Ink Raindrops

The sinking feeling in my gut from Raimen’s newfound art of healing, and the embarrassment of walking into a large number of his little games designed to inform me of how much choice I had in our relationship, left me in a foul mood.  I practiced for several hours in a haze of frustration and anger, barely stopping to acknowledge that girl when she at last showed her face to bring me my lunch from the cabin.  I had not seen Master Mikhail all day either, but his absence was more noticeable than hers.  I wanted to ask her where he’d disappeared to, but as usual, she paid me no attention and wandered back into the cabin, lost in some trance, hearing music or seeing ghosts that none of us could or would.  I didn’t even need to wonder how long it would take her to return to her room.

She was a strange one, and I’d done my best to avoid her; a sentiment she seemed to share in regard to the rest of us.  She had come under Master Mikhail’s tutelage more recently than Raimen or myself, thus giving us seniority.  Though Raimen and I had not become fast friends quite in the way that Master Mikhail had hoped, this girl was a different matter.  We were not enemies, but we were not friends.  In fact, it was safe to say that she noticed us only in bursts.  Master Mikhail had been making excuses for the better part of two years, claiming that her shyness kept her from communicating well, and that she would just take time to come to terms with all of us, but we had decided between ourselves that she must have been, to quote Raimen’s usage of the term with me, a dummy.

Still, for all the unawareness she seemed so content with, the girl was gorgeous, and a talented fighter on top of it.  My own looks were nothing to consider for very long, or so I thought, but that girl – her name was Nana, I thought I remembered – could have been a princess based on her face alone.  At fifteen years old, she was head and shoulders taller than me, and could almost look Raimen in the face if she had ever wanted to.  She ate and drank little, unlike the rest of us, and the lack of “excess” showed well in her figure, but less so in her strength.  Still, when it came time to practice, she could do impossible things with her blade, things the rest of us had yet to consider, and she did them with such accuracy and speed that they put even Raimen on the defensive.  I wanted to believe that maybe he had such trouble with her because of her wide, haunting pale blue eyes or her long blonde hair, but he ignored all such hopes and suggestions toward that end, of course.

To top it off, the tale of her life before coming to live with Master Mikhail was, if anything, more complicated than my own.  Where I knew nothing of my own past and could not have told anyone had I wanted to, Nana did know, but refused to speak of it.  Anytime family or parents were mentioned, or anytime things in the cabin got too cozy, as if we were all a real family bound by blood, she got even quieter than usual and disappeared into her room again, refusing all visitors, including Master Mikhail.  To add to the strangeness, this behavior he accepted without question.  If Raimen or myself had done any such thing, I had no doubt that he would have been in our rooms within the hour, but Nana he seemed to leave alone with an awkward but acceptable grace.  Her secrets were her own, and would forever stay her own, it seemed, since he was unwilling to shed any light on them for the rest of us, who might have been interested in getting to know our house sister.

Though Raimen and I knew it was cruel, we had created a game between ourselves to see which of us could get through her fog enough to produce some sort of a reaction.  She had spoken to us perhaps a handful of times in the two years she’d been with us, and all of them were short bursts, free of discussion or extrapolation on anything.  If given an order, she would obey it and then return to doing nothing; if asked a question, she would answer and fade into the background, or shrug without words if she didn’t know.  She did all the things that most normal people do – eating, sleeping, basic hygiene – but beyond that, she was in a class by herself, a class where nobody spoke and everyone stared into the distance as if there was something very interesting there all the time.

A soft voice behind me – Nana’s – brought me to the realization that the subject of my thoughts had come back outside to join me.  I looked at the ground rather than into her perfect face; it was painful at best to pretend she was normal like the rest of us.  “Anri.  Master Mikhail says to work on your form.”

My heels dug into the ground.  “Thanks.  I’ll tell him how much that means to me when I see him next time, if I ever see him again.  Is he even watching us?”

I watched her shadow shake its head.  “No.  He’s gone.  He got a summon this morning.  He left that in a note for you.”

“Note?”  I blinked.  “I didn’t see any note.  Who did he go see?”

