Tsomis woke up in the middle of the night coughing. The phlegm weighed down the back of his throat and he cranked his throat trying to clear it. At four corners of the tent he saw the three sleeping mounds of the other children who had shared his tent for as long as he remembered. He coughed louder and watched the mounds. He knew it was selfish but he hoped one of them moved. It was strange as he was not usually like this. Growing up in the tents, the children were very self sufficient. To rely too heavily on the tent mates would cause trouble with the older children, who expected complete obedience from their younger charges, and while they encouraged them to work together, they did not allow one to take on the responsibilities of others. What they did in their own tent at night was their own business. No older children would intrude on their quiet talks of a world without tents.

It had been a long time since Tsomis was last sick. Sickness was very common in the camp. The children did not receive enough to eat or drink, and when there was work to be done, which was more often than not, they were worked throughout the day. It was common for the children to grow sick for weeks at a time. Some of them never recovered. Tsomis had lost two tent mates that way. One day they were fine, the next they were buried under all the blankets the children could find in the tent. Then on morning they would discover their bodies rigid and not breathing, and the older children would supervise them as they carried their friend’s body out for burial. The first time was difficult; it got easier as it happened three times more within their tent. They watched as it happened even more often in other tents.

Tsomis did not think he had ever gotten sick before. He tried to think back as far as he could into his past, and he had been the only person in their tent never to have a sickness. He had taken care of his tent mates when they had grown sick, as the rest of them had. He remembered back almost the entire ten years of his life. Only the beginning, in the time the children called the coming down from the mountain, did he, as the rest of the children, lack any memories.

To lose a friend from tent city was difficult; to lose a tent mate was heartbreaking. The older children expected the remaining children to continue to perform as a tent the same duties as they did when they were at full strength. Each tent was required to perform the same tasks, regardless of how many children were left in the tent. When there was one child left in a tent, those children rarely survived the month. While other tents would try to help them, their tasks were impossible. It was not only the amount of work but the loneliness that eventually did them in. The empty tent would disappear, moved further down the line to wait the arrival of the next set of younger children to begin their tent journey.

The tents themselves were made of canvas, a thick material that kept most of the weather out. There were oversized patches along the sides and top of the tent. The children did not have any extra canvas to patch, and a dried woolen material was used as a patch when holes formed in the canvas. The children filled the holes themselves as best as they could with the materials, never needed prompting from the older children. Sometimes the difference between whether a sick child survived or died was how well the patches kept the cold winds and the endless dust from the insides of the tent.

Tsomis wrapped the threadbare blanket around his shoulders and reached down to tie up his leather boots. He opened the front tent flap and stepped outside. It was warmer than he expected. The air was thick with dust as it was on most early mornings when it did not rain or snow. The dust was a dull orange color and the world looked orange when viewed through its haze. At this time in the morning, the dust hovered a few feet off the ground. When Tsomis stood at his full if unsubstantial height, he could see over it and look to the morning sky. He enjoyed this time of the morning, as the dust created an ethereal stage to see the world outside, as if he peeked out over an orange cloud high in the sky on the world above.

Tsomis peered up at the moonlit sky and was able to make out a few smudged lights that could have been stars. He had read about stars in the books Melinda stole from the old women. Over the horizon to the east, the horizon was red and orange with the first glimpses of the sun. This was one of the few times of day where the sun’s light was visible in anything but a dissipated, brownish cloudy way. It was only later in the day when the warming kicked up the dust that the sun disappeared behind the orange dusty winds.

To the west Tsomis saw the large range of mountains that ran along the edge of the world. The mountains bordered the world as far as he could see. The older children called the mountains the spine of the world. Every one of them knew that they came from that spine. Melinda believed they came from beyond the spine. The rest of the children laughed at the idea. What could be beyond the spine? How could anyone ever get over those giant mountains? Even viewed from this distance, the mountains were huge. The children knew if they got closer, the mountains would be insurmountable. Tsomis agreed with the children. There was nothing beyond the spine. It was the edge of their world

Tsomis coughed again, feeling his lungs moving up through his chest. He had seen too many children start with this cough and deteriorate rapidly. He was of mixed feelings about his cough. The honest truth that he would not tell his tent mates was that he did not mind if this first cough meant his death. He had thought about this for some time, wondering when it would hit him. While the other children fought hard against death, Tsomis was not so sure it was so terrible. He had seen enough of the calm faces of dead children that he was not sure if their deaths had been that terrible. He was not eager to see if he theories were correct. At the same time, the part of him that he knew was cowardly, that spoke softly in his head making promises about the peace that such silence would bring him, sometimes beckoned quietly toward him. The silence and the rest would do him well, he sometimes thought. He did worry about how Melinda and the rest of his tent mates would take his death. They would be worked harder. While he knew that, he also knew that for all of his efforts, he rarely pulled his own share of work. He was too small, too brittle. He wished it was otherwise, and it was another reason that death did not scare him. If they worried less about him, he hoped they would do better at their tasks.

