And now for a 2000 word snippet of my NaNoWriMo novel. :)

Aiden was out of water. In fact, he had been out of water for days. He gnawed on his last bit of food and tried to chew and swallow it slowly to make it last, but he was too hungry and exhausted. It was all gone. There were no creatures, no water, nothing around him at all but more mountains. He had been going for days on end and there was absolutely nothing there but dirt, rock, and dry shrubs.
“Mountains,” he snorted, sitting in a valley to keep the burning sun off his dirt streaked face. “Who invented these?”
He leaned back against the next mountain he was supposed to climb and started giggling to himself.
“Inventing mountains. Really. What a ridiculous idea. Lakes and rivers I can understand, but mountains?”
He laughed a little more about it and settled down, closing his eyes. He started dreaming, even though he was still awake, and he saw a man sitting on the clouds, playing with clay and forming a miniature version of the world. The man examined his ball of clay and carefully started making little mountains on the surface of the ball.
Wetness touched Aiden’s mouth and his dry, swollen tongue automatically stretched out to lick his lips. The liquid tasted salty and metallic, and it was thicker than water, but it was liquid. More dribbled onto his lips and he lapped up as much as he could. A drop of it fell on his hand and he opened his eyes and looked down.
Blood. He’d been drinking his own blood.
His stomach lurched and he leaned over and choked and gagged and heaved, losing the last bit of food he’d had. He groaned and wiped his mouth. His hand came away bloody and he realized numbly that his nose was probably bleeding.
“I gotta…” he gasped, scrambling to his feet. “I gotta…go…water…”
Using the side of the mountain as a crutch, he stumbled along its base, tripping over every bush and rock in his path. One stone caught him by surprise and he went toppling into the dirt, scraping his face and hands and knees. Groaning, he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, and started crawling impossibly slowly. All he knew was that he needed water. He didn’t know where to look for it, but he needed it and he thought he could crawl forever if only he could find some water. Dignity be damned.
It was a struggle to keep his heavy limbs moving forward, a few inches at a time, but he kept at it, his head hanging and his nose bleeding, and the whole of his body aching with exhaustion and starvation.
A rushing sound filled his ears and he nearly cried out. He knew that sound. He’d lost consciousness a few times in his life and he always heard that sound before it happened. Next, the black dots would fill his vision from the side and he would know no more.
A peculiar thing happened then. The sound stopped. With the last of his energy, he lifted his head and looked right into the mouth of a cave, and there, standing just a few feet in front of him, was the girl with the electric blue eyes.
“Aiden?” she whispered.
The sound returned and he gasped and fell forward as the black dots invaded.