She shrugged, pulling a practice blade from the bin between us; I took that to be all the answer I was going to get about Master Mikhail’s whereabouts.  “You didn’t see the note because Raimen put it in the fire this morning, before you woke up.”

“Figures.”  I spat in the dust, ignoring Master Mikhail’s warning about doing so from days ago.  It somehow gave me courage to fly in the face of expected behavior around this strange, ethereal ghost of a girl.  I had always believed that girls needed to be twice as strong as boys, in order to be their equal and surpass them, but Nana seemed to disagree.  Her mannerisms and behaviors were all delicate and polite, even when fighting.  It made me want to hurt her just to see if she could get dirty.

As I expected she would, she stepped around the place where I spat and onward toward her training dummy on the other side of the field.  Just like that, our conversation was finished.  She couldn’t even say goodbye or “I have to go” like any normal person would.  The urge to trip her or break her sword or something just to get her attention was beyond difficult to ignore.  Sighing, I returned to my own practice, stray thoughts swirling about in my head as they always did.  I was going to have to work on my focus, first and foremost, if I ever wanted to beat Master Mikhail!

The most difficult part of living at the cabin with Master Mikhail, Raimen and Nana wasn’t that our differing natures made it hard for us to co-exist in peace.  It was the knowledge that we, the students, were supposed to be more than just strangers to each other.  Master Mikhail had chosen us, out of all the students interested in practicing the Way, because he felt we were the brightest and the best, with the most potential.  At some point, we would have to stop being children.  By the estimates of some Masters that Master Mikhail made acquaintance with, we had been children too long already.  They looked down on him for letting us grow and learn as people, not to mention the fact that he had not forced us into a team yet.  That team was the problem, as far as I saw it.

The training that Master Mikhail put us through was designed to make warriors out of us.  Only Raimen, I thought, had taken this to heart.  I loved to fight, and to win, and Nana – who knew what Nana thought?  Raimen, on the other hand, was learning things like tactics, and skills that did not rely on his blade alone.  As I had said before, he was the eldest, and that meant that he was a step ahead of the rest of us in realizing where his responsibilities and expectations for the future lay.

His parents, both respectable merchants in the nearby city of Kino, had given him to Master Mikhail hoping that some of his headstrong behavior would be removed by the time they next saw him, and also that he might find a respectable wife to help him carry on the family tradition.  I knew what he thought of the former, but it seemed as if he had accepted the latter without further discussion or argument.  Still, I had met his parents once or twice before, and come to the immediate conclusion of what they would think of his intended bride!  Women, of course, did not belong in the Way.  If not for Master Mikhail’s reputation, training Raimen with the intention of introducing him to a team with two females in it might well have ended his time with us years ago.

A team of students seeking the Way spent their lives together.  They learned to guard each other’s backs, make up for each other’s shortcomings, and work as a perfect, cohesive unit to handle anything that came their way.  The very idea of this as a future made me want to giggle, and it was an urge I could not fight in the end.  Nana did not even glance at me, which just further confirmed my amusement.  How Master Mikhail expected us to even tolerate each other, much less defend and protect each other through death and beyond, was beyond me.  It might even have been beyond Raimen, though he had never said as much near me.

In my eyes, we had an un-winnable combination.  A headstrong girl with no memory of her past and no hope of ever getting it back, a boy more interested in books than fighting, and with enough clout in his life to get whatever he wanted with minimal effort, and a girl that nobody knew or understood enough to guess at what she might be thinking – these things would never make a team!  But then, Master Mikhail had chosen us.  However hard he worked us, and however strange his methods might have been to outsiders, he was the only one of us that could avoid the title of “dummy.”  He was amazing, both as a teacher and as a person, and we would have done anything for his praise, anything at all.  My failure would not have been so crushing if this were not the case.