The tent city moved every few weeks. The mountains were always to their west at the same distance. They never moved too close to the mountain. At the same time, they never left sight of the mountains. Some mornings, Tsomis could sometimes watch as a column of guards headed in the direction of the mountain. Some evenings, when the dust settled early because of impending weather, he could sometimes see them return. It was not a mystery where their small amount of meat came from. The hunting along the base of the mountains provided the bits of meat the children would share in the evening stew. It was also not a mystery where the new children arrived from. The mountain was where they were born and where the guards brought them. Every few months, a new column of children would arrive, herded like cattle by the guards. It was a time of mixed thoughts amongst the children living in the tent. They knew that with the arrival of the new children they would move up in the pecking order of the camp as the oldest of the children left the camp to unknown destinations. The younger children would move up the tent ranks, taking over the tasks of the older children. The tasks never grew easier as you aged, but they did grow more varied. The older children were more responsible for the tasks, but were less likely to do them, as they had more children under them that performed those tasks. It was the way of the world: the younger worked harder and the older enjoyed their efforts. At least that’s how it looked from the bottom of the pecking order where Tsomis and his tent mates found themselves.

Tsomis knew that at some point he had walked down that mountain from wherever the children came from. He had no recollection of whatever that place looked like. He remembers nothing from before he lived in the tents with Melinda, Samuel, and Trident. They have always lived in their tent as far as he remembered. They lived and worked together for many years. They sometimes, late at night, when the older children were asleep or far out of voice range, tried to remember where they came from. Melinda claimed to remember the journey down from the mountain. She could not have been older than three years old when she travelled along with Tsomis, Trident, Samuel, and the other ten tents that made up their year down the mountain. No matter how hard she tried, however, she could not remember anything beyond the journey down the mountain. There was nothing before the journey. The rest of them could not even remember the journey itself or any life outside of the tents. They would sit up late at night and try to jog Melinda’s memory for anything she remembered from the side of the mountain. She described the most amazing of plants and flowers that she claimed grew on the side of the mountain. She also, and this was most incredulous, claimed that the sky itself was blue on the mountain. It was then and there that Tsomis knew that Melinda was making stories for them. Even with this knowledge, they did not mind these stories, and always sat quietly to listen to what she had to say and what she could remember.

He looked over to the edge of the camp and saw two guards sleeping. They leaned on oversized poles topped with wicked-looking blades. Tsomis tried to resist coughing, but the phlegm tickled the back of his throat until he has no choice but to cough a deep long cough. Once he started, the coughing raged inside of him, wracking his chest and causing an explosion of sound into the otherwise quiet tent clearing. When he opened his eyes, Tsomis saw one of the guards looking at his direction. The pole was held out in front of him, and his eyes had the startled look of fear.

Like most guards, he was a large hairy man. Tsomis would have been surprised if he came up to his kneecaps if he stood next to the man. Not that the children were ever allowed to get close to the guards. The guard’s beard was thick and braided and he wore a hammered metal helmet that covered the lower parts of his sunken eyes. The hair on his arms was a thick coarse black. Tsomis had trouble telling the guards apart. Trident had named all of the guards based on their appearance. He had no trouble telling one from the other, and would weave stories about where they came from and their relationship with the old women, their wives. How he knew of such things to make up such stories, none of the tent children knew. He would tell the stories in the dusty fields where they worked the land during the springtime. The children from other tents would circle around them, leaning close to hear his stories. Stories were the only capital the children had to trade, and if nothing else, Tsomis’s group was rich in stories.

Tsomis was fearful of the guards. They wandered the outskirts of the tent camp, but never entered the area where the children spend their time or performed their work. Tents surround the children’s area of the camp. The wives of the guard would watch over the older children, ensuring that they were watching the younger children, and on down through the ages. The old women were as large as their husbands and only lacked their furry beard. To Tsomis, the old women smelled terrible. He imagined their men smelled even worse, although he tried his best never to find out by avoiding being downwind of them.

