“Let’s go upstairs and see for ourselves.” Porter knew that if Aubert had gone to sleep, his work --- for better or worse --- had been completed. He needed to see his partner. They quietly mounted the stairs. As they entered the attic, light filtering through the curtains fell across Alex’s bed and they heard the Ranger’s rhythmic breathing. He seemed deeply asleep.

"What's that smell?" Porter wrinkled his nose like a cat. There was a sick smell, fleshy but faint. It was masked by a much more powerful aroma of herbs and chemicals.

"He must've burned some of the herbs," Harris suggested, his profiling instincts coming into play. This idea was borne out by a large metal dish with the remains of a charcoal block and ashes. There were also the stubs of candles, and a Bible with several ribbon markers in its worn pages. He sniffed again, like a bloodhound, with his eyes closed in concentration. “It smells like angelica root, several incense resins, and…” One more whiff and Harris had identified the fleshy odor. “Valerian. It’s used for ---“

“I know what it’s used for,” Porter responded absently, confirming for Harris the fact that he’d dosed Kat’s tea last night. “It’s an herbal sedative, the same chemical consistency from which Valium is derived. Hey, don’t touch that!” He stopped Harris from picking up the Bible. “Never mess with a healer’s things, Harris. It ain’t polite.”

They turned their attention to the man sleeping in the bed. Alex lay on his back, looking pale and tired, but no longer as though he were at death’s door. There was a religious medal of some kind around his neck. Porter bent closer to examine it and then almost chuckled. St. Jude, the patron of lost causes and desperate situations.

Neither of them wanted to touch it. Porter knew well enough about the work faith healers did, and Harris was just flustered. He kept thinking about voodoo and had no desire to fool with anything left around.

"It’s not voodoo,” he explained quietly, accurately interpreting Harris’ sudden fit of nervousness, “though I could care less if it was if that’s what kept him from dying. Whatever the man did, he did it good. Sleep well, buddy." Porter nodded, his hand resting briefly on the younger man’s dark curls, and left Alex to his healing sleep. Harris hurried after, face scrunched up in thought and brain teeming with unanswered questions. Alex slept on without dreaming.

You will have to excuse my lack or proper writing, but you must take into consideration I was never considered a scholar.
The next four years consisted of random abuse, and I was at times set to go sleep in the kennels. I was awarded a new shirt, and when my pants all but burst at the seams, I was awarded another shirt, and a pair of pants, both so large I had to tie them on with a rope.
When I was seven, I was kept in the kennels. At first, the dogs ignored me, but once they came down wind of me, they began to harass me. I smelled like wolf. All but one dog attacked me constantly. The start of this month in the kennels was the last month I could truly be called innocent. After that, I would turn eight.
By this time, I not only knew the language of the Citadel, but I could only speak it. Master woke and told me he would not have a runt chasing his heels, and that I would have to spend some time in the kennels. I ate what the dogs were fed, and I slept beside my dog companion, and I fought with them. I learned to fight in an odd hybrid way. I used my teeth, feet, hands, and nails in ways never thought of before except by dog men. I would bite gums, paws, and backs, and then pull at the wound until they all learnt to respect me.
When I turned eight finally, Master took me to The Sovereign’s garden once again. I had not been there since I first arrived, and though I had seen The Sovereign a few times, I was never given more than a glance. When we entered the gardens, I immediately kowtowed. The Sovereign laughed.
“You have been having fun with him, Leon. You may rise, Salyk,” a dog’s name, “come, look at this. Unhook the leash, Leon.” He commanded my master. My love for The Sovereign grew stronger. Even though I knew Master was my provider and protector, and I loved him as such, I also hated him fiercely. Just as fiercely, I loved The Sovereign, even though I knew Master received his commands from him. As the weight of the clasp for the leash was lifted from my shoulders, I felt immensely free, though I still had the weight of the heavy collar on me.
“Come, boy,” The Sovereign beckoned. I took a hesitant step, and then rushed to him, and he hugged me. As I stood in his embrace I felt… far less scared. I was not stupid; I knew he was the ultimate one who allowed anything that happened to me, but….
“I am sorry. You will have helped me greatly, but is it worth the cost?” He turned to master and released me. “Leave us now.” After Master left, he led me to the edge of the pool. In it were fish the size of my forearm, and a beautiful fountain covered in carvings. Me and The Sovereign merely sat watching the fish. I counted fifteen and idly guessed that The Sovereign would not be pleased with me if I caught one of the fish to eat.
“Salyk, I shall tell you something that you may never repeat, do you understand?” Startled by his breach of the silence, I looked at him intently and nodded. Not looking at me, not even to acknowledge my gesture, he said “soon a boy will come, his hair will be made of fire, and he will wield two twin blades. People have spoken of his coming for… a long time.” I watched as his face and body came alive with the power of his belief in what he was saying. I listened more closely, entranced by a poem he recited.
He sat, his eyes glazed in thought. He returned to me and smiled, “I get carried away,” he laughed. “Speak, Salyk, tell me of something.” He commanded. Of what should I tell him?
“Go on, do not fear. I wish to hear your voice before you go.” He encouraged me, smiling again.
“I sleep with the dogs, and there is but one who has befriended me, and I it.” I told him, and he laughed at me.
“My language comes from your tongue naturally, are you sure we are not of a country?” He said, but I did not truly understand him. He watched the fish a moment, then dismissed me. “Go now, he will be wanting you. Leave.” His voice was stern such as I had never heard it. I went, kowtowing to him before I left, even though he still watched the fish. I found Master’s room to wait outside of on my own, knowing the Citadel well by then.