In light of this, we tried.  We had had very little training as a group, and most often each of us acted on our own instincts.  I was the one that got us into the most unexpected trouble.  Raimen wanted to end everything in one strike and go home for dinner.  Nana rarely even noticed she was in trouble until the blades started flying, and after that her opponents didn’t last long.  I wanted to believe, somewhere inside me, that Fire, Water and Air could combine into something more powerful than each of them alone, but the reality of such a task seemed impossible.  If anyone could do it, Master Mikhail could, but could it be done?

Just as I had stopped laughing and returned to my training, leaving Nana behind me, the silence of the cabin and the surrounding forest was interrupted by the sound of frantic hoofbeats.  Master Mikhail, on the back of his favored horse, arrived out of a gathering cloud of dust, a dangerous frown on his face.  He wasted no time in arriving at the cabin, dismounting, and ushering his horse into the small adjoining stable that he kept for our mounts.  We all had them, but only Nana ever did more than ride hers; she even talked to the things as if they were human!

Master Mikhail turned away from the stable and looked out at Nana and me.  His eyes were serious and sad in a way that I had never seen them before.  If he hadn’t been our esteemed teacher and someone worthy of at least some respect, I might have asked if his best friend died, or perhaps his dog.  It worried me more than I cared to admit.  He was always the firm one, the calm one in the face of anything.  What could have happened?  Where had he been summoned, and what grave news had he received there?  Hadn’t he just accepted my failed excuse for a challenge with grim amusement just two days prior?  To look at him now was to see a man aged ten years in a single day; no, a single afternoon.

The feeling of despair that had started with Raimen’s careless healing and worsened with thoughts of how we were ever going to band into something approaching a team was getting stronger.  When Master Mikhail spoke, it reached newer heights again.  “Anri, Nana, I have something you need to hear, and the sooner you hear it, the sooner you will be prepared to face it.”

I went inside, with no argument, and Nana followed, moving as fast as I had ever seen her move before.  It was the least I could do for a man I respected so much, and who had tried, at least, to humor my selfish need for attention via a challenge I should have known I could never win.  Whatever news he brought was grim indeed, and I wanted to be sure that I was the first to hear it for myself.

The fire’s warmth spread across my body, lifting both my heart and my spirit into realms unseen.  It crackled and burned, whispering messages that I had only begun to comprehend since coming to live with Master Mikhail; it would take me a lifetime, if what he said was true, to learn to understand them in full.  Still, I listened to each word, each syllable, as if it were the last one I would ever hear.  No matter what it said, the words themselves brought with them such a sense of comfort that I could not ignore them.  At the same time, the dual nature of the flame raised its head – fire could burn as well as heal, and threatened to engulf me, unmake me into the dust I had come from.  None of the others, save for Master Mikhail, knew this as I did.  They couldn’t, of course.  It was not in their nature to know, and they had knowledge of things that I could not, too.

Master Mikhail called it the Voice of Nature.  According to him, the Voice could speak in any of four tongues, and each ear that listened heard Her in a different way.  With this understanding came intimacy and trust within a given worldly element – those who heard the Fire’s Voice, such as myself, could learn after a fashion to embrace all things born from Fire.  The sunlight of a fierce summer’s day or the raging heat of an active volcano all spoke with the same Voice, and could be heard by Her chosen.  There were other Voices, too; of Water, and Air, and Earth, but these I had never witnessed beyond the insistence of others that they were real.  It was only fair; they didn’t believe me, either.

Thinking of the others – Master Mikhail, and Raimen, and our third housemate, the other girl, that I had yet to see for the first time that morning – began to pull my attention back from the dancing fire and into the visible world once more.  I regretted the interruption, but there were exercises and studies to perform if I wanted to undo the shame that I had brought upon myself the previous day.  Master Mikhail had said nothing to the others about my failure, and this omission was perhaps more painful than any truth he might have told.  To have tried and failed was bad enough, but to have tried for nothing?  There would be no recognition, no praise for my brave, if foolish, attempt.  Had I not at least found the courage to continue, after Master Mikhail had brought real blades to the challenge?  Had I not at least done well for the first half of the fight?  He knew, and Raimen knew that I had failed, but beyond this, it would be as if nothing had ever happened at all.