The polearm that hairy guard held shook in his hands with rage. The older children had passed down the word that there were dangerous people on the outside of the camp, and the guards were there to protect them from those people. From the look in the guard’s eyes, Tsomis no longer doubted it. His anger was directed at Tsomis, but it was not anger that he had been awakened. Tsomis looked deeper into his eyes and knew he had been terrified of falling asleep at his post and being awoken by something more threatened than a ten year old boy coughing in the night. The guard waved his hand toward Tsomis and pointed at his tent. Tsomis took one last look to the horizon, trying to catch the last few colors in the clouds as the sun lit up the dust and turned and went back into the tent.

Tsomis knew and understood the rules. While he knew to listen to the older children, there was a huge gap between the rules that the older children put together and those that the adults placed on the children. Rules, he knew, were meant to be followed, and he did his best to follow them. It never occurred to him at this time to question why or whether he should follow these rules. There was no other way to live but through the rules. He knew that.

Some rules helped keep the children alive. He knew if he did not line up properly in the morning and evenings, he would not get his daily food or his cup of gray, cloudy water. The rules were his life. They were the lives of the rest of the children in the camp as well.

He ducked back into the tent and held back another cough that was building in his chest. Tsomis had not been prepared for the weather turning cold over the last few weeks. Yesterday, as he started to cough, he had dug his overcoat out of his oversized travel sack. The sack contained all that he owned outside of his paltry blankets and the patched tent over his head. The coat, like most of his clothing, was too big for him. The clothing was passed down by the older children every year. He would reluctantly pass down his clothing, which toward the end of the year just start to almost fit him, and receive clothing that was too big. And Tsomis was more than small for his age. He was tiny. The other children within his tent rarely remarked on it anymore. It was the way it was. It was only a problem when he was placed in front of younger children who would have trouble looking to him as an older child, particularly when some of them towered over him.

Tsomis lay down on the oversized blanket near his corner of the tent and waited for morning. He sniffled quietly and stared at the patches on the roof of the tent, wondering which would fail first. He cough quietly and tried to stay still until the rest of the children awoke.

Melinda was the first one up. Like most of the children, she was larger than Tsomis. She had stringy blonde hair that she hacked off at her shoulders weekly with the dull knife she always worse on a rope belt around her thin waist. Her hair was never straight and always seemed to have grass weaved through it. She had an upturned pug nose that was always red and running. She had high cheekbones, almost to the point of being pointed. Tsomis did not notice any of this about her. When you are with someone for a long time, you do not think much about them. You forget what they look like because you take what they look like for granted. In the same way you never notice the changes that those closest to you go through. The changes are so gradual that by the time you remember to look you might not even recognize them anymore. Tsomis had taken Melinda for granted many years back, her solid appearance and strong presence, that he had not noticed that she had blossomed into a young women.

They had grown up in the tents together. Melinda had always protected Tsomis and her other tent mates from the other children when they had first arrived. Now she had grown distant from him. It might have been his standoffishness, or it might have been something else. Like how she looked, he rarely thought about why he did certain things. There were rules that were generated in his mind about how he was supposed to act. Some of those rules were placed on him from the outside world. Others were placed by him. It was his survival technique. If he knew how he was supposed to act in a given situation, he could act that way without thought. It was the thinking that he knew would in the end kill him.

“I saw the sun again this morning,” Tsomis said to Melinda, talking quietly so as not to wake up the other two sleeping forms in their tent.

Melinda put her finger to her lips and opened the back flap of the tent.

“Where are you going?” Tsomis hissed at Melinda. The back flap of the tent led outside the children area. It led to where the adults slept. Their tent had moved to the border over the past year when they had taken the area of the children one year ahead of them. They knew they were not supposed to cross that part of the encampment.

“It is okay,” Melinda said. “You have to see this.”

Tsomis stood with his hands on his hips glowering at Melinda. There was no way he was going to leave the tent from the back flap. It had been tied down for good reason, and he was not going to head in that direction. He knew better than that. There was a reason for the tent being tied that way and the rules placed on the children.

“Don’t you dare,” Tsomis said in a harsh whisper. “Get back in here.”

