Total words written so far: 29,116
Only 20,000-ish words left? If I just write 5000 every day for the next 4 days, I'll be finished! (Maybe not actually finished with the story, but I'll be at the goal word count!!) I could totally do it. I'm going to try... Hmm.
As of day 15, my idea for the ending is pretty much figured out!
Kiffen was still upstairs doing his scientific experiments with the dead Lady Killer, she could hear him walking around, which meant she still had a little bit of time to explore the room. If this one room is the entire "other world," then this fairy hunt wasn't going to last too much longer anyway. Unless there was a way out other than the staircase, it kind of seemed like a dead end.
On second thought, she paused to uncover the clock. She was in a different world, now, maybe time was different here. If it was, though, she wasn't sure she'd know. If it was going slower, all that would mean was that she was going slower, too. Right? Oh, man. She hoped so. Mom was going to kill her if she ended up missing out of state. The grandfather clock was not that different than any normal grandfather clock. It was stately with dark wood and a pendulum that swung the seconds inside of its glass belly. The clock face was normal, although the hands of the clock seemed to be frozen entirely. The big hand on 4 and the small hand between 9 and 10. Didn't these clocks have to be wound up every once in a while. Goldie didn't know how long between the normal windings but most likely it'd been way too long down in the musical dungeon to still have any energy from its last wind. The decoritive carvings around the outside of the clock face showed the numbers repeated around the face, except they ran the other direction. The number 12 was still on top and the 6 was still on bottom, but when reading the outside numbers, the big hand was on 8 and the small hand was between the 2 and the 3.
Interesting.
She stepped closer to examine the carvings on the face. She stood on her tip toes and wished that she could have a growth spurt. Why did Kiffin get the growth spurt and she couldn't have one? There were even smaller numbers around the numbers around! Repeating and repeating and becoming a chaotic web of numbers, the smallest ones trailed down the body of the clock in and out of order. 12, 11, 10, 3, 2, 11, 7. Engraved into the golden pendulum, more numbers. It was like a math clock. Goldie didn't like math very well. She was working on division in school. Horrible, horrible numbers. She looked up at the face again, then up to the very peak of the clock and there sat a little brown fairy. Her legs, hanging over the edge of the clock, looked to be in mid-swing. As if she'd just been minding her own business resting at the top of the clock when, just like the clock, she'd been frozen in time. Goldie stretched up and touched the fairy's foot. Cold and hard just like the rest of the clock. Huh.
It was a fairy, but she was pretty sure it probably wasn't the reason for her vision of the fairy in the back corner. She started to again head in that direction when she had a thought.
"Floyd, is this a different dimension in my world or an entirely different world from mine?" She looked at the cat for a moment. He appeared to be listening, but she had no idea how to read him, so she just continued on with the task at hand. She wondered if he even bothered answering her questions when Kiffen wasn't in the room. She assumed maybe he did. A deaf person might be able to read her lips and sign an answer to her question, but would she be able to read the sign language? Decidedly not. She was going to assume he always replied even when she had no interpreter. It made her feel better about talking to him. If he didn't reply and just stared at her like she was dumb when Kiffen wasn't in the room, well, then she'd feel silly. No. He definitely, definitely gave a reply to every single question. She worked her way back, farther and farther out of the lamplight, past two more pianos. What in the world did these people do with these pianos? Collect them? Were these people from her world or the other world? Maybe people didn't actually play pianos in this world.
She finally reached the far back wall. It was black. Or, at least it was a dark color. Even in such low light, she assumed she'd be able to tell if the walls were white. Wouldn't she? She ran her hand along the wall as she moved toward the corner. The wood slats on the walls were smoother than the floors. She quickly pulled her hand back from the wall, remember the splinter she'd received earlier. She kissed her fingers and then moved slowly on, touching the wall every once in a while to make sure she was still on track. At the point where the two walls met, the world seemed extremely dark. At this point she was as far as she could be from the dim lamplight and the longer she stared at the corner, the more she felt like she was just floating along in cold, dark space so far above the earth that it was nothing but a pale blue star, the only star she could see in the entirety of space.
She wasn't sure that she was on earth anymore. But, how could she leave Planet Earth and not have any idea how she did it? Suddenly, earth came crashing toward her and soon she was caught by gravity and falling way too fast.
"Goldie." Snort, growl.
Goldie turned from the corner to find Kiffen had made his way back down to the room without breaking her concentration, or even any of the stairs.
"Did you find something back there?" Snort, growl.
He looked gigantic. She was still getting used to him. So much like a dragon, now. Or at least like she pictured a dragon would be.
Still the chicken legs, though, not that she could see those from where she was standing. She worked her way back to the center of the room at the bottom of the staircase where Floyd joined them.
"It's going to be much harder to talk down to him when he's so dang high above you, huh?" Goldie giggled and bent down to pat Floyd's head. He didn't seem put out. Then again, not a lot of emotions register on a cats fuzzy face. Basically, the only thing she'd probably ever be able to understand if it was registering on Floyd's face was sleepy, angry, and super-duper angry.