Raimen was the first to notice my return.  He was lounging in one of Master Mikhail’s armchairs, reading his ever-present book of advanced studies.  I had thought often, to my own great satisfaction, about what he might do if I were to steal that book while he slept, or twist it out of his grasp and (accidentally on purpose) drop it into the mud.  It had taken me a few tries to figure out where he kept it when he did sleep, and the unfortunate realization that it resided beneath the small of his back during nights had left me pondering how best to snatch it for the future.  It seemed as if he were married to it, sometimes – if only that were true!

“I thought you looked a little less dumb than you did a minute ago.  Your jaw was hanging open.”  He didn’t even look up; he might have been talking to the book rather than to me!  “Drool isn’t very attractive for a girl your age.”

My hands were on the book before I realized what I was doing.  “I don’t look dumb, and my jaw wasn’t hanging anywhere.  It looks to me like you’re reading this with your eyes half closed, if you can see all that from across the room and still read.”  I tried to tear the book out of his hands with every ounce of strength I had; of course it was like trying to tear a single brick from a built wall.  I knew that he heard the Water’s Voice, on Master Mikhail’s word, but more often it seemed that Earth would have been appropriate!

He didn’t laugh or return my insults as I had expected him to.  It only occurred to me after the searing pain in my left palm dissipated why he did not.  Damn my foolish injury!  Until it healed, so much would be difficult – taunting Raimen, planning how best to get a reaction from that girl, and finding the time to challenge Master Mikhail again.  Next time, it would have to be public; I would have to make sure that everyone attended.  Of course, that meant I would have to be sure not to fail again, too.

A growl in my throat, I let go of the book and turned my back on Raimen.  “Fine, keep it.  One of these days I’ll just burn it, you know.  Then where will you be?”

“Get back here, dummy.”

I paused at the new tone in his voice.  He wasn’t angry or teasing, this time.  Turning, I found his face to be unreadable, much as it always was.  He had the gift to change his expressions and thoughts so fluidly that they were unintelligible to anyone who did not hear the Water’s Voice – though I refused to give him an inch on my belief in such things, the concept fit him without a doubt.  Raimen was serious quite often, perhaps more than any of us, but the timing on this bout of it was strange indeed.  He was the eldest, it was his right to be serious when he pleased, or so he reminded us at least once per day.  Still, I knew that Master Mikhail watched him, and that he wondered at what thoughts swelled in Raimen’s unreachable depths.  I had not yet determined whether he feared that Raimen’s advanced training would someday be the death of him, or whether his interest was just that of a surrogate father concerned for his child.

Sighing, I turned back to face him, my hands on my hips – with my left hand just a little gentler than my right!  “You didn’t listen when I said I wasn’t dumb before, did you?  Why should I listen to you now?”

“Give me your hand.”

He wasn’t kidding.  Deep in my chest, my heart started to pound harder than I had ever heard it before.  Touch him?  Him, of all people?  I did my best never to be closer than a mile to his presence, and he knew it.  Even the other girl got closer to him than I did.  He loved to taunt me with it too; sitting on benches together when we had no choice resulted in the worst fights between us, when his knees “accidentally” bumped into mine, or when his hands “accidentally” pinched where they shouldn’t.  He was three years older than me, after all; expecting innocence from such a deep thinker was foolish on a lot of levels.  Master Mikhail never interfered – not because he approved, I knew that, but because I had agreed to this when I agreed to study the Way.  As a girl, I would have to fight and choose my own battles.  My name was only as good as I chose to make it.

He sighed, impatient.  “Just give it to me.  I didn’t mean that way.”

I had to think for a moment before my brain caught up with his, and the resulting comprehension made me even more flustered than I had been.  I hadn’t even considered he might have been asking about THAT!  It was one of the many reasons we didn’t get along, Raimen and me; even when taunting me, his mind was at least three years ahead of mine, and sometimes it felt more like thirty.  He could run circles around me, and make me feel like even more of a fool than Master Mikhail could, if he set his mind to it.  The less time I spent in his company, the better I felt.  It was clear from his expression that he’d assumed at least as much as I had; he thought I had been worried about the meaning of his words on a different level, not that I had just hesitated for the obvious reason.  Not for the first time I wished I could just walk away and leave him unanswered, but I knew that would never happen while he still lived.  It was a shame, really.

