[RiddleRose]: 298.Gold Dust - NaNoWriMo '07.Chapter twelve

Chapter twelve.

Neil went back to his place in the dream state he tended to get into when he had had an inspiration. Occasionally he got mugged while in this state, but tonight he got home safely. The idea for this had come to him when he was watching Livia. She had fascinated him, with her mercurial mood changes. He tried to think what her childhood must have been like. 

He was in the middle of a novel, the one with Lessa and Jamie in it, but he put that aside for the moment, ignoring their protests. Now that he knew he wasn't insane, seeing and talking to his characters didn't bother him nearly as much as it once had. It had been a bit of a shock when Wren had walked over holding little Lessa's hand, but Livia's explanation made it a bit more plausible. He was curious as to why Livia couldn't see them though, since she was clearly also taking Dust, if she could see Katrina.

Katrina had been the first one he had started seeing too. It had given him an awful shock. At first she hadn't been able to speak to him, she just watched him, with that implacable psychic look. She was a good psychic. He had written her that way. No doubt she had known he thought himself insane. But she was also a very touchy, and occasionally really bitchy person, so she must have just let him think that.

It had been Livia telling him that Katrina had predicted an earthquake that made him believe her. He had long since finished the book that Katrina was in, and he had actually stopped seeing most of the characters. They seemed to fade away with time, but Katrina had stayed. Probably because she was so damned stubborn. 

In Katrina's story, the earthquake happened early on. It was a huge one too, ripping apart her world, and forcing her people to learn to live on their own, amid the wreckage. It was a semi post apocalyptic story. Katrina was his favourite character in it. She just sort of sauntered through the novel, predicting things at her leisure, collecting favours when she needed to, and only breaking down once. That was the night when she found her daughter dead. She got roaring drunk, and after that was a bitter, world weary sort of person. Even then though, she was still a little spot of calm in the crazy dog eat dog world that Neil had envisioned for her to live in.

It was funny how they all recognized him. He could see all of his characters, all the main ones anyway, and they all knew him very well. They didn't know that they were figments of his imagination, and they never knew which story they were from, but they all felt some sort of pull towards the manuscript with them in it. Lessa and Jamie didn't know they were still being written, but they didn't like it when he put aside their story in favour of another one.

He could tell that this one was just going to be a short story though, so he told them to go amuse themselves for a while, until he had time for them. They disappeared, both making terrible faces at him. 

He really like Lessa. Jamie was a trial though. He was hard to write. Neil had realized, partway through the story, that Jamie really should have been a street urchin. But at that point, he couldn't change it. It made for a lot of torn up pages, and a lot of extra Gold Dust. Maybe that was why both Lessa and Jamie were so clear. He had written and rewritten them a hundred times.

He made himself a cup of coffee and started to write. He was interrupted only once, when Wren came in. he had no idea what time it was, but it was very late, or perhaps even very early. He vaguely noticed that Livia was with him, and shouted, “Don't have sex on my bed!” and then sank back into the story. 

It was giving him a little more trouble than he had expected. It was not very long, only about two pages, really. But page after page got discarded, crumpled up and thrown over his shoulder. He just couldn't seem to get it right. It didn't help that about an hour in, the main character appeared and started talking to him. She kept bugging him to give her a name, but he refused outright. Eventually she just stomped away and sat muttering in a corner.

Finally, after hours of agonizing editing, it was done. He retyped it, as he always did, being careful of spelling and punctuation. He had to do this with everything he wrote, because he worked on a typewriter.

Occasionally people asked him why he didn't get a computer. It would make for less wasted paper, less retyping, fewer typos, and easier editing. To all of these points Neil agreed wholeheartedly, but he persisted in using his typewriter because it had a personality. Car connoisseurs might say that specific cars had different personalities. Neil was a typewriter connoisseur. And typewriters had personalities. 

Computers were just whirring contraptions of wires and cables, and motherboards, and things like that. Neil had no idea how they worked, but he did know that a computer would never give him sass like a typewriter. When a typewriter refused to work, all you had to do was look for the bit of mechanical mistake that was happening. With a computer, you had to endure its inane babbling. “Error code number 4003006785”. “Error code number 53983762900”. “Error of type 337812031”. “Error type just kill yourself now because I'll never stop saying this”. “Error type MWAHAHAHAHA”.

Neil hated them. They had their uses. But he would never ever write on one. Ever. No matter what anyone said. For one thing, he suspected that he wouldn't be able to make Gold Dust if he used a computer. And without Gold Dust, he would have almost no income at all. Writing ads for sleazy newspapers paid very little, and merely served as a job title, if anyone asked, which they rarely did.

