Nano 2012 Day Twenty-Five

It powered up and made its annoying music and then he picked the program that knew all his preferences for shows. He couldn't think of anything so he turned it off again. He switched around to the section where his games were and picked a particularly aggravating one. He had kept getting stuck on this one, it would let you get a certain amount of progress and then it would suddenly change the 'rules' on you. It was a lot of fun but was also incredibly frustrating seeing his on screen protagonist getting beaten up, ripped apart, burned and electrocuted. He played for about fifteen minutes, dying in a similar way over and over and finally gave up and turned the whole system off. He lay back on his couch and thought about his writing. NOw that he had completed something he was actually proud of, what should he do? Should he keep going? Did he have to keep writing every day? He had heard that was what made a good writer. He wasn't sure if he could bring himself to do it though. Although he did it all the time for work, but that was copy writing. It was to a set of rules and a set of objectives and he could easily find the bits and pieces of information to put the story together that would make the client happy and hopefully attract the customers. There was a formula to attracting the customers too and all he had to do was pay attention to the trends of the day and how they changed the way people thought about the ads they looked at and merely modify them. With his fiction, though, it was a lot harder. Everything came from his head, his own experiences, the things he had said or thought he should have said. It came from his imagination which sometimes he felt was rather dusty and was also why he was so proud of his story, because it was imaginative. At least, he thought it was. It was just as likely the agent would think it was immature and puerile and not get past the first page before throwing it in the trash. In Manelaus's opinion, that would be a great shame.

He got up again and grabbed his laptop and his little stable table and went and lay down on the couch again. Ok, time to try writing ot masterpiece number two. He began to type, "In the Himalayas there lives a huge white beast with shaggy fur and an overbite. All the adults call his "Daskrogen", all the kids call him "Uncle Wooley"."

Hmm, not bad. He kept writing, "One day when the beast was collecting wood from the forest for his fire he came across a small deer that had broken its leg in a bear trap that had been set. It was unconscious from loss of blood and twitching. The Daskrogen reached down and opened up the trap and gently pulled out the deer's mangled leg He inspected the leg and could see it had been broken. This made the beast very angry, however he controlled his anger and found a small twig with which to splinter the deer's leg. He pulled some of his shaggy fur off of himself and stretched it out to make a makeshift bandage which he used to fasten the splint to the deer's leg. He leg very carefully picked up the creature and took it up to his little hut in the mountains. When the deer awoke, at first it was frightened to see the beast and tried to scramble away but discovered it could not put any pressure on its leg and cried out. The sound broke the beast's heart. He had a bowl of broth ready, which he put in front of the deer and the deer eagerly licked it up and then cried for more. The beast put him more broth and then sat back with his long-necked banjo and softly twanged out a song. He sang as well. He sang in his native voice, which was low like the rumble of a wolcano but melodic and fluent like a breeze through the trees. He sang of loss and of sorry, of remembering and of happiness. He sang of the hills around the forest and of the forest ithin the hills. He sang of the animals that lived in the forest and the ones who hunt in the hills, and of the animals in between who are not sure if they would like to be hill animals lost in the forest or forest animals lost in the hills. Finally, he sang of an understanding of purpose between all living things, that we all have a right to live and a right to die. That there is a circle of life and a way of doing things and that the forest and hills are built on the history that came before them, from right back when the trees were saplings and the hills were small mounds of ice and dirt.

The deer sat quietly and listened to this, and when the beast had finished the dear carefully shuffled itself over to where the beast was with its three remaining good legs and rested its head on his lap and went to sleep. The beast had other things it needed to do, but for now it stayed where it was and gently tuned its banjo while the deer slept."

Not a bad beginning, Menelaus thought, but where does it go from there? Does he go the traditional children's fairytale route and make them best friends? Does he do a modern take on it in the style of all those Little Red Riding Hood rewrites and make them lovers? Does he make it a warning tale about conservation and make it about the townspeople cutting down the trees or threatening the beast and the deer or even, bizarrely, somehow being directly responsible for the ice on his mountains melting?  Did he have to pick any of these? It seemed he did because the natural flow of the story seemed to stop exactly where he had left it. How could he possibly make a choice? He remembered he should probably save it and did so, then heard a knock at the door. He shut down his laptop and went to answer it. As he expected, it was Tina, although it seemed a little early.