“ALEXA! JANIE! COME QUICKLY!”
Alexa and Janie’s heads snapped up as the flap of their tent flew open. Oriana looked in on them with wide, terror-filled eyes.
“It’s Aiden. He’s dying.”
Janie was up in a flash and pushing past Oriana. Alexa was hot on her heels. They ran through the city to reach the front entrance. Nikki and Sebastian were already beside their longtime brother and friend, holding his hands. He was scraped and bruised and covered in blood and vomit, but none of that phased Janie and Alexa. They fell to their knees beside him and started doing everything in their power to bring him back to consciousness and stop his bleeding.
Oriana caught up to them, out of breath, and stopped at Aiden’s feet.
“There was blood everywhere when I found him. He’s lost too much.”
“Go get water,” Janie snapped. “Lots of it.”
Oriana nodded and turned to run to the well in the center of camp. Once she was gone, Alexa shook her head.
“She’s right. He’s barely alive as it is.”
“Stop the bleeding and we can work on that,” Janie replied shortly, refusing to believe that Aiden, one of her favorite Warriors, would die right in front of her. She wouldn’t believe that there was nothing she could do. Until the last breath left his body, she wouldn’t stop trying to save him.
Oriana returned with Marid, who immediately turned pale white upon seeing Aiden.
“Oh, you sad idiot,” he murmured. “You tried to find us on your own.”
Janie snatched the bucket of water from Oriana and dumped half of it on Aiden’s head. His eyes flew open and he croaked something out.
“Sit him up,” Janie barked. Alexa and Nikki scrambled to get him into a sitting position and Aiden groaned in pain with every movement. Janie ignored his complaints, pulled his mouth open, and lifted the bucket to his lips. He gulped down as much water as he could manage and pulled back once he’d had enough.
“Food,” he mumbled, his eyes closing again.
“There’s nothing made right now,” Oriana said before Janie could even look at her.
“How soon could something be made?”
“Twenty minutes at best.”
“Go. Make something as quickly as possible.”
Oriana nodded dutifully and dashed away to find a cooking Witch.
Marid kneeled down in front of Aiden and grabbed hold of one of his hands.
“Aid, buddy, talk to me. What’re you doing out here?”
“Finding you,” Aiden breathed, his eyelids flickering feebly. “Magicians don’t lie. Says so in every history book. I figured you had it right, Lex.”
“So you left? How long ago?”
“Over a week.”
“When did you run out of water?”
“Uh…uh…I think four days ago.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. It’s a miracle you’re still alive. After three days, people become delusional,” said Alexa, propping Aiden’s head on her shoulder.
“Stay awake, Aid. When did you run out of food?”
“Today,” he mumbled, quickly losing consciousness again.
Janie bit her lip and handed the bucket to Marid.
“Make him drink more. I’ll be back.”
She left them and disappeared into the camp. Nikki opened Aiden’s mouth and Marid put the bucket to his lips. Aiden drank the rest of the water in the pale and immediately passed out on Alexa. Silent tears were streaming down Nikki’s cheeks.
“He’s not gonna make it,” she whispered, holding one of Aiden’s hands in both her own. Sebastian put an arm around her and kissed the side of her head.
“No, he’s not. But at least he’ll have died honorably and as a true Warrior.”
Alexa and Marid looked at each other, communicating silently. Someone needed to clean up whatever mess Aiden had left behind and it needed to happen soon. Creatures were attracted to blood and they didn’t know if Aiden had been followed or not. If he hadn’t been, they still couldn’t leave a blood trail leading right to the Magicians’ front door.
Marid kept his voice low and said, “After he passes.”
“I’ll go with you.”
He didn’t fight her and she silently thanked him for it.
Aiden’s stomach growled long and low, but Janie and Oriana still hadn’t come back. The four of them waited in torturous silence, listening to the inconsistent shallow breaths of their dying brother. Janie and Oriana appeared between the tents, carrying between them some sort of basket, but as they ran up the hill to them, Aiden’s last breath rattled to a stop.
Nikki put a hand over her mouth to stifle her sobs and Sebastian held her tightly, rocking her slowly, back and forth. Marid sat back on his heels and landed on his butt, his eyes wide and glazed over.
“No!” Janie screamed, dropping her side of the basket to run the rest of the way up to them. “No! Aiden!”
Alexa quickly pulled Marid over to hold Aiden and got up to restrain Janie.
“Janie, stop. Janie, listen to me. There’s nothing we could do. Please, Janie, calm down. Sit down, at least. Janie…Janie…”
And finally, after a minute of coaxing her, Janie sagged into Alexa and cried for the loss of her friend.

Jon was leading the Hunters through a valley when his creature darted forward unexpectedly and started cantering faster. The other two creatures were doing the same, taking the control from the Warriors. The Hunters started sprinting to catch up with them.
The first creature reached a spot right next to a mountain and stopped short, nearly throwing Jon forward into the side of the mountain. Clutching the creature for dear life, Jon looked down at the ground and groaned. Not only was there blood, which the creatures had initially been attracted to, but there was also a pile of sick right next to it.
Snuffling with its nose close to the ground, the creature stepped forward carefully, following a sparse trail of blood until it stopped abruptly at the face of another mountain. The trail itself was about two hundred feet long.
“He was definitely here. How he made it this far with the amount of blood he had to have lost is beyond me,” said Jon, gazing around at his surroundings suspiciously. “Either someone found him and carried him away, or he found enough strength to send himself to the Regular world. I highly doubt the second option.”
Valerie clomped up beside him and looked around as well.
“Then we must be close.”
“There are no signs of civilization anywhere around here,” said David from behind them. “Magicians gotta drink water, too. We need to find a water source and then we’ll find the Magicians.”
“Right. Well, Aiden was heading this way. Maybe he knew there was water this way,” Jon mused.
“It’s worth a shot. C’mon.”
Valerie took the lead through the winding valley before them. The last of the Hunters was passing by when the mouth of the tunnel opened up. Marid and Alexa held their breath, preparing for the Hunters to realize that they’d heard something behind them, but they never turned back. They waited a good ten minutes anyway before they stepped out into the open just in case one of them looked back at all.
“He was being followed,” Marid murmured, creeping out of the tunnel with Alexa directly behind him.
“No shit. Look. The Warriors are leading them.”
Marid glanced over his shoulder and saw Jon, Valerie, and David riding atop huge black creatures.
“Hm. David doesn’t look to happy to be here, does he?”
“Well, he is stuck with Val.”
He chuckled and started erasing the trail of blood by scuffing the dirt with his feet. Alexa followed his lead and started doing the same a little further down the trail. Marid reached where she started and he checked his work before going to meet her at the end. She was holding her nose and facing away from the vomit on the ground.
“Oh, gross. How do we clean that up?” he asked.
Alexa shook her head and Marid sighed and looked around for something he could use to spread it around. Marla came crunching along at that moment with a frown on her lips.
“Need something to disappear?”
“Yeah, this stuff. You wanna check the blood trail, too, to make sure it’s all gone?”
“Oh, the blood’s gone, but it’s pretty obvious it’s been scrubbed out. Take a branch off a bush and make it look a bit more natural while I take care of this.”
“Gladly,” Alexa muttered, moving away from the puke as quickly as she could to find a bush.
Twenty minutes later, the three of them met back up at the entrance to the tunnel and gazed wordlessly out at the valley in front of them. The Warriors and Hunters were barely visible in the distance, but it didn’t look like they were going to turn around any time soon, so they went into the tunnel, closed the entrance, and started back to the city for an impromptu funeral.