Melinda laughed lightly and slipped underneath the tent. For all of her height, she moved smoothly and effortlessly. Tsomis again felt jealous of how easily she controlled her limbs. Even if he wanted to see what she wanted to show him beyond the tent, he could never have moved that easily through the back of the tent flap. His body was not made like that. Everything he tried to do with it was a struggle. He had to pay attention when he walked or else his feet would get out of rhythm and he would fall.

He sat on his blanket and scowled at the back of the tent. He prepared what he would say when Melinda returned. He had given Melinda the lecture about rules and their place in the world of tents a number of times.

Melinda stuck her head outside of the tent and looked both ways before she pulled the rest of her limbs through the tent flap. Sewed to the flap was a long leather strap that she refastened to the wooden cork that held the flap closed. When she first explored the back of the tent, she found that she could fasten and unfasten the strap by pushing against the flap itself. The flap was not made of the same canvas and patches of the rest of the tent. It was formed of a thin material and when she pushed it, the flap fit her hand like a glove, allowing her to manipulate the straps that held the back of the tent firmly closed and attached to the ground through the pegs that the older children hammered in when the tents were moved.

She looked back one last time toward Tsomis and giggled when she saw him sitting on his bed spread with arms crossed and a scowl on his reddened face. He was such a small boy. He looked delicate and undersized, like a child in one of the smaller tents. She knew he was not a child. They had grown up together and she could not remember a time where they have not been in the same tent, moving from tent to tent as they grew over the years together in the children’s area of tent city. She fastened the back flap closed knowing that she could never convince Tsomis to break the rules that he felt kept them alive. She had long since given up on the rules. Her life, she reasoned, was not worth the following of rules. She knew it would be short. She had seen too much death not to know that when a cough came down on her, she would be the next that the children would carry out from her tent.

She looked to the sky but the dust had risen over the morning until it hovered a few feet over the ground and obscured the light coming from above. It was a chilly morning, chillier than she expected coming from the warm tent. The weather must have changed recently. There looked to be little chance of rain as she could make out the part of the sky where the sun was hitting the dust bank. She thought back to the blueness of the sky, her most vivid memory from her trip down the mountain. While she sounded confident when she told the other children about the sky, and where she could see it in her mind’s eyes, she still was not sure how reliable that memory was. She realized rather early that memory was a rather malleable material. She could change her memories quite easily by remembering them differently. She did this by telling stories. She used those stories to change the worst of her memories to more tolerable memories. She had only told Tsomis about this trick, and while he seemed to appreciate it, he was never convinced as she was that she had fully suppressed her terrible memories.

Melinda stayed low to the ground as she surveyed the tents that surrounded her area. She glanced back and saw the children’s tents running along a line, each one attached to the next one forming a boundary to the adult tents. From experience, Melinda knew that the next set of tents housed the old women who watched over the eldest of the children. There were no guards stationed in this area, although she had at times seen guards coming out of the old women’s tents. It was a strange environment as the adults rarely paid the children any mind. Except for the oldest of children, the older children managed the younger children and so on.

A few of the older children seemed to know more about the world than the rest. Melinda and Tsomis and the two other in their tents knew very little of what the world outside of tent city looked like.

Melinda worked her way along the edges of the children’s tent. She approached the food pit from old women’s side of the tent city and looked over to see a long line of children already waiting for breakfast. She skipped passed the line, keeping her head bowed down so none of the older children would see her sneaking beyond the boundary of the children’s camp, and worked her way to the edge of the tent city. Here she sat on the ground, hiding her body by a tent that she knew contained the old woman that took care of the children. She could hear their guttural voices inside of the tent. They spoke a language that none of the children knew. They did not speak their guttural language when they were near the children, at least not sufficient for them to pick up any words. It was strange that the old women did not teach them their language.

Melinda had worked out long before that the old women and the oversized guards were not their parents. They all knew they came from somewhere else and had been left in tent city for some reason. Some of the children believed their parents were going to pick them up and recover them some time. It was a comforting thought, but over the years not a thought Melinda placed much credence in or thought about very much. She had vague memories of living outside of tent city. She was small, so small that all she remembered were brief feelings of being loved from the time before she was taken down the mountain to the tents.