Gritting my teeth, I stuck my good hand under his nose, and was compelled to use it to slap him.  From the flinch I noticed at least halfway through the motion, I held off, realizing he had already expected something like that.  Always a step ahead, Raimen was… one day I would catch him off guard, and savor the moment like the most delicate of gourmet feasts!  “I suppose you want to spit on it or something?  Look, Rat-man, I have things to do…”

On any other day, at any other moment, the insulting nickname that I’d used for years would have irritated him into some sort of response.  Instead, he shook his head – and sprung into action.  Before I knew what had hit me, he held both of my wrists in a death grip and he was on his feet.  The instincts to fight or run were at war within my head, but he gave me no time to consider either option.  He was so strong, and so fast, and I was helpless against anything he might have chosen to do.  Maybe he’d decided not to wait for marriage… If only I’d learned faster, thought faster, if only I hadn’t been such a failure, in front of Master Mikhail and everyone…!

My eyes were closed so tightly that I could see spots of light hovering at the edges of my vision.  I felt him slide his hand from my left wrist to my left palm, and his touch crossed the line where my skin was covered by a thick bandage.  Unfortunately, he didn’t stop there, and brought his full palm to rest over my injury.  The pain was instantaneous.

“What do you think you’re doing?  Stop it, Raimen, you know that hurts, don’t you?  You saw me get it, you know what happened, don’t play me for a fool…”

He was ignoring me.  From the lack of other motion, I realized that I wasn’t in danger of being taken advantage of, at least, and my eyes began to slide open again.  I had not wanted to believe he would do such a thing, but I couldn’t trust him, couldn’t read him, not with so much water in the way…

At last he spoke.  “I wanted your other hand, not the one you gave me.  I’ve been reading a lot, as you noticed.  There’s something in here I’ve been wanting to try.  You can be my test subject.”

“What?”  I think my voice hit an all-time high at that moment.  “Don’t you dare test anything on me!  Did you run this by Master Mikhail?  Does he know what you’re about to do?  Is this even safe?  You know I don’t trust you…”

I started to pull on my hand, trying to free myself of his grasp, but it worked about as well as it ever had in the past.  His grip tightened on my palm, bringing the pain to new heights.  Unbidden tears came to my eyes, but I would sooner have died than let him see them.  Instead, I lifted my foot and stomped down hard on his bare toes.

He howled in pain, dropped my hand and fell backwards into his chair, wincing as if I’d broken his nose in the same movement.  His hands went for his foot, exploring through the pain to see if I had broken anything.  The scowl on his face when he looked back up at me was the Raimen I had come to expect; the sullen little boy that I’d known for years rather than the thoughtful, curious imitation of a man that I’d seen mere moments before.  It comforted me more than anything else had, perhaps even the fire, that day.

“You’re so stupid, Anri.  I wasn’t going to do anything bad!  I know we don’t get along, but I’d never…”  He trailed off, one hand scratching at his messy hair.  “I’d never… you know, hurt you.  On purpose.  Unless I had to.  Or you wanted me to.”

“Why would I ever want you to hurt me?  I think you’re the dummy here, Raimen, not me.”  I stuck my nose in the air and turned to head for the door.  “Next time find a different test subject to play with.  I’m not your toy any more than I am your wife.”

He smiled, and this of course made me frown.  That statement should not have in any way brought a smile to his face…

“In that case, you might have a look at your hand.”

I looked.  I had to, because I couldn’t feel anything wrong anymore.  The bandage was still tight and unsullied around my palm, and the bloodstains from before still dirtied the white cloth… but I knew before I even unwrapped it what he had managed to do.  With a sinking feeling in my gut, I went through the motion of unwrapping it anyway, just to prove to both of us his expertise.  I couldn’t wait to give him one more reason to gloat over me.