NaNoWriMo Part 2

I changed the plot a bit. And the names. :P Here it goes:

Alexa begins the revolution in the middle of Court and calls in Magicians
Marid, Sebastian, and Nikki go over to Alexa's side
Eli goes with Alexa on principle alone
After rebels are gone, Janie leaves, too
Janie contacts Alexa (don't know how yet) and is brought into hiding
Alexa and the Warriors and Eli go into hiding in the Wizard City. Alexa and Marid's relationship is clarified during this two or three month process.
News of Aeris' corruption leaks to the public of the Shadow Realm
Shadow People start whispering and grumbling
Aeris has the Hunters and Warriors slaughter hundreds of the most rebellious people
Aiden leaves the Warriors and strikes out on his own in search for Alexa and the Magicians
Aiden dies during a creature attack/allergies
After finding Aiden's body (and not being able to heal it), Alexa goes out into the open with her 'freedom fighters'
The two sides clash and are fairly even in strength, but not in numbers. The Magicians make up for lack of population.
Unexpected allies arrive to fight for Jenny (creatures? Folk?)
Aeris disappears the second the odds aren't in her favor
The battle ends and every Healer available to the rebels goes to work
Alexa is interrupted in the middle of a healing and is told someone has specially requested an audience with her
Alexa goes to the outskirts of the rebel camp with Marla and Balthy and meets Jon, who says he was wrong, blah blah blah, and asks if he can join the cause.

It'll probably change again, but whatever. This worked out well and helped develop the romance between Sebastian and Nikki that I knew was going to be there from the beginning. I'm still not sure how to make Alexa and Marid just friends, but maybe I don't have to. I could always go with the cliche love triangle, but I kinda wanna do something different. I guess it all depends on Jon. I've got his character - mostly. Sometimes, I don't know what he'll do. I think I should do some more research into my own characters. :P

Hell Hath No Fury

This will probably have a few grammar/spelling errors in it because it's 4 AM and I'm too tired to go back and edit stupid mistakes. I'll try my best, though.

If you've been reading this blog lately, you'll know about the post where I compared myself to Cinderella. Well, bitches, Cinderella struck back tonight! And not even on purpose. :P

So, there was an improv show tonight and, as always, there was a party afterward. At this party, which I said I really didn't wanna drink at, I had ONE Smirnoff Ice (which was fantastic, by the way, I highly recommend them if you're a girly-girl, lightweight, or flamboyantly gay man), and I didn't have anything else for the rest of the night. And I drank it slowly while eating cheese puffs, so I didn't even feel anything.

You might be wondering why I'm justifying this. I'll explain now: When I am drinking, I'm a very loving person. Hence me making out with two separate guys at two separate parties while intoxicated. So, maybe not loving. Whore-ish.

So they started playing pong in the pong room, and we hung around until the end of the first game and then most of us left for the living room (most of us being girls). There were about three or four guys in there with us and we were having bunches of awkward conversations. Blah blah blah. Eventually, this guy Kyle and I just started flirting very openly with each other (but not really seriously. It was more of a playful thing, like how I used to play-flirt with Nick back in Etown.). At some point, I stole his seat while he was getting another beer. The Boy (aka Alex aka the Prince mentioned in that emo blog) was sitting on the other couch with a Claire, Jen, and a guy whose name I THINK is Steven. Kyle comes back out of the kitchen and kinda gapes at me incredulously, so I give him the sign for suck it and tell him to sit on my lap if he's going to be so butt hurt about it.

He does this. And, I know this makes me sound like a horrible person, but I was elated for the rest of the night because Alex didn't genuinely smile for at least ten minutes. I realized that I did the same exact thing to him that he did to me while Kyle was sitting on my lap, and on one hand, I felt like a bitch, and on the other, I felt like a victorious bitch.