"Hell's that matter? Go on, Lennie, an' jump in, will ya?"

Lennie relented, voice barely heard, with a soft ‘Awright, George’. He jumped. The men around George roared with laughter for a hilarious split second. And then Lennie sank beneath the water with a tremendous splash followed by a deafening silence; the appendix had burst; it was suddenly not funny at all.

"We oughta drag him out," George said with a calm that was strange for his heart's sudden jackrabbit beating. "Can't swim a lick."

The men and George stood there for a second longer, just staring ahead, frozen. It was unnaturally quiet and they watched as Lennie began to drown in front of them. The world itself was right then drawing in its breath in anticipation; the only sound they could hear, from where they stood far up along the bank where there was grass instead of mud, was Lennie’s gurgling as the Sacramento River replaced his air. The dawning came across George first; the surrealism broke and he sprinted down to the river‘s edge. He leapt gracelessly, his shirt ballooned up around him comically, the way he landed into the water. The rest were close behind him, splashes making the water slosh up against him in waves that felt higher than they were. He wrapped his arms around Lennie from behind, grabbing right around Lennie’s chest, but they were both soaked wet and bobbing like corks and Lennie was thrashing like a madman, and so George‘s grasp slipped until it was around Lennie‘s stomach. Lennie wailed, kicked and struggled and dragged them both down. Their heads burst above the water, George managed a gasp of breath and Lennie exhaled a strangled sob before he dragged them both down again. "Quit stugglin', you crazy bastard," George tried yelling, his mouth filling up with water and the air only collecting a fraction of his sound. "You's gonna be fine, quit yer kickin'--" Lennie dragged them both back down; the other men pulled them back up-- "quit yer blubberin', you’re fine, Lennie. I's got ya, I've got you, quit it, will ya?" The water went up over his head again, and in the midst of his fear George was suddenly aware he’d lost his hat--an odd detail that stuck out even as air bubbled from his mouth and nose. He was drowning and he’d lost his god damn hat. He took in deep lungfuls of water, then surfaced once again, dizzy with lack of oxygen. Slowly they managed. Their guts were filled with filth and water. Their eyes were red. Water bugs and mosquitoes caught in limp hair. But they managed. They managed. All swimming backwards, they pulled Lennie ashore. Lennie lay still, then, head thrown backwards into the dirt, his throat working as he swallowed a make-believe lump, muscles twitching desperately all about his neck--laying there in perpetual half-death before letting out an audible breath.

With Lennie’s breath, they all came to life.

"Do you know what scene you want to do yet?" Demyx asked once he had swallowed. Roxas shrugged and was going to say he wasn't sure before Axel elbowed Demyx with a smirk.

"Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread."

"I want to try that!" Demyx exclaimed. Roxas quarked a brow at them both. If he recalled correctly, that particular scene (Or one act, as the case may be) was very... odd.

"Some girls in my class are trying," Axel said, "but Cid says he won't even start considering the possibility unless they can get off book. Which they are failing miserably at, of course."

"It's just a shame that there's only one male part," Demyx said with a pout. Axel paused to think about that for a moment.

"We could switch it around, I bet. There's only one part that really needs to be a girl."

"Cid wouldn't let us do that, would he?"

"If we don't even mention it until we're off book, he might," Axel said with a smirk. Roxas could see the scheming wheels in his head start to turn. It never ended well when that would happen.

"Do you want to do it with us, Roxas?" Demyx asked excitedly. Roxas gaped at him incredulously.

"You do remember I'm new to acting, right?" he said, to which Axel barked a laugh at.

"You don't need skill to do Philip Glass," he laughed, "just a brain."

"Which you have!" Demyx noted happily.

"So you really should," Axel finished. Roxas stared at them frowning for a long moment before answering.

"I'm going to want to kill both of you, aren't I?" They both grinned in response and Roxas knew he couldn't get out of it now.

“My name is Lancelind,” the young man said. “And you are?”

“Wishing I had chosen prison,” Ricmorn said, dejected.

Hehehe.

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