As expected, the wound on my palm was as if it had never existed.  There was a rough scar in its place; whatever Raimen had learned, it was not the kind of complete healing that Masters practiced, but that was to be understood.  After all, Raimen was not supposed to be practicing anything out of that book without Master Mikhail present!  He was no Master – he was too young, even if by some miracle of nature, he had managed to find the talent!  I half expected it to reopen with too much provocation, but the only way to do that…

Then his comment registered at last, and I felt even worse than I had after failing my challenge.  He knew it, too; the look on his face was somewhere between triumph and agony from having his toes crushed.  Disgusted, and finding nothing to say that would not make the situation even worse, I decided to do what I had intended to do all along and leave.  I stalked to the door and left without so much as a second look at him.

As the door slammed shut behind me, I could hear him say one thing, and one thing only.

“You’re welcome, Anri.”

Greetings, citizens!  On this day I felt it was pivotal to bring to you the story of Miss Candy Heart.  She has captivated my mind as a writer, and I want nothing more than to share her tale with the world.  In light of this, you will have to wait to read Way of the Dragon indefinitely*.  I’m sure that you won’t mind.  After all, Miss Heart’s tale is simply enchanting and should more than occupy your attention for the remainder of your lives.  After all, it is a story of happiness, with excellent morals and suitable for children of all ages.  Please enjoy!  (Oh who am I kidding.  I know you will!)

*I will post the promised updates tomorrow.  Don’t look at me like that.

Candy Apple Heart woke to the sound of birds singing and the kiss of the sun upon her fair brow.  She had wanted to stay in bed and continue the beautiful dreams she had been having, in which ponies and fairies and castles in the clouds were all hers, but then she realized that these things were already hers, and that she could have them at any time.  So she woke, and stood up, and stretched her arms wide.  Being a princess was just too good to stay in bed and waste.

It took no time at all for her handmaidens, children all elfin and beautiful like herself and with properly sized hands to do the job with alacrity, to lace her into her delicate gown.  She had many like it, of course, and if her servants were to be believed, she would have an endless supply.  Wearing the same gown twice would be an affront to her birthright of perfection, after all.  Then they did her hair, using a special comb to whittle down the painful knots that less skilled individuals would have pulled or tugged instead.  She was a princess, but to them she was a Queen, and they sought nothing but her pleasure at all times.  She could not find anything wrong with the thought.

Her unbound but carefully combed hair flying in the breeze (attracting more knots,) Candy abandoned her servants and rushed for her ornate bedroom door.  The morning was still new and fresh, with countless adventures yet to be had!  Who knew what lay in store for her, ready to amuse and obey her at a moment’s notice?  Who knew what friends she would meet and wrap around her tiniest of manicured fingernails?  Who knew how soon it would take her to get bored of them all?  She wouldn’t know until she tried, of course.  Perhaps she would simply give herself wings and fly down to the city today – that would be new, and the sunlight would warm the apples of her cheeks on the way down.  And Beauty was just getting old anyway, for a unicorn.  Who knew unicorns lived longer than three days?

She raced down several flights of ornate stairs and through several ornate hallways before finding her way to the castle gate.  Of course it was unlocked, she would have expected nothing less.  Outside, in the leafy bright green of the peaceful forest, she could see the colorful butterflies waving and beckoning, and she could hear the fairies just out of sight, their tin-whistle giggles taunting her to find them, to play with them, if she dared.  Of course she dared – she would dare anything!  But first, there was the matter of her wings.  If she could fly, she would be able to find them all the quicker!

Reaching for the fancy pockets of her robe, Candy drew forth a scepter of crystal and sapphire, that quickly mirrored the paleness of her hair and the blue of her eyes.  She set her jaw with all the seriousness of a child a year older than herself, and then began to spin in circles, the rod outstretched to its length in her hands.  The magical words she knew so well gave rise to the power within the scepter, and within moments she felt a strange but lovely sensation of warmth rising between her shoulder blades.  For a moment, only a moment, it started to hurt; at her frown, the wings opted to bloom fully grown, rather than taxing her with the process of growing.  Success!