Kyle got up after a wonderful conversation about how many gallons of little children we can fit into our respective trunks (please don't ask me to explain this. It's really fucked up), and I made a show about how I'd lost feeling in one of my legs. Steven got up and went outside to smoke, and Claire, being ridiculous, moved over to my couch in an attempt to seduce me (but not really). I grabbed a pillow and put it between us, but Alex invited me to sit on the couch with him and Jen.

So...yeah. I win. I totally fucking win.

Who knew Cinderella could be a vindictive bitch? :P

Halloween Cards

I got two cards in the mail from Elisabeth (aka Best Roomie Ever) the other day and one of them really meant a lot to me, even though I doubt she meant to do that.

The card reads: How do we know Halloween pumpkins are male? Their heads are empty, they have mush for brains, and after a few days they start to smell funny.

She added this: True story! My addition? The beauty and awe only lasts so long. They easily go rotten.

I'm pretty sure she was referencing our ridiculous pumpkins from last year (that we kinda forget about and they, in turn, rotted from the inside out and turned a sickly white color), but it made me think of all my boy drama. With Matt, the illusion that he was perfect only lasted for so long (a very long time, but still not very long). And Mike only lasted a couple weeks before his true colors came out. Alex, though, had me captured. But, as she said, the beauty and awe only lasts so long. I don't know what I did, or if I did anything. But I guess that's over now.

I'm still determined to be optimistic. I'm only nineteen and I've got plenty of time to find a guy who will actually have the balls to hold onto me.

So, thanks Lis'beth. Your card meant more to me than you know. :)

NaNoWriMo

So, I did all that work on my nanowrimo story, and now I have nothing to do because I don't want to rush through this month. I know I can write 50,000 words in a matter of a week, but I don't want to do that this time. I'm gonna take my time, live out the rest of the month at a slower pace, and finish the story.

I've got 85% of it planned, now that I think about it. That's probably why I finished almost 18 pages today. I've still gotta work out an ending.

I'm not going to give out any spoilers, but I've got the entire thing planned up until the Queen's Ball, which is right before the revolution begins. (Now that I think about it, I need to rewrite one scene to fix the time line.) I've got every bit of dialogue for the beginning of the revolution, but I'm not sure how to pull off the action sequences. They're not my strong point. Anyway, I've got it planned up until that point, and from there I have no idea where I'm going. I know one character needs to choose between Aeris and Jenny (Or, really, Marid)at some point, but I don't know which way he'll go yet. Either way, in the end he has to end up on Jenny's side (maybe Percy Weasley style) and come clean about his past in an effort to make up for being such an ass throughout the entirety of the story. Or maybe he'll show up on the last page and...

Oooh, I love blogging just for this. If I just sit here and write down every idea as it comes to mind, it's a lot easier to figure out what I want to do.

So...

Jenny begins the revolution in the middle of Court (before the examination process)
Marid leaves Warriors to fight with Jenny and the Magicians
Magicians hold Aeris and Warriors back so Marid and Jenny can escape
Eli doesn't know what to do, so he does nothing
Jenny and Marid go into hiding in both the Regular and Shadow world. Their relationship is clarified during this two or three month process.
Nikki, Janie and Sebastian find them and join their cause
News of Aeris' corruption leaks to the public of the Shadow Realm
Shadow People start whispering and grumbling
Aeris has the Hunters and Warriors slaughter hundreds of the most rebellious people
Aiden leaves the Warriors and strikes out on his own in search for Jenny and the Magicians
Aiden dies creatively (will think of something later)
After finding Aiden's body (and not being able to heal it), Jenny goes out into the open with her 'freedom fighters'
The two sides clash and are fairly even in strength, but not in numbers. The Magicians make up for lack of population.
Unexpected allies arrive to fight for Jenny (creatures? Folk?)
Aeris disappears the second the odds aren't in her favor
The battle ends and every Healer available to the rebels goes to work
Jenny is interrupted in the middle of a healing and is told someone has specially requested an audience with her
Jenny goes to the outskirts of the rebel camp with Marla and Balthy and meets Jon, who says something surprising that I haven't thought of yet.

And that will be the end.

I'll have to force myself not to skip over the action and battle scenes. I hate writing them because I'm much better at dialogue and person-to-person interaction. I've forced myself to write scenes I would normally skip over already, so it shouldn't be too hard to kick my own ass about it. :P

And now that I've got that planned, I really want to write it. But I'm not going to. I'm going to let it simmer in my mind for a while. You never know, I may just come up with something better. :)