Day 16

Still haven't really discovered where the werewolf story is going; I have an idea, but I think "and something happens" is just a bit too vague. ^_^

I haven't thought about this novel idea lately, so I thought I'd try writing the beginning and see what happens. Some of it was written a while ago, but I think the majority is new.

***

Violet had known that the task would be difficult, but as she nursed a cup of tea and surveyed the mess of cardboard boxes she realized she had completely underestimated it. The sheer effort it took to neatly pack away her grandmother's things, to sort the china and the knitting needles and the books that only a short while ago had helped define a person's life, was utterly exhausting. These were the things that had surrounded her grandmother, here in her little house, and now she was gone and they were all that was left behind.

A lump was forming in her throat and she quickly took a sip; the too-hot liquid burned in her mouth and on the way down. Violet cast her gaze around the room and it settled on the clock on the mantelpiece. It had a simple wood casing, with a still life above the face depicting several apples, a bowl, and the clock itself. The Roman numerals were wrong in the painting—the artist had mixed up the order, so where there should have been XI for the eleven there was IX. Violet remembered when she'd first noticed the mistake; being only six or seven she hadn't even understood Roman numerals, but she'd felt great pride in pointing out the difference to her grandmother.

Violet turned around suddenly and put her mug on the table by the door. This was just too much. She strode into the kitchen and out the back door onto the patio. Closing the door behind her, she breathed in a deep breath and let it out shakily. She looked out over the garden, feeling a calm settling over her. The flowers and vegetables still reminded her, but unlike the lifeless house and its contents they made her smile.

There was a path that began where the patio ended, and Violet found her feet taking her away from the house. It wound its way past runner beans twining up canes, through flowerbeds of foxgloves and roses that buzzed with bees, to the bottom of her grandmother’s garden. There it entered a small wood, and the gravel crunching underfoot gave way to tamped down earth. In the shade of the trees the path quickly turned out of sight, and as a little girl Violet had never made it to the bend before retreating to the sunlit garden. It wasn’t that she had been afraid of exploring; well, not entirely, anyway. Looking back, she realized she had been afraid of losing the mystery of what might lie in the beyond. As long as she hadn’t ventured too far she had been free to imagine fairies lounging atop spotted toadstools or squirrels arguing over a nut. Even at a young age, before disillusion set in and such fantasies went the way that Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy go, she had instinctively known that going any farther would put an end to her imaginings.

***

Hm... not terrible, but not great. Huzzah for editing!

[Edit: Continued here.]