A Foggy Problem

Updated to add stats…

NaNo Day 6

Daily Words: 971
Total Actual WC: 10,017
TOTAL WC GOAL: 10,002

Here’s a snippet for your Friday…

This is a longer snippet than I’ve been posting from the NaNo novel, mainly because it’s Friday and I wanted to. Do bear in mind that, being NaNo, this is rougher than my usual first draft. Names and places and such are usually the first decent option that comes to mind… I can’t guarantee they’ll stay the same in the final draft, especially if I realize that I used a name because I’d heard it before. (AKA – I’m not intending to borrow names, and if I have, I’ll change that.)

Anyway, without further ado, here’s a bit from “Into The Fog” (which, as a working title, is also subject to change…)

Sheila sighed. “I know what you want from me,” she said, “but I don’t know that I can help. Yes, I came out of that fog, but I was in my own world before that. I don’t know what it hides over here. And I don’t know how to get rid of it.”

She’d decided to tell the truth, or at least as much of the truth as they’d be able to handle. They didn’t need to know that they were figments of her imagination, characters in a novel she was writing. And they certainly didn’t need to know that she’d dreamed up this world and its problems without also coming up with a way to solve said problems.

“I’m not from here,” she said as they continued to stare at her. “I don’t know anything about this place.”

Okay, so that last bit was a lie. She knew everything there was to know about Andover, since she’d created it. Sadly, there wasn’t much to know. Her worldbuilding was very incomplete on this one.

“There is still something you can do,” the prince said, and though he spoke slowly she could tell it was because he was lost in thought and not because he had a limited intelligence.

“What?”

“Of that I am not yet sure.” He frowned as he looked at her, but didn’t seem to be frowning at her. “But Alex is convinced you are the key to this mystery, and his hunches are never wrong.”

“Never?” She raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “He’s human, isn’t he? He’s bound to be wrong on occasion.”

“No. He’s not.” The man who’d reminded her of a dancer spoke for the first time, and his voice was as lilting as his movements were graceful. “Alex is born of faery blood. The Taint manifests in us all differently, but in him it provides just a hint of the Sight.”

“So he can foretell the future?” Now the sarcasm was creeping into her voice, but she let it. Fortune telling was not something she intended to let into one of her novels.

“Of course not.” The disdain in Alex’s voice was as obvious as the sarcasm in hers. “True Sight belongs only to the Fae themselves.”

“But when he has a hunch,” the prince continued, sounding more sincere than the rest of them combined, “he is never wrong.”

“I see.” Sheila crossed her arms across her chest and glared at them all in turn. “And just what does this hunch say I am going to do?”

“Fix the problem. Save the kingdom.”

“Look, Your Highness — you are the prince, I presume?”

“Of course.” He frowned at her a moment. “And yourself? What are you that Alex holds you in such high regard?”

“My name is Sheila.” She looked at Alex, who would not meet her gaze. “And I don’t know why I would be crucial to your success.”

“And yet, you are.” Alex spoke with such conviction in his low voice that, for a moment, she believed him too.

Then she looked back at the king, frozen on the dais, and a knot formed in her stomach. She’d better believe that she was crucial to their success. Because one way or another, she needed to find out a way to end this book.

copyright Nicole Tom, 2009, do not copy, reprint/re-post without permission, etc.