"Hello you!" He said and gave her a kiss.

"Hello loverboy!" She said, "Can I intrude?"

"Always, come in." He stepped aside so she could enter his apartment and she skipped in.

"So, isn't it a bit early? Get an early minute?"

"Noooo I just had work finish early. There was a fire drill and they dismissed us straight from there. They don't really care about productivity too much."

"Obviously."

"So what have you been doing? I see your new toy is off."

"I've been writing, actually. I had to rewrite something I did a few months ago for a new target audience."

"Oh that sounds annoying!" She sat herself down on the couch and grabbed one of his games magazines and flipped thorough it. He sat down next to her. "It wasn't too bad, I just had to work out what they would probably want. It's nothing I haven't done before. Really, it's easy money."

"So that's all you've done today?"

"Well, I also tried to write a short story."

"The one you've been working on for a while?"

"No a new one. Hey, how did you know about the other one?"

She looked up from the magazine she had been flipping through and smiled "I know everything, remember?"

"Seriously..."

"Seriously, you've talked about it before. But months ago. You used to bring it up every now and then when we got together with Peter and some of the other guys. I was part of your friend circle, remember? Remember me? I'm your friiieeend."

"Ok, ok, that makes sense."

"Why were you keeping it from me? Or thinking you were keeping it from me?"

"No, i just didn't want to show you anything I wasn't sure about."

"Aw, I'll always think what you're doing is amazing because you're the one doing it! So... this was a new story? What's it about?"

"I was just writing it off the top of my head, it's about a big white creature in the Himalayas..."

"You mean the yeti?"

"Well no. I mean, kind of. It's sort of like the legend of the yeti except it isn't actually the yeti if that makes sense?"

Tina looked a little confused but she said, "Go on."

Anyway, he liked in the icy mountains and down below there's a forest"

"A forest right next to icy mountains?"

"Yeah..."

"In the Himalayas?"

"Well, yeah."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Look, I haven't Google Mapped it. Anyway, he goes down into the forest and he finds this little deer with its foot stuck in a bear trap."

"That's horrible!"

"And he decides to help it. He bandages up it's leg and takes it back to his house and..."

"Fucks it?"

"What?"

"He fucks it, right? They become lovers?"

"What, no! He sings to it!"

"And then they start fucking?" She looked at the stricken look on Menelaus's face and laughed, "Oh baby, I'm sorry I didn't mean anything by it. I didn't mean to traumatise you either! But you know, there's a few stories that start like that, like the fairytale and it ends up being the two creatures are actually lovers and..you know."

"Yeah I know, I was actually considering if I should go that route to be honest. But it seemed to degrade all the scenes of him looking after her, setting her leg, playing her music..."

"Do you think our sex degrades our friendship?"

"Well, no. I mean, it's different..."

"Is it really? Are you saying all sex is dirty, that it contaminates things?"

"No, of course not, why would you say that? If I thought that, do you think I would have sex as often with you?"

"Well hormones make people do crazy things!" She smiled, "But no, I'm just goading you."

"Well alright then. Um did you want a glass of water of something?"

"No, I'm fine. Can I read what you've done of your story?"

"Well I've pretty much told you all of it. It's not particularly poetic or anything like that. It's just the story. I was writing off the top of my head."

"What about the other one from months ago? Did you ever finish that?"

"Yeah actually, I finished and polished it."

"Can I read it? Please? Please?" She bounced on the couch and brought her knees up next to him and kept bouncing, pushing him playfully on the shoulders with every word, "Please? Please?"

"Alright alright you crazy girl!"

"Yay!"

He grabbed his laptop and opened it up to his story and passed it over to her. She read for a minute and then said "There's no chance you have a printer is there? I just find it hard to read long things off a screen."

"Uh sure..." He grabbed the laptop again and told it to print the story to the network printer he kept in his cupboard. Once it had rattled off all the pages, he handed them to Tina. She stretched out on the couch and kicked off her shoes. "Ok, you can make me a drink now" she said, "a cup of tea would be really nice. Thank you!"

He made her the tea and wondered how she would react to the story.

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