Untitled Novel Day 12 of 30 - 28,000 Words to Go

Total words need to stay on track: 20,004 Total words written so far: 22,000

Goldie sat back down on the floor of the secret room and wait for Cat, uh, Floyd to come around the corner. Sh crossed her arms and stared at the wall across the room. She wouldn't even look at him when he comes around the corner. No way. He doesn't deserve to be looked at, or petted. Hmph.
Floyd peeked around the corner and perked his ears, waiting to see what Goldie was going to do. When she didn't say or do anything, her rubbed against the corner of the wall and walked right up to her, and rubbed again against her knee.

"I'm not talking to you, Cat, or should I say Floyd?!" Goldie yelled his name very loudly. So loud it was more like a scream. She hadn't realized how mad she was until just then. But, strangely enough, all the feelings left her body when she'd screamed his name. She almost felt happy again. But, she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of thinking she wasn't mad at him. She'd let it go on for a while. She tightened her arms against her chest.

Floyd walked over to where Kiffen was sitting on his tail cushion and studied him. Sniffing around him, and poking his tail with his paw. Kiffen stayed quite still. Goldie began to get a little worried, wondering whether Floyd might try and eat him. Maybe he'd never seen a lizard cre-- a wyvern before. And, cat's really liked eating little creatures. Even ones that might give them rabies. Oh, wait, they knew each other already, she was pretty sure... because Kiffen knew Cat's name. Oh. Huh. Goldie watched the two of them go on like this for a few minutes. Kiffen remaining entirely silent and quite still. His body still reacted to Floyd's punches, leaning this way and that but staying upright.
Finally, Floyd sat down and started purring. Then he started licking his foot.
Kiffen turned to Goldie.
"He says he went on ahead and scouted out the territory down there."

Goldie's mouth fell open, but she caught it so it didn't land on the floor. "When did he say that?"

Kiffen scratched his head with oneof his claws and studied her. "Are you saying you didn't read any of that?"

"Read any of what?" She pointed at Floyd. "What were there, speech bubbles above his head that I missed entirely?"

Kiffen shook his head. The silvery scales on his chest glinted in the sunlight. "No. He doesn't speak like you and I do. It's a body language of sorts. It's his ears and his tail, sometimes he uses his paws as well. I don't know what the fluttering in his chest is for. Signals contentment or some such nonsense."

"So, it's sort of like sign language?"

"What's sign language?"

"It's something humans who can't hear -- and I guess some animals, too -- use to communicate. They use their hands, or paws."

"That sounds very like this. Except the hands part. Floyd doesn't have hands. He does have paws, though." Kiffen looked at Floyd.

"Does he understand me?"

"Yes."

"Why can't I understand him?"

"Because the gift of understanding cats has not been bestowed upon you." Kiffen was speaking in monotone now. This was all common knowledge! How could she not know about the cat language?

"Who bestows the gift of understanding cats?"

Kiffen's shoulders drooped and his head sunk into he chest. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in slowly. He breathed out in a long, loud sigh, then looked at Goldie. "You know that thing I said about the questions?"

"I just--"

"I can't handle it."

"Fine." Goldie wanted to stomp. Actually, she really wanted to stomp on him. She could do it, easily. He was only five inches tall. It'd be easy to smash him with her foot. But, she wouldn't. She didn't really want to kill him. Stomping on him probably wasn't the best way to let out her frustrations. She'd have to be creative about this. That shouldn't be a problem. Creativity was her forte after all. "Will you at least ask Cat--" She growled, "This is so hard. FLOYD."

She extended every syllable in his name out five times as long as it was, almost to where it didn't even sound like the right word anymore. Fuhh Luhh Oyyyy Duh. Fuhloyduh. Fuhloyduh. Floyd. Maybe that would help, maybe not. It's frustrating naming a cat and then learning that it already had a name of his own. It had happened with Goldie before. She'd named a street cat "Barnoldo" once. She and her mom had been feeding it every once in a while when it showed up on their porch. The street cat was happy with its name as far as she could tell, but then one of their neighbor's decided to take it in. She told them what she had named it, but they didn't care for the name Barnoldo, so they named him mittens instead, because after they'd given him a bath, they realized the all-black cat actually had white feet. White feet? So what? He already had a name and it was a good one! It made her mad every time she thought of it. Actually, now that she knew that cats had names for themselves, she wasn't quite so mad about it. It meant that Barnoldo/Mittens wasn't actually Barnoldo or Mittens! He had his own name and if Goldie was ever blessed with the gift of understanding cat language, she was going to find out what his name was and start calling him that. TAKE THAT, MEAN NEIGHBORS!

