All Hallow's Eve Eve

Happy Almost Halloween everyone!

I'm just going to give a quick little ROW 80 update this week because, I'll be honest with you, I'm really excited about today's WIPpet Wednesday and I want to get to it as quickly as possible!

So here's the progress I've made on my goals since last week:

• I downloaded the stock art I was eyeing, turned it into a cover, figured out a pen name to use, and published the first part of my serial on Barnes and Noble! I've also made two sales! Yay! Now I'm just waiting for it to be processed for Amazon. 
• I rewrote the scenes of the other contemporary project that were making the hero look like a jerk. 
• I chipped away at my new project some more
• I started part two of the serial
• And I even started on the next update for one of my fanfics (Chapter 29 to be exact, and I'm only halfway through the story. Sheesh.)

In between all of that I finished two tribal bodices and added them to my etsy store. Normally my items are made to order, but these are made out of that spiderweb fabric I shared last week. You can check them out by clicking the link for my store above, or on the pictures to the side here.

It's been a very busy week!

Now, for the part of the post that I have been waiting for since last week! WIPpet Wednesday!

I mentioned last week that I had written more of Maya's prologue. It's actually a scene I'm very excited about, because it's where she first meets a character who has already met her. Of course, neither of them realize who the other person is at the moment - oh, the joys of time travel! Plus, as you'll see shortly, it's appropriate considering that tomorrow is Halloween!

Without any further ado, since today's date is 10/30/13, here's 30 more paragraphs!

To Maya’s surprise, the grass she landed on gave way almost as soon as her backside made contact with it. She kept falling, slipping down a rocky slope until something hard and unmoving and cold stopped her. She instinctively rolled to her side, throwing her hands over her face and head to protect it from the debris that fell around her.

Marius leaned over the edge of the hole she had fallen through. “Are you okay?”

Maya coughed and gagged, gasping for air and leaving a small puddle of spit on the rock floor underneath her. “I think I’m fine.” She called up to him, then stood carefully. She hurt all over, and she could see bruises forming on her skin from where she had landed, but when she stood her feet could bear her weight and she was able to move her arms and fingers. “Yeah, I’m fine!”

“Can you climb back up?”

“I don’t know.” The slope was pretty steep and made up of rough rocks. She stepped on a stable looking one, hissing when a sharp pain shot through her knee. She fought through the pain though, desperate to rescue herself and return to the dig site before anyone knew what had happened. However, when she grabbed another rock above her head to pull herself up, it pulled loose from its neighbors, and she fell back down to the ground.

“I’ll go get your dad! I’ll be right back!”

“No! Don’t! Just get me some rope okay!” Maya called up to him, but he was already gone. “Great.” Maya grumbled to herself. Her parents were so going to kill her. There went any chance she had of going to Euro Disney. All because she had tried to impress a boy by riding a stupid horse. She sat down on the ground, pulled her knees against her chest, buried her head in her arms, and began to bawl her eyes out.

Eventually she wiped the tears from her eyes and dried her nose on her sleeve. Crying wasn’t going to get her out of this mess.

She stood and faced the rocky slope once again, determined to pull herself out of the hole she had fallen into. However, on a closer inspection she realized that the slope wasn’t made up out of rocks like she had originally thought -- it was actually made out of several stone bricks! She stepped back and looked around her, noticing that the walls on either side of the small space weren’t the rough walls of a cave, but smooth and flat and painted in a myriad of colors, and the floor underneath her feet was tiled beneath all the dirt.

She followed the floor away from the hole she had fallen through. It was dark but here and there light filtered through cracks and holes in the ceiling above, revealing more mosaiced walls. They told a tale she couldn’t quite understand, showing pictures of a world being destroyed by fire and floods and people fleeing the chaos while others huddled together and prayed, or bowed down to a group of three women. Possibly four, as a large chunk of plaster was missing from the mosaic.