She waited until she heard the old women leave the tent. They would be working their way over to the eating pit to oversee the breakfast. The old women would always oversee whenever food and water was distributed amongst the children. They were rarely around the rest of the time. They made only enough for the children. Melinda wondered where the old women ate and whether they ate better. In her explorations, she had never found where the old women ate. She let it slide from her mind as she unhooked the back flap of the tent and stuck her head inside. The tent was empty as she hoped. She slipped inside and let the flap close behind her. She began rummaging through the items in the tent. There were many bed rolls and piles of clothing. Shed hair covered most of the items. Like the men, the old women’s hairs were black, thick, and overly coarse, which was very different from her own thin yellow hair. The old women’s smell was overpowering in the tent, and Melinda had to breathe shallowly to avoid taking in too much of their smell. It smelled of boiled cabbage and intensely cooked nuts. The nuts would have made her hungry if they did not smell spoiled, as if cooked with an agent she could not identify.

Under the last pile she found was she was looking for. It was a small book, its cover long since worn off and the first few pages ripped apart and missing. The spine was weak and the back cover had been burned slightly probably by being placed too close to a camp fire. She hugged the book close and poked her head outside of the tent.

Tsomis sat resolutely on the blankets. The rest of the children had already risen and made their way out of the tent to wait for breakfast. Food was never a problem for Tsomis. He found he could go days without eating without any ill effects. While water, even the dirty gray water, always was welcome, he could live well without it as well. Melinda had remarked that he was like a camel in this regard. When he drank he would drink as much as they would give him. Melinda had tried to find where he stored the water. She was sure he had humps somewhere that were hidden from view. When she wrestled him to the ground, she found only his skinny body and no evidence of humps.

He heard the tent city outside of his tent come to life. There were the screams of young children and the low buzz of older children in conversations about the day ahead. There was little excitement in their voices. The word had been passed down through the older children that the old women had said that they were planning to move tent city again. The faceless invaders had gotten close and their scouts were planning to move them further north along the mountains that they continued to hug. Neither Tsomis nor any of the children he spoke to knew what about the invaders. It was only through hints from the old women that they knew that they existed. They would spend hours piecing together the words from the older children in the hopes of hearing about people that existed outside of the tent city. The rumor among the children was that the invaders were their real parents, the ones the guards and old women stole them from.

Melinda scoffed at such discussions as she did not believe the invaders even existed. She thought the old women used the invaders as an excuse to get the children to move, give them something to do. Her explanation made much more sense than the imaginary invaders. The tents never moved far or fast enough to get away from such invaders. They only moved as fast as the youngest children. Tsomis was sure that when they moved, he could sometimes see their abandoned campsite within view of their new campsite.

When they weren’t trying eek out quick growing fungus from the ground, they spent most of their working time moving and digging their tent holes. The children set up the entire tent city at each move. The old women and guards were not to be seen until all the tents were properly set up. The old women would supervise, and the guards could be seen circling the tent city as they set it up, when they were not working their way up through the mountain.

The children would finish the digging around the tents, recreating their area of tent city after the last move. It was hard work, particularly for the smaller children, but it was well rewarded. During the work, the children were left alone, and supervised themselves. The older children would watch what the younger children would do. It was only the oldest of children that were directly supervised by the old women. The younger children barely saw them.

Melinda approached the tent and hear coughing coming from inside. She poked her head in through the back flap of the tent and saw Tsomis. Tsomis tried to resist but he could not. He laughed when he saw her cunning smile. A few of Melinda’s front teeth were broken at sharp angles, giving her the appearance of having fangs instead of front teeth.

“I found it,” Melinda said triumphantly, holding a small book in her hand.

Tsomis could not stay angry with Melinda. He ran over to her and took the book from her hand. He flipped through the pages trying to make out a few words.

“We haven’t seen this language yet,” Tsomis said. “The printing is much better quality than some of other books.”

“Yes, I know,” Melinda said. “I was looking through it on my way back.”

“Are you crazy?” Tsomis said. He knew the answer to his question before he asked it. Melinda was crazy. She was incredibly brave and not for the first time, he wished he shared some of her bravery. She would go against the older children’s wishes, and dare them to come at her. Tsomis coughed in answer, and Melinda looked up with a terribly worried look on her face.

Before she could say anything, the front flap flew open. Derkling stormed inside the tent. Melinda dropped the back flap.

“So there you two are,” Derkling said. He held a wooden cudgel. He was a few years older than Tsomis and Melinda. He had been placed in charge of them for many years. His rank was always out of reach for them. They thought one day they would catch up to him, but they never did. It was strange to grow in power among the smaller children, who seemed to join the tent city more rapidly over time, but never grow in stature over the older children, who always loomed over them.