Kiffen's chest armor was shinier, now. He must have buffed it.
"I was noticing that a lot of stuff that appeared in my visions after the Lady Killer bit me were based off of things that are in this room. And, back in that corner, I'd seen a glowing fairy outline carved into the wall, so I went to check. It's pretty dark back there. Maybe if I brought the lamp this time." She pointed at the lamp and flapped her hand at it, as if it would come when it was called.
Kiffen reached over and grabbed the lamp, sitting on the piano, by its handle. "I'll carry it," he said in his deep, not so Kiffen voice. She knew she'd get used to it eventually. "You're a little too clumsy for this."
Goldie frowned at him. It was true, though. She was probably the youngest person here. Although, she'd never asked Kiffen his age, she assumed he was older, just because he seemed more knowledgeable and he knew cat language.
She turned and slithered through the sheeted furniture, once again, assuming the others were following because this time when she got to the back corner, she could tell the light was closer because the floor was pretty well-lit. The wall color was still just a big black hole. She stuck her hand out again to feel the wall. Kiffen was suddenly standing beside her. How was he so quiet? He's huge. Shouldn't he make noise as he walks? Goldie imagined how Kiffen should sound walking. It'd be like a walking tree. Walking trees would swish in the wind. They're very tall, so their tree legs would crack and groan as they stepped. Wooosh, crash, crackle, crack. So much sound. Wyvern serpent creatures must have the instincts of foxes. Or... something. You sure could hear him breathe, though. He held the light closer to the corner and they studied the walls together. It seemed like nothing. Pure nothing. Until Goldie's fingers encountered a rough spot.
She leaned closer to the spot.
"Here, Kiffen. Bring it closer." Her nose was nearly touching the wall and Kiffen brought the lamp so close she could feel the heat from it radiating off the glass. "Look! There's something here." She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and rubbed her fist against the wall. "Look, look! It's soot or something, like this place had been on fire." She scrubbed and scrubbed the soot off the rough spot in the wall. She uncovered a crude drawing of the fairy she'd seen glowing in the wall.
"My fairy!" The drawing was strangely familiar. She'd seen something like this... oh, the cupboard in the dark bedroom. The intricate drawing. This one was crude, but it had the same sort of feel to it... Things drawn on walls and all. Only children draw things on walls. The one in the cupboard had said, "Help me." She'd forgotten about it.
She turned to Kiffen.
"Have other people come through the secret room before?" she asked.
"You're the only one I've seen in that room in a long time."
"It's just, I found something written outside of the upstairs room, right before I came though the cupboard doors and I only just remembered."
"Hmmm," Kiffen mumbled. He was pressing against the wall with his claws. One of the boards was weak in the center. Kiffen was bouncing his fist against it. He pointed with the lamp. "Right over there. Press the center of the board that corresponds to this one." Kiffen leaned his shoulder against the board as Goldie felt the boards on the other side of the corner.
"This one?" she asked.
"Yeah. Press it hard! Both hands!" Kiffen started to growl as he pushed. Goldie did, too. They growled together, louder and louder, and everything around them started to growl as well. Growl, growl, growl. Echoing, like an empty room or a cave. Goldie was pressing so hard, she'd closer her eyes to concentrate all her strength on that one spot. Growl accumulated and accumulated, each growl stacking on top of the next until they created the biggest growl Goldie had ever heard.
The growls stopped suddenly.
This is one of those moments, where in a movie, one might hear crickets chirping. Goldie didn't even hear that. She couldn't hear Kiffen breathing, either. She strained to open her eyes.
It was like that moment where earth was crashing in on her only a few minutes ago, only this time it was light crashing into the darkness. At first, blinding light. She held her hand over her eyes to shield them. No sense losing her eyesight by staring into the sun, or whatever that was in front of her. She glanced past her hand shield again. Yeah. That has got to be the sun. She turned to face away from that light and dropped her hand. She was out in the middle of a meadow of some sort. Still so bright. Of course, it wasn't hard to see why. Across the other side of the meadow was another sun in the white sky. Double the suns, double the brightness of earth. She nodded her head. Makes sense. She'll probably get skin cancer in about five seconds. She couldn't leave her shade hand down, so she put it back up to her forehead and turned in a slow circle to find her friends. Her eyes were very slowly getting used to the light, but at this exact moment the scene she was seeing through her under-protected eyeballs looked a lot like over-developed film. So much hot white light mixed with black shadows. She noticed a large dark spot in the distance, it seemed to be moving, in a slow-mo sort of way, but she decided to head in that direction. He looked far enough away that if it wasn't Kiffen, she still might be able to run away before whatever it was noticed her. She looked down at her feet as she walked to keep her eyes away from the sun and the white sky. She tried to keep at least one object, like a tree, between her and the large black dot, so maybe the dot wouldn't see her any time too soon. It seemed to be staying relatively still. Maybe he'd seen her already and was just waiting for her to catch up.
Hopefully Floyd was with him. There was no way she was going to be able to find a tiny cat in the tall grass out here.
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