He fell into bed, not really noticing that there was someone on the other side of it. It would be Wren. Wren was always showing up randomly and sleeping on his bed. He was used to it by now.

Neil woke up when he heard a short, decidedly feminine scream from the other side of the bed. He promptly rolled over and fell out of bed. The floor seemed softer than usual. Neil realized this was because he had landed on Wren. Why Wren had chosen to sleep there was beyond him at this time of day, but he decided that he should move, because Wren was making some very displeased noises. Neil thought this was probably because he had had to sleep on the floor. So Neil rolled over, off of Wren, and went back to sleep, because that seemed like the logical thing to do at the time.

Wren, on the other hand, was wide awake. Having your rather large and lanky best friend roll off of his bed and onto you often has that affect. He also heard Livia yell on the bed, and yelled up to her, “don't complain! At least he didn't land on you!”

“He was IN MY BED!” she yelled back, sounding a little frantic.

“Well technically it's his bed,” said Wren in milder tones, “And I told you, he's not interested in you!”

“He's a BOY!” she yelled, not mollified at all, “He's automatically interested in any girl in his bed!”

Wren lost his temper, “Then you shouldn't have bloody well slept in HIS BED, should you? I did offer you the floor! In fact, I URGED you to sleep on the floor. The floor came with marvelous recommendations! But no! You wanted the friggin' bed! Well you got the bed! And you got everything that comes with the bed! And I got everything that comes with the floor! I would like to point out the Neil ended up on top of ME not you! And it was in no way a pleasant experience! Somehow I think you got the better end of the bargain! So just shut the hell up, okay!”

She did shut up, amazingly enough, and Wren gave himself a minute to straighten out his various knots and cricks. There were places where he could tell he was about to start badly bruising, and places that were just awfully painful. One leg was asleep, and his wrist was bent at a weird angle, and when he tried to unbend it, it sent shooting pains all the way up his arm.

He hobbled into the bathroom, falling once, but recovering himself nicely on the standing lamp which, now that he thought of it, Neil had probably put there solely for the purpose of preventing falls. The floor was a dangerous place to walk when one was mostly asleep.

The bathroom was a welcome refuge from Livia. He was really growing to despise her. If he hadn't given him puppy eyes at the worst possible moment last night, he would never have agreed to let her stay at Neil's place. He shouldn't have let her. She had taken his side of the bed, made him sleep on the floor, even though, as he had pointed out, there was plenty of room for two, or even three people on it, and then she had caused Neil to fall out of bed on top of him!

She was obviously the devil in female form. She would have to be exorcised or something. Wren knew that this meant he had to find a bell, a book, and a candle, but at the moment he just wanted a shower. He turned on the water, and let it warm up for a minute, then stepped in. It soothed quite a few of his various aches an pains. His leg woke up after much complaining, his wrist unbent, and a few of the miscellaneous cricks and pains went away.

He was just toweling himself off, when he smelled something terrible. It was coffee. Livia, not knowing about Neil's zombie tendencies, was brewing coffee. All of his earlier suspicions came rushing back. She was the devil in female form! Come to earth solely for his misery. What had he done to deserve this?

As Neil's first yell of “COFFEE!” was still leaving his lips, Wren came charging out of the bathroom, hair wet and flying everywhere, a towel wrapped loosely around his waist, and ran full pelt towards Livia, who was just pouring herself a mug of coffee.

She had just enough time for, “Wha-?” before Wren snatched the mug out of her hand and poured it down the sink. She had just enough time for, “HEY!” before Neil came barreling into Wren, knocking him right over. Neil's eyes were bloodshot and half closed, and a continuous stream of “coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee” was issuing from his mouth. Neil grabbed for the coffee pot, managing to knock it over. It spilled scalding hot coffee all over the floor. Most of it missed Wren, who was writhing under Neil for the second time that morning. A little bit of it got under his hand, which was palm up on the floor, and unable to move, due to Neil's knee, which was pinning it down.

Wren yelled in pain, as the boiling coffee pooled under his hand and began steadily burning a hole through him. Neil, luckily, was still in zombie mode, and thus headed for coffee, which was mostly on the floor I front of Wren. This meant that he got off of Wren fairly quickly, but it also meant that it was over Wren's head. Wren thought that in a few hours he would probably have a beautiful black eye. Right now, he just hurt all over. 

Wren cradled his hand and whimpered. His towel was somewhere tangled up with Neil, who was trying to drink coffee off of the floor, but he didn't even notice. It had been a bad morning.