Derkling banged the cudgel against his opened palm. “Why aren’t you at breakfast?” Derkling looked at Melinda, who still crouched at the back of the tent, trying to cover the bottom of the back flap, which was still not fastened closed. “And what are you doing, Melinda?”

When Derkling switched his gaze over to Melinda, Tsomis slipped the book behind him and under his blanket. Melinda made a face at Derkling, watching out of the side of her vision to ensure that Tsomis used the distraction to hide the book.

Derkling pounced toward Melinda. Tsomis stood frozen as he passed him. He lifted his arms to defend his face, afraid that Derkling would change direction. Melinda rose to stand as tall as she could under the tent and turned her body so only the side faced Derkling. Derkling was large. He had grown faster than most of the older children. While he would never be as large as the guards, he had filled out in his chest area and his legs had widened almost as wide as the widest of firewood. Even for all of his growth spurt, he was still shorter than Melinda. Most children in the camp were shorter than Melinda.

Derkling brought the cudgel over his head. Melinda had had many encounters like this. Derkling did not need to attack Tsomis. The mere threat of attack was enough for him to cower to Derkling’s authority. Melinda was a more difficult opponent. Even when they had been younger, Melinda had never cowed to his authority. Derkling took that personally. The rest of the children under his command never questioned his orders, particularly when he started carrying the cudgel that only the oldest of children were allowed. He had carved faces in the cudgel when he was first presented with it. Melinda and Tsomis were not sure whether the old women or the older children presented him with the cudgel.

The faces he carved along the cudgel were contorted and pained. Derkling had a talent for carving and whittling. When he was in his better moods, he would present the younger children small wooden carvings he would create from the fallen branches that he would take from the firewood piles when the older children and old women were not looking.

Tsomis had one such carving from when they were much younger. It was of a small boy pulling back a bow with a fitted arrow. He hid the carving from Melinda. She would not understand that this was the first kind thing anyone older than him had ever done for him that did not involve ordering or yelling. That it came from Derkling in a moment of rare niceness made it even more special. Melinda would never understand that.

Derkling did not bring down the cudgel. He stood his ground with the cudgel held over his head. He breathed heavily, looking slightly up to see Melinda’s hunched shoulders and head, as she ducked to avoid poking her head up through the tent and risk bringing the tent fabric down on their heads.

“We’re going to breakfast,” Tsomis said as he lowered he hands away from his face. “I woke up late, and Melinda was waiting with me.”

Derkling spun around with the cudgel still held on his head. Tsomis looked over to Melinda and tried to indicate with his head that she should not do what she was thinking. She was measuring the distance to wrestle Derkling to the ground. While Tsomis did not doubt that Melinda could tackle him down and hold him there for some time, he eventually would manage to get up and get help. The older children, who looked at Derkling as a bit of failure in his dealings with Melinda, would come in to set things right. Tsomis could not stand to see Melinda bruised and bleeding again.

“Honest, we’re going there now,” Tsomis said. “I came down with a cold yesterday.” Tsomis forced himself to cough so Derkling could hear the phlegm sitting at the back of his throat. Derkling seemed to relax at the sound. He even looked a bit worried at the sound. Melinda stopped measuring the distance to Derkling, and looked ready to come over to help Tsomis get over his cold.

“Keep warm,” Derkling said, reassured now in his authority. “It’s going to get colder soon, and we’d hate to lose you.” Tsomis was not watching Derkling. His focus was on Melinda in an attempt to keep her from attack Derkling and escalating this to something worse.

Tsomis nodded and rose using his foot to kick the book further under his blankets. He walked toward the front tent flap without looking back. He heard Derkling behind him. He headed to the breakfast line to see what they had prepared in this morning.

Word count: 6,291

Words remaining: 43,709.

Today was a good start. The story was not terribly good or engaging, and I spent most of the time telling instead of showing, but it was a good few hours of heavily caffeinated writing. Unlike most years, I did not have any problem with turning off my internal editor and just writing crap. After I hit around 4,000 words, I went back and reworked a few parts to pad words and change the direction slightly. I wish I had left the end with a hook to start tomorrow. I guess I’ll worry about that tomorrow.

As last year, I decided to keep the writing hidden. It's more for your protection than mine. It is terribly written with no story or words that are worth reading. Perhaps in time, when this is over, I'll go back and create a second draft that is worth reading. Until then, you'll have to accept these brief musings as my progress.