The Wisp, Chapter Four, Part One, Fiction, Reading, Photography, Digital Art, and Blog

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(Edited)

The Wisp

Amy’s breathing told Bara she was in her dorm room, but Amy hadn’t woken her. There’d been a sound. Now there was only silence, silence and the low hum of Amy’s snores. Bara closed her eyes once more. There it was again, a tapping, something tapping very insistently against the window. There’d be no sleep until she figured out what it was. She had her suspicions.

Colin … If that is you, I’m going to murder you.

A sleep-heavy torso lifted and she rested on her elbows. The blanket fell from her shoulders. The cold bit at her bare skin. Temptation. Lay back down, pull the covers back up, and ignore whatever was outside. Instead, she slipped from beneath the blankets and stood. The wooden boards were ice slats on her bare soles, and the air revealed her breath on the exhale. Dragon’s breath, her mother called it. She fumbled through the darkness to the window, drew back the curtains, and peered into the night.

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Outside the storm still raged. The heavy weeping of rain had stopped, but the wind was still angry, picking up fallen leaves and branches and throwing them at the window. Tap tap tap. The fury reached through the glass pane with invisible, icy hands. The cold coaxed a return to bed, but something else held her back. As Bara looked out into the storm, she felt someone was watching.

And someone was. She’d been right. It had been a woman in the library, and that woman now stood on the edge of the forest, looking back up the window.

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The Wisp was tall and thin with long limbs. Her skin was pale and glowing. Even from a hundred yards away, it glistened like waves in the moonlight. Her hair was long and silver, not grey, but metallic silver.

She stood motionless, then like an iridescent dove taking flight, turned into a blur of silver and white and disappeared into the woods … only to reappear seconds later.

Amy stirred and broke Bara’s attention from what was outside. She went to the bed.

“Wake up!” she whispered.

Amy had no intention of waking-up. She lay still, seemingly able to sleep through a hurricane in a drum shop. Bara tried again, shaking her this time.

“Go back to bed,” Amy answered groggily. “Tell me in the morning.”

“There’s someone outside.”

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(The Reading)

It has been a quiet few days on the lip of eternity. A black hole of blogging oblivion. The block chain has been quiet and dark, but now the fork has been hardened, and its ready to swirl some code or get spaghettified.

Alright ... I'll stop now, but you should know, Hivelanders, all the #spacenerds out there are experiencing a high akin to low gravity, also known as giggle fits.

Hey ... making you chuckle or even groan against your better judgement is all the thanks I need. That means I'll never stop ... really.

To this instalment of the Wisp. One of my favorites. We see Bara enter the Slip again, but this time she really dives in and stays awhile. We get to spend a little more time with the dark-haired boy. He is not only dishy, but also heroic, if strangely mute. Things would work so much smoothly if he could only talk but then there wouldn't be much of story to tell. Just exposition.

Contrast between the dark-haired boy and Colin, Bara's other love interest, is built. Dark versus fair. Quiet versus boisterous. Mysterious and seemingly eternal, versus outgoing and youthful. Male readers sympathize with Colin. Let's face it. Perfection isn't obtained in reality. Colin takes the pressure off.

The appeal for the lady-folks almost always falls in favour of the dark-haired boy, for all his unobtainable charms, and also because he knows when to be quiet and just hold a girl's hand. Alas Colin doesn't quite know when to stop performing and come in close for the kiss. The opportunities come for our lanky charmer but he never sees them.

oh ... to be kissed ... and kissed good and by the right fellah.

I'm getting carried away ...

Bara's dreamtime serves not just to offer romantic escape, but also to move the plot along and to eventually collide the Slip world with the waking world of Windfall. Time for all you would be Sherlock's ... sorry had to pause for a moment to think about Henry Cavill ... but it's time for all literary type detectives to get out your magnifying glass and read for details.

Dreams point the Way for those who don't get lost in them.

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***

Words and Images are my own.

The Wisp, and its sequel, the Tall Man is available in paperback or digital through Amazon and your local libraries and bookstores. Click on any title below to further explore and support my writing.


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5 comments
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Haha. Sorry, dear, but I think of Benedict Cumberbatch when I think of Sherlock. :)

Sorry I'm late to this! I haven't had a chance this entire week to curate. Catching up now!

!tip .5

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(Edited)

Thank you, Victor:) I rather like them both but the dark hair squeaks out the lead:)

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