In the present, once again, she asked Kiffen one more question.
"What else did he tell you about the downstairs world?"

"I never finished that, did I?"

Goldie shook her head and Floyd stopped cleaning his fur long enough to give Kiffen a long glance.

"It's because of all your annoying questions!" He went off on a rant again, just like when she'd dropped him on the floor. She ignored him again, only this time it wasn't out of shock. She just didn't want to hear his rude words. Instead, she watched Floyd. He stood and moved closer to Kiffen, staring intently at him. When he reached to point where he was almost nose to nose with him, his ears twitched. And Kiffen shut up.

That was it? A barely discernable twitch could stop a wyvern in his tracks?
Guess so.
After Kiffen took the time to repeat Floyd's warnings, mostly of spiders and holes in the floor because the old floorboards weren't holding up very well, he finally thought he could make a fireball big enough to light the oil lamp. She brought the oil lamp to him and set it on the floor. She opened the hatch in the glass and Kiffen did the rest. He stood in the door of the lamp and pressed his hands to his belly.
"Urrrrrk," was the sound he made when he belched. He had apparently done the teeth clicking part right, because a little puff of flames spouted from his mouth for about a second. That second was all it took to light the wick on the oil lamp. Goldie clapped her hands excitedly.

"That was amazing, Kiffen! You really are a dragon!"

"Wyvern," Kiffen corrected.

"Right. That's what I meant," said Goldie. She scooped the lamp up from the floor with Kiffen still standing on it. She brushed him away from the lamp door, so she could shut it. She was so excited to get going. She walked to the doorway of the hidden stairwell and stepped inside. The lamp wouldn't be very helpful with the sun shining so brightly on them, but wait till she decended those stairs. It'd be perfect!
A little voice spoke up.

"Mind if you let go of my tail now?"

She hadn't realized it but when she'd grabbed the lamps handle, she'd somehow caught Kiffens tail between her fingers. She apologized and swung the lamp back down to the floor, so he could step off. He brushed off his scaly little body. Floyd led the way down the stairs, once more exploring the deep underbelly of the secret room, and Goldie followed his fluffy behind, leaving Kiffen to take up the rear. She slowly decended the stairs, creak by creak. Her weight was probably ten times that of Floyd. She'd not thought of that. His steps didn't make a single sound, but the boards were groaning under her feet. She walked slower and stepped as lightly as possible, testing each board before she actually put all of her weight on it.
The stairway decended for much longer than she expected. She thought that, surely, the winding stair wouldn't wind more than once, but she'd gone around the central pole of the staircase twice before her eyes adjusted to the dark and the lamplight. Shapes in the dark started to appear. Big ones. Covered furniture, maybe. Could also be monsters, but Floyd had said there were spiders and holes. Not monsters. In fact he didn't mention any magical creatures, which actually seemed strange. A magical cat, although, she wasn't sure he was magical quite yet, and a magical wyvern, definitely magical couldn't just walk around and be magical all by themselves. Others must be here somewhere. Plus, Kiffen had said he'd seen some fairies in the secret room not long before she'd gotten there. So, they were definitely around. And Floyd knew that fairies were her goal, so if they were here, he would have told her. She watched the shapes, getting more and more involved in them and less involved in where she was stepping. She'd forgotten to be careful entirely by the time she hit the last stair.
Crack! The stair broke and she lost her footing. "Ugh!" she grunted as she pitched forward. Her leg hit the floor of the room and her knee collapsed beneath her, leaving her in a crumpled mess on the floor. No, that makes no sense. She wasn't really a crumpled mess. She'd just landed on her butt. She was probably covered in dirt, though, so maybe "mess" was accurate, at least. She stood up after sitting on the floor for a while taking in the shock of what had happened, but she was missing something. Wait, where's the lamp? She pressed her hands to all of her pockets, even though it made no sense. The lamp couldn't be in her pockets. She spun in a circle. The area where she was standing was lit up, so... it was above her. Floating in the air, bobbing up and down, like a gigantic version of Tinkerbell.

"You all right, down there?" called Kiffen from above.

"Where are you, Kiffen?" She was beginning to think she'd fallen farther than she'd realized and was actually another floor below the room she thought she was in.

"I'm just above you. I caught the lamp when you fell. I think I should carry it for a while."

"Are you flying?"

Kiffen sighed.

"So... yes," said Goldie, outloud for her own sake. He had wings. She hadn't realized he had wings. They must fold so neatly behind him when he's standing.