Skyward - (NaNoWriMo 2013 Novel)

Life Outside - (Nov 9, Saturday)

"You've lived outside for your entire life?" Jakob was agog. How could anyone be expected to survive in this cold, chaotic wasteland of tangled forests and colossal monsters. The girl had given him a thick kind of blanket to cover his thin clothing, but it only did so much to aleviate his shivering.

She laughed brightly.

"Outside? My entire life? Of course not! We've got homes too, you know. We've got tents and cabins and even houses--proper ones, that we built with our own hands, from wood and rocks and iron.

"Just because we don't live in MegaDos doesn't mean we have to live outside. We live wherever we choose, and sometimes we get up an move along to another place, when we need to. I've slept in all kinds of places! One of the best was this old theatre. The main floor of it had been ripped up pretty bad by The Wild, but one of the men took an random swing at one of the walls with his sledge, and he nearly lost the thing when it punched right through. We made a bigger hole in it so I could crawl through to scout, and I found a whole other world on the other side: grand staircases with the thickest, softest carpet you've ever seen, and, at the top, a whole other theatre. One of the old signs had called it The Secret Garden Theatre. When I got up all those stairs, walked through the doors, and had a chance to look around I couldn't believe it!"

"Couldn't believe what?"

"It was like a forest; like how the Wild can get into buildings some time and turn em into a jungle inside. Except this wasn't the Wild; someone had made the theatre to look like a forest, with leaves hanging from the ceiling, and clumps of faerie lights instead of chandiliers, and all the pilars inside had bark carved and painted onto them.

"The place was as dusty as anyplace else, but it was the prettiest place I'd ever seen. We found a back-up generator in the backstage, and before they could drain it of the fuel, I BEGGED them to turn it on; just for a little bit. Scar--he's the boss--grumbled about attracting The Wild or pirates or something, bur Sorely, who's kind of like Scar's underboss, he could see how badly I wanted to see the theatre with its real lights on. I think he probably wanted to see it all properly lit up, too. Eventually Scar said we could have two minutes, and they primed the generator and revved it up, and it roared, and i ran back out onto the stage, where the generator wasn't so loud, and I got to watch all those faerie lights come to life slowly. There were more than I thought; LOADS more. There wasn't just the faerie chandelliers, there were individual lights in among the leaves, and peeking out of the bark of some of the trees most of them were a yellow-gold colour, but some were other colours, too.

"They'd done something to them so that they blinked on and off at different times, and it made me think of stories I'd heard about lightning bugs, out in the proper Woods, out past The Wild, and then the Farms. Sorely came out with me on the stage after a while, and he did this low whistle. I think he was impressed. Scar didn't come out. He stayed in the back with that stopwatch of his, and i don't doubt that he killed the generator the very second the watch ticked two minutes, maybe even before. Scar always says that he's gotta make sure we're all okay, and he does a good enough job of it, but it usually just makes him not any fun.

"Anyway, it might've been two minutes, or it might've been one minute and forty-five seconds, but it felt like forever. I'd held my breath for most of it without knowing. We heard the generator sputter out, but the faerie lights stayed on. Sorely said 'batteries', but I didn't really care because the lights stayed on.

"We heard Scar clump out in those big boots of his, and we could smell the gas he's syphoned in that red metal container he carries around for it. The clumping stopped, and then he said 'batteries' too. I turned around to look at him, and he was wearing the closest look Scar has to a smile, and, like a real kid, I whispered 'faerie lights, Scar!'"

"He just dropped his big campsac and started taking out food and bedding and cooking stuff. Me and Sorely looked at each other and decided without saying anything that that was ok by us, and we started unpacking our own gunna. The rest of the folks did the same thing. If Scar had his way, he'd mostly make use march through the night most nights, so when. he decided to take a break, smart people listened to him and did the same."

Jakob couldn't figure out how the girl managed to talk so much and breathe at the same time. He was still having trouble with the unfiltered air. He also couldn't figure out how someone living Outside could be so happy all the time.

# # #

I seem to be getting into a rut here when it comes to falling off pace. Also, the Write-In I had planned for today has been cancelled, and I need to take a few hours to do something important with a camera, so that should make getting back up to speed a bit challenging.

This is doubly unfortunate since I met a new character today. I knew she was going to be cropping up in here before long as I'd encountered her in my Wattpad Writeathon piece, but in this bit she's turning out to be a lot younger than I'd expected, and I may have to fix that, or I may have to just write her as a hardcore, teenage-ish character that still has a very close tie to her childlike wonder. I'm not sure how well that will work. We'll see.

Chronologically speaking, this is in the final third of the story, which, in a rough way, breaks down as 1)Life on High, 2)The Fall (not to be confused with the similarly-titled first part I wrote on this story), and 3)Exodus.

Alright. Enough excuses. Time to get cracking on the next one.