Maya’s fear of being yelled at, at being told she couldn’t go to Euro Disney, was slowly beginning to fade away into excitement. Had she discovered a set of new ruins? She was fairly certain they weren’t on any of the maps she had seen at the dig site. And if her dad’s team had known about them, there would be archeologists crawling all over the place.

She stared at the mosaics as a goofy grin spread over her face. She would be famous! Her face would be all over magazines and newspapers like those kids who had discovered those dinosaur bones back in the 1800s! She’d like to see Katie Perkins beat that!

She continued to follow the hallway until it ended at a square room. Here the walls were simply whitewashed and absent of any decoration, and tile floor was broken up by a large stone disc that had been set into the floor in the middle of the room.

Even though she knew better than to touch anything, Maya found herself drawn to the disc. She bent at it’s edge, brushing off debris to reveal intricate carvings and semi precious stones that seemed to glow in the dim light. She frowned; to her untrained eyes, the mosaics on the walls outside this simple room resembled the pictures she had seen of Roman art in a book her father had bought her, but the carvings on the disc looked faintly Celtic . . .

“Maya!” She could hear her father calling her, his voice echoing through the vast and empty space. “Maya, sweetie! Are you okay? We’re coming down to get you!”

Maya stood, and turned back towards the long hallway, intending to rush back to the hole and reassure her dad that she was okay. However a dark shadow blocked her way.

Remembering all the horror films that she had watched when her mother had told her not to, Maya’s mind immediately leapt to the wrong conclusion about the shadow. It was a monster, or a zombie, or some sort of demon intent on eating her, sacrificing her, or dragging her back to hell. She screamed and stumbled backwards, stepping on the disc in her desperate attempt to escape the hulking shadow.

The shadow shouted something at her in an unfamiliar language, and reached for her with skeletal hands. Maya screamed again, then darted to the side, evading its’ grasp. The shadow turned to follow  her, stepping away from the doorway. It held its hands up, a ring on one of it’s fingers sparkling in the sunlight spilling in through a small hole in the roof as it continued to mutter in that strange language -- probably asking her to become it’s undead bride, or casting some heinous spell on her, or something.

Maya shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks as she sobbed in terror. However, despite her fear another part of her mind seemed to sharpen. She realized through blurry eyes that the creature approaching her was doing so on shaky legs. It wove from side to side with each step, and it’s steps were slow and stiff.

She held her breath, and then as soon as she saw her chance she took it. She rushed towards the creature, dodging to the side at the last minute. The shadow tried to grab her, but it’s arms closed around empty air as Maya was already past it and bolting down the hallway towards safety.

Her father had just reached the bottom of the rubble pile and was turning towards her when Maya reached the hole she had fallen through. She flung her arms around his waist, trying to explain about the undead thing chasing after her and how they needed to get away, now, in between sobs. He didn’t listen, just hugged her close and kissed her head, shushing her. “It’s okay. It's okay. I’m here. You’re safe.”

“But . . . But . . .”

“Maya, there’s no such thing as monsters. It was probably just a skeleton.”

And then the creature stumbled out of the hallway.

Maya screamed again at the sight of it. Her father quickly shoved her behind him, and swung his heavy flashlight at it, as if that would somehow keep the monster at bay.

The creature simply stared at them, and then it canted forward, falling first to it’s knees before collapsing all the way to the ground.

Maya peered around her father at the thing sprawled out in front of them. Now that they were out of the dim hallway and in the light, she could see that the monster was human shaped, with long matted red hair, and wore rough simple clothing that looked like something from medieval times.

“Stay here, Maya.” Jack commanded her, stepping closer to the creature.

“No! Dad!” She cried, clutching at his shirt in a desperate attempt to keep him back.

It was no use, however. He simply shook her off, and knelt next to the thing that had chased her through the ruins. He turned it on to it’s back, revealing that it was not a monster, or a zombie, or a demon, like Maya had thought, but a man.

To see more WIPpet Wednesday posts, go here.
To see more ROW 80 updates, go here.