She took to the skies just as her handmaidens arrived at the gate, breathless with worry for their Queen.  She was always too fast for them, just as she ought to be; if she wasn’t, they would hold her back with their concerns for her safety.  They might have been children, but sometimes they acted like adults, and if there was one thing that Candy Apple Heart hated, it was adults.  Not that she hated anyone or anything.  There was no room for hate when she had so many lovely things for herself, and could go anywhere she pleased in a lovely world of her very own.  What could come of hate when it was so much easier to just escape?

She flew through the forest, staring with eyes that she willed to be sharper than they were, trying to find the fairies, but they continued to evade her.  It took only five minutes of this before she decided she was bored, and that she didn’t want to find the fairies in the first place; she had simply been scouting the forest for her own amusement.  Of course, this made her feel better than admitting she had failed.  Instead, she made her way through the forest and over the oceans beyond, flying toward the sun that had beckoned her first through her bedroom window.  It would lead her to the city, and to her friends, the fastest.

When flapping her wings too hard began to tire her, Candy’s frown again brought solace; the wind picked up, blowing gently from the rear to press her forward without effort.  With the additional speed (and of course, it was blowing the correct direction) she made it to the city just a moment before boredom set in again.  She looked about for her friends, but they had yet to arrive – which brought another frown to her face.

Suddenly the city was filled with children, some older, some younger and some even the same age as herself.  All were pretty and dressed in bright colors, and they came in colors of black and brown and white and even (she thought) green for interest’s sake.  They bowed to her, as they should, and then awaited her command.  What toy would they watch her play with, or what game would they allow her to win?  She only needed to think a moment before making her wishes known – there would be a flying race.  Everyone would have to try to beat her.  And if they failed, she would send them home instead of inviting them to her big celebratory luncheon later in the day.

Upon further observation, Candy realized that none of her friends had wings.  She might have frowned, but instead determined that she had won the race by default.  Her wings weren’t even as tired as she thought they might have been, after such a race!  Her friends bowed again and shuffled back to their homes, unwelcome at the party she had promised – it really was too bad, but they hadn’t beat her, after all!

Thrilled with her conquest, Candy made her way back to her castle, stopping only once to pet the nose of Beauty, who seemed even older than she had the day before.  Candy made a mental note to transform her into something more appealing, if in fact she remembered to do so.  Now, instead of wings, she needed a party, and well, the wings had served their purpose.  Flying took too long and hurt when she got tired.  More twirling of her scepter revealed a banquet hall of magnificent proportions, filled with butlers and chefs who continued to obey her every command.  She ate, and ate, and all of it her favorite flavors, and gained not a single pound in the process.

At last, when she could fit no more food into her belly, Candy yawned a giant yawn and decided that she was sleepy.  After all, her hard-won race and her flight across the world had been so very taxing.  Her handmaidens led her away from the banquet hall, and then – when she could not walk another step – carried her up the remaining flights of stairs to her bedroom.  They undressed her, and redressed her in a nightgown that was not much less ornate than her previous gown.  Then they tucked her into her ornate bed, with the blankets pulled up over her nose.

As Candy Apple Heart fell asleep, she thought to herself that it had been another extraordinary day, filled with everything she had ever wanted.  But tomorrow would be better still.

As in, no dice roll needed this month.  I guess I’m going to have to figure out where WotD is going for real now!  I hope I can do it justice after as many years as it has been percolating in the “unfinished” bin.  I’ll be very surprised if there’s not a slight change in tone or voice just due to my growth as a writer since I wrote that chapter, but I don’t want to turn it into something more complicated than it needs to be, either.

Thanks so much for your votes.  I see a few extra this month and I hope you’ll all stick around for the future!  I’m not in this for the publicity first and foremost (this is to keep me busy during months that are not November!) but the more readers I get, the better the system works, and the more I feel like it’s not just my husband and a very small contingent of personal friends telling me what I ought to do.    I know these things take time, and that’s great, but every little bit counts as far as I’m concerned!

Let’s see what I can accomplish in getting WotD moving.  Meet me back here in a little more than a week!