Nano

 I started this journal last nano, and failed a bit in updating it.
Here's a little snippet from one of my short story segments - this year I'm being a Rebel, and writing almost an anthology/collection of short stories rather than yet another (a fourth, actually) hefty first draft that I won't get around to writing and people won't get around to reading. This way I have more motivation to write, and can edit specific stories faster so that I can actually goddamn show them to people for once!
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In a house on a hill at the top of a street where two intersecting lanes meet there is a room.

And in this room on the hill, there is a desk.

Right now this desk, with its maple syrup coloured wood and brassy fittings is covered with many things, which we shall list here:

-One lamp, on and shining a yellow light

-Assorted pencils and pens, scattered

-One pot of ink, dribbling blue

-Three maps, only one of which depicts a place you or I could ever dream of visiting

and one girl, slumped over the lot.

Let us take a closer look at this girl. She seems to be all in order - white silvery wisps of hair escaping from a great plait, pale skin dappled with greyish freckles, black shining eyes under dark slate eyelashes, a white dress. Even the buttery beams from the desk light don’t lend her colour. This girl looks all washed out. This girl looks like she needs warming up.

But this room she is in looks so cold, so dark. Even the great tapestries on the wall, even their heavy weight of thread and carpet don’t look like they would bring warmth. As this girl sleeps, her full lips leave little puffs of steam in the air and her breath escapes to the rafters of this room, crowded with metal and wood.

In a few hours, this girl will be shaken awake and hustled out of her father’s strategy room, berated by stone faced goblin butlers who will pinch and prod at her thin white skin as if to test a peach for bruises. 

She will be hurried down the thin and winding corridors of this house on a hill, and handed over to old maids as plump as sows, made to stand on a worm eaten stool and be stitched into the most beautiful velvet dress ever seen. It will be as purple as the marks on her arms that the goblins have made, almost a perfect match. It won’t bring any colour to her, any more than the light of a lamp would stain her skin. She is a moon, in her house. Colour, words, they are only reflected on this girl. She is a mute princess, a monochrome beauty.

 

But for now, we shall leave her sleeping, and if when the butler and footmen find her she has had her thin arms ever so gently moved to a more comfortable bony pillow, we shan’t say a word.

After all, she wouldn’t tell, would she?