FOR THE WIN!
After I minor heart attack this morning for not remembering where to find the "Verify Win" page was, I did claim my win for NaNoWriMo 2011. Hurrah! Can you hear the trumpets? Oh, maybe that's only on my side of the screen. The win is all the more sweet because this year's NaNo challenge was the rebirth of my first manuscript, whose plot I continued to just be "okay" with because it was always "the plot." After a brief strike of lightning to my creative noggin, a new plot was formulated and I took it full steam ahead for NaNoWriMo.
Here is the last of the excerpts.
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Words written today: 1,230
Finishing word count: 50,406
Favorite lines:
It was eerie trying to find my way back to the chamber on my own. When we had Kyona to guide us, I hadn’t noticed that the tunnel under her house split off in directions other than the one she took. Things shuffling around me forced my legs to walk faster. Tiny pebbles being kicked around as if I were being followed made me put my hands of both walls. I eventually was running and found the chamber. After I put myself in the center, I spun around quickly, half expecting something to leap out at me from the tunnel. Nothing was there. I found the circle I stood on earlier and joined it again. The solitude was something entirely different. Kyona’s presence was invasive to my channel. I did not feel it earlier, but I was alone now, ready to make this work.
I spread my arms and reached out with my fingers, as if grabbing imaginary door handles. I wiggled each one, feeling the air. I didn’t give myself as much time as I would have liked to prepare, but jumping into it seemed right. I shut my eyes and opened my channel. In the absence of Elf spirits and a Chimra essence, my channel could wander the chamber. The gates spread wide and my magic flowed evenly from my body. I opened my eyes long enough to see a milky aura shifting silver around my body. Kyona compared a channel, spirit and essence in such a rudimentary way, I scowled, as if the structure of what stored our magic was just a part of our genetic makeup and nothing more.
I only recently learned what genetics means. The Mavians study broad spectrums of sciences that, until they arrived on Elyserian, the people were unaware existed. Every person and animal has a genetic signature, a trait normally found in the blood that is passed down from their ancestors. I suppose that’s what Kyona was getting at, but why didn’t she just say it?
With my channel filling the chamber, I tried to bring my mind away from everything it was touching. It was harder than I thought, because everything it came across, my brain wanted to process. Despite that challenge, I eventually found myself in a state of supreme thought. Miraculously, all else was gone from my mind. I knew what the Mavians looked like. Never saw one up close, but the documents back at our schools went in depth to their appearance. I pictured the height first. I stood at five feet, six inches. I gave myself another four heads, thinking that’d qualify for a Mavian. The difficult part would be arranging my body so my arms became longer, my body wider and my head in that strange bulbous form, like Alpha’s.
My channel wanted more attention, but I fought to keep it at bay. Once I had finally created the picture of a Mavian in my head, I gave myself a few seconds before drawing the magic back into me at full force. It’d have to be swift so it didn’t have time to settle. It needed to experience all of what I had just created so I could become it. A few seconds became more like thirty, but after that, I closed my channel like a swift kick at a door and the magic bombarded me. It rushed back and my legs trembled. I had never released so much just to try to wrangle it all back. Whenever we sent it somewhere, there was always a purpose; a destination. Not this time. My body quaked and my heart jumped started with feverish pumps. Despite my best efforts to remain standing, I fell to my knees and then to my arms. My back arched and my eyes couldn’t leave the ground.
My throat contracted and I toppled over onto my side, unable to breathe. I clawed at my neck, hoping it would do something, but I had no gain over being out of breath. I beat my chest and kicked my legs. Nothing helped. Here I was, alone in a cellar under the earth, being suffocated by my own magic. No one would know I was dead until morning.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
