nanowrimo 2013 // island girl.

It's day 27 of NaNoWriMo, and I'm twenty thousand words behind. I've written possibly my favourite novel ever this month, and it's nowhere near being done. However, I thought I might share a few bits of it with ya'll, since I've been painfully absent from this blog for the past few weeks. (My apologies.)

please keep in mind that Island Girl and all it's characters are copyright (c) me, and if you steal it I will hunt you down and make you give me all of your cookies for the rest of your life.

June
If you were to ask me at any point in time where, exactly, I came from, I wouldn’t have an answer. No one knows. Not really. The old folk down on the docks, with their rocking chairs and gossip, say that when I arrived, things began to get interesting on the island. The loose-tongued say that I walked straight out of the sea, naked as the day I was born, and danced on the beach in the twilight. Some say that I brought luck with me, but the superstitious say that luck always runs out.

...

Cyrus

My heart was light.

And it was heavy.

She was beauty 

and she was everything that I was not.

My heart sang.

And it sobbed.

She was never mine

but she was everything I ever wanted.

My heart was with her.

And it was alone.

She was the stars

and I could never reach high enough to reach them.

I was heavy and light 

and singing and crying 

and with her, but so terribly

alone.

...

June

I stand on the brink of a great wave, the past behind me reflected in the dark storm clouds, and the future before me, looming and equally as dark. My feet are firmly planted in the water as it laps at my toes, and there’s no going back. I close my eyes, and screams are tugged desperately from my lips. I try to turn back, and there’s nothing there for me but darkness and hurt and loneliness. Before me lies the path I must take, and it’s a solitary one. I’m in a kingdom of isolation, and a crown sits upon my brow. 

I’m the queen. The queen of this growing darkness and hurt and pain and I can’t see the end of this horrible throne room. Darkness curls out from my fingertips and dominates the things I see and everything I touch turns to ash. I’m burning up, and taking my life with it.

Stars, like tiny broken shards of glass shine in the sky, beckoning to me to leave the kingdom I’ve created for myself behind and start afresh, but I can’t. I can’t.

My fingers dig into the fabric of my quilt, and I jolt awake. I sit up, and there’s nothing around me but darkness and the flickering light of my dying flashlight. My chest heaves with my every breath, and I can’y calm down. The darkness, my old friend, has turned against me and terror replaces my old fondness for it. I struggle to calm myself, but everywhere I look I can see the great wave and the shadowy crown that became my identity. 

I tear back the covers and run down the hall. My feet are slippery with sweat on the floor, and the coldness of the air mixed with the dampness of my clothes and I begin to shiver. I burst out the front door, and it slams back against the hinges, hurtling into the wall. I can see nothing, and I run the path into the village by memory, and then the little sandy trail down to the beach. The pebbles cut my feet, but I can’t feel it. I’m numb, body and soul, and I can’t escape this new longing for everything to go back to the way it was before, when everything was simple and nothing hurt.

The water is cold as it comes up around my ankles, and then my knees and thighs, and finally my waist. My thin nightdress floats on the top of the water, and my toes curl into the sand. Here, in the sea, with tears in my eyes and bloodied feet, I begin to scream. Louder and louder, howling with the wind as it whistles up off the surface of the sea. I want to die, I think. I want to drown, and the desire to do so has not felt so strong in a long time. I was getting better, and the sea had lost it’s hold on me, but now, at the turning of the tides and as new pages are begun in my own story, I cannot escape it’s clinging fingers. 

The sea’s fingers are as sticky as seaweed, rolling up around my ankles and pulling me down down down into the depths, and I am helpless to fend it off. I scream again, and then one more time. I sink to my knees in the sea, and the waves roll over my head. Water fills my lungs, and in between the choking and wheezing and bitter taste of the water, I feel alive.