YET ANOTHER TIME TRAVEL STORY

I have to say that this idea isn’t entirely my own, it was taken from the Adopt the Plot thread on the 2009 or 2008 National Novel Writing Month boards and I’ve sorta just taken the concept and run with it. I have to present an idea for my writing class (yes I’m taking a writing class at the local library) on Tuesday and this is an idea that I can work on intermittently without burning out my muses for NANO which starts in sixteen days.

There was something especially torturous about lines, mused herself as she peered forward and to the side just enough to see that she was finally inching towards the desk. She had been in line for a couple of hours and as each moment passed her anxiousness grew. Finally she heard the magic words, “Yes how can I help you,” and she stepped forward past the yellow line and handed her papers to the woman on the other side of the desk. The endless seconds ticked by and Avery wondered if she could take much more of the waiting but finally the woman looked up with a bright smile on her face.

“I am sorry,” she apologized with a grin. “But your visa has been denied.”

Avery felt her stomach drop to the floor. “What?” she exclaimed loudly, pausing only momentarily to look around as customers in other lines turned their heads towards her. “What?” she asked again more quietly, partly out of embarrassment and partly as a self-check to keep her anger under control. “What do you mean mean my visa has been denied?”

She leaned forward onto the metal desk, her fingers plastered against the see-through plexi glass which separated her from the Visa Authority Customer Service Rep on the other side.

“Your visa has been denied under sub-section five-forty-three kay of rule seven forty nine-bee which states that no person shall leave the zone laid out by the written declaration of the visa,” the woman paused and looked up at Avery with a sickly sweet smile on her face. “You left your designated area of travel…”

Avery wanted to scream. “Well of course I left my designated area of travel,” she began sarcastically. “I had no choice BUT to leave the area. As I told the Personal Safety Authority Officers when I came back through, I was being chased by these men in blue suits and…”

“I am sorry,” the woman apologized as she handed Avery back her papers with a big fat red line through the carefully filled out boxes. “But any complaints will have to go through Veena Dejardin in room forty-two on the seventy-seventh floor.”

“You don’t understand,” Avery pressed as she clutched the papers in her hand, doing her best to remain calm. “My sister is back there. We got separated and she hasn’t returned,”

“All incoming passengers can be found on sub-floor five,” the woman interrupted. “Please go to arrivals to see if she has come through or not.”

Avery shook her head. “She’s hurt,” she tried to explain. “She got hurt running from the men in blue suits.”

“All medical inquiries must be taken up in room seven-twenty-three on floor eighty-two.”

Avery felt like she was going to scream, but screaming would get her nowhere so she turned and stalked away, muttering every expletive and curse word that she knew under her breath. Her day was definitely going from bad to worse. First she had to leave her little sister in a place where she was likely to be hanged for a witch, and second when she returned to get help she had been horrified to learn that not only wasn’t she to be believed, but she couldn’t even go back to do the job herself.

“That’s what happens when I go through the TTA,” she thought spitefully to herself as she exited the large imposing building and crossed the aluminum plated streets. “But as the old saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to travel through time.”

CASTLES, IDEAS & THE EQUINOX

First off, I have got to say that the season premiere of ‘CASTLE’ was amazing! Seeing Castle and Beckett together again was great. Last season ended with Richard Castle telling Kate Beckett that there was something new in her mother’s murder case–this season opened with the two of them not speaking and once again being forced to work together even though Beckett didn’t want anything to do with Castle because he broke her trust about the case. The episode ended with Castle apologizing and Beckett telling him that she would see him in the morning. ^_^ The dynamic between the actors is amazing and the characters compliment each other so well! It is going to be a great fun season I think.

And now, on to my story idea; it’s not totally original, but then again what is in faerie tales? I was thinking about Cinderella and I wondered what the story would look like if Elle (Cinderella) and the Prince had been friends when they were young children. What if Elle had loved the Prince all along? What if he had loved her too but thought that she had died in the same carriage accident that had claimed her father? What if she had been found by her stepmother and forced into a life of slavery? What kind of faerie tale would we have? I don’t have the answer (yet) but I still wonder….

….plus today is the autumn equinox or the first day of Fall. It changes from year to year like the solstices and the spring equinox, but the autumnal one brings change–even though it may not feel like it. To pagans, it is known as Mabon or in the school district that I have been placed, Harvestide. It is a time of balance where light and dark are equal.

This day has been celebrated for millennial all around the world. In Greece they celebrated the grape harvest, China celebrates honouring family unity and of course there is Oktoberfest. The whole harvest season is a time to give thanks–and us Canadians follow suit. It is the time of year to celebrate the gifts of the earth, we also accept that the soil is dying. We have food to eat, but the crops are brown and going dormant. Warmth is behind us, cold lies ahead. Some symbols of Mabon include squashes and gourds, apples, seeds, baskets, sickles, grapes and wine.

There are also many myths about the changing of summer to winter, there is the myth of Demeter and Persephone. When Persephone was stolen Demeter fell into despair and winter befell the land. Zeus arranged for Persephone to spend half the year with her mother and half in the underworld with Hades and thus the Greek warm and cold seasons are explained. There is the Sumerian myth of Inanna who descends into the underworld which signals the coming of cold.

There is so much more, and it can all be found where I got my information; aboutpagan.com which is a wonderful website.

BRAINSTORM!

I have an idea. A bloody brilliant idea. The story will be called Chasing Time and it deals with the story of a girl named Avery Barnes who is charged with travelling through time to figure out not only the secrets of humanity, but of all creation. Avery travels through time picking up various pieces until she figures out that the creatures who are helping her are really the creators of all. By learning this she brings the creators and their celestial legacy to humanity and in the end saves it….

…the only question now is do I write this story for April’s wrimo or July’s wrimo or NANO in novemebr? I don’t think that I can wait for november and I don’t think that I can wait till july either…and while I want to write this story now because I am so inspiried I have already started with my skating story and I don’t want to abandon that. The sooner I write my skating story the sooner I can send it out and the sooner it can get published…I’m working on an end date of eleven months here….

…what to do. What to do….