Writer In Motion Week One: The Unedited Draft

I'm doing Writer in Motion, where writers workshop a scene based on a common prompt over the course of a few weeks, including self-editing, feedback from a critique group, and feedback from an assigned editor. 

Authors are encouraged to post the evolving drafts on a blog or website, which seemed like a good enough reason to make a blog. So... ta da! 

The prompt was this awesome photo. Week One's task was to write thing thing, so behold: The Thing! As near as I can tell, it's a scene from a novel I'm not actually writing. Which, okay, cool. Curious to see how it evolves over the next few weeks...

The Thing:

Caius stepped onto the balcony, passing silently into the late morning light. The land dropped sharply away below, rock becoming ice becoming sea.

He hated it here in Tsor. Hated everything about it. The way his feet never got warm. The way everything tasted like salt. The way he’d followed Isidore here, as though he’d had no other choice.

“Tell her,” Miranda had demanded over a breakfast of stale bread and fish. “It’s bad enough that you’re miserable, but you’re becoming distracted.”

She was right. None of them could afford distraction. Not with the armies of Airec preparing to destroy all three of its neighboring kingdoms in one fell swoop. And so he forced himself to onto the balcony where Isidore spent her mornings. Not that he’d been paying attention to her routines.

She was here, leaning over the earthen balcony as though about to take flight. Wind pulled strands from the braids of dark curls crowning her forehead, creating an unruly latticework of hair across her face. Caius fought down a horrifying impulse to pull her back from the edge. A smile lit her face, as though she’d just seen something that pleased her deeply.

He took a hesitating step forward, and her head snapped to the side. The smile dropped away, and something in Caius’ chest tightened. The wind sent his own blonde hair careening across his face, and he let it. How foolish, to think that he might be someone who could make her happy, when all he’d ever done was the opposite.

“My apologies. I’ll leave you to your thoughts.” He turned to head back into the tunnels, but her voice arrested him.

“Tell me again,” she said. He glanced back at her. Her brows were drawn together, a small line dividing them as she absently bit her lip. It was the face she made when she was puzzling something out. When had her expressions grown so familiar to him? “What are the three ways into Airec?”

“It’s nothing you don’t already know,” he replied, surprised by the question. By the fact that she was asking him anything at all. He let himself lean against the railing beside her, telling himself that the swooping sensation in his stomach was a response to the staggering drop-off below. “By air, by sea and by land. I don’t have the dragons to move my own army, let alone both of ours. And it’s too late in the year to travel by sea. The passage at Saxela will be frozen solid, and our ships would be stuck until spring.” He eyed the lonely ship on the horizon, dwarfed by the sea. Just as their combined forces would be more than outmatched by Airec’s, even if they could manage to get there in one piece.

“Which leaves the pass through the Irreb Mountains.” Her mouth twisted. “Where they’ll see us coming from miles away.”

It wasn’t anything they hadn’t talked over dozens of times, each conversation leading to the same reckless conclusion. They would march their two armies through the pass, and many if not most of them would die. Their only hope was that enough of the soldiers would make it through to put up a decent fight once they reached Airec. All they had to do was occupy Airec’s forces long enough for SOME OTHER THING TO HAPPEN.

There was little good about the plan.

“What if there was a way to go under the mountains?” Isidore asked. “If our armies made it under the pass whole, we’d have a fighting chance of lasting until SOME OTHER THING.”

Cauis stood up straight, eyes searching her face. “There’s no way you could be serious, and yet it seems that you are. Those tunnels haven’t been stable since the earthquake that crushed Egeon’s armies one hundred years ago. We would find ourselves buried next to them, if we even made it that far.”

“I think I could do it.” Confidence lit Isidore’s face, and her smile returned as she shoved at a strip of hair that the wind lashed across her cheek. “You saw what I did when the cliff collapsed. I think I’m strong enough hold the tunnels. We could travel below ground by day, and then come up at night to sleep.”

“You think?” An urge to brush a piece of hair she’d missed behind her ear nearly overtook him. Caius shoved his hands into his pockets.

Dangerous. She was dangerous.

“The instability of the tunnels isn’t the only problem.” Panic began to creep in as he realized how serious she was. “The echnals that hunt in those tunnels picked off a fifth of Egeon’s forces, even before the mountain made itself their tomb.”

“That’s fewer fighters than we’ll lose marching straight into the Airec’s defenses. We’ll be lucky if half of us make it through the pass.” She took a step forward, eyes alight with something none of them had felt in weeks: Hope. Caius felt as though he were being cleaved in two. “And it wouldn’t have to be all of us. With you leading your dragon fighters above, we would have the advantages of surprise and of the air.”

Her words were a bucket of chill water dousing him.

“You can’t possibly think I wouldn’t be going with you.”

“There’s no need—"

He turned away from her, terrified of what she might see on his face. “If you do this wildly stupid thing, you’ll do it with me by your side. I won’t send my people into nearly certain doom while I hide in the clouds.”

“You wouldn’t be hiding,” she said. “You’d be leading our second offense.”

Only when he was confident that he’d schooled his features into a smooth mask did he turn back toward her. “You may be able to move stone, Isidore, but you you cannot move me. Juno will lead the dragon fighters. I will lead my people into the earth.” He leaned against the railing, curling his lip into a smirk. “Perhaps I’ll surprise you and make myself useful.”

He saw the moment she relented. “Fine. If that’s the price of you supporting my plan with the councilors, I’ll pay it.”

“I am glad to hear you find my company as odious as I find yours.” He imbued his words with as much scorn as he could muster, pushing himself back toward the tunnel. “It will warm my heart in the frigid tunnels.”

He returned to the tiny cave that was his room in this place to find Miranda waiting, her thick, grey hair hidden beneath a thicker grey hood. “Did you tell her?”

He shook his head.

“Coward,” she sighed.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or perhaps I was distracted by her plan to march our armies directly under the Irrebs. Or by the fact that I found myself agreeing to accompany her.”

Miranda’s eyebrows flew up. “I take it back,” she said, her voice gravel. “You’re not a coward. You’re a fool.”