Limes with Orange

I've been struggling with my novel the last couple of days because I've had to kill off a character that I had become quite fond of. I finally did it. She's dead. The plot can move forward (after my main character wallows a little first). I've never killed off a character before. It's kinda sad. I was planning on writing that section to the Adagio of Bach's Sonata No. 3 for Cello and Piano (used in the movie Truly Madly Deeply in the scene where Nina is playing the piano, a piece that she and her lover used to play together before he died, and her lover's ghost begins to play his part on the cello). For some reason it wasn't right. It definitely evokes grief for me, but it's for a grief that's less raw. Instead, I wrote it to Barber's Adagio for Strings (used in The Elephant Man, Platoon, Lorenzo's Oil and Amélie). To me, it evokes a painfully controlled grief that eventually breaks down into shattering sobs. More what I was looking for here. Not to imply that I expect you to break down into sobs while reading this excerpt (that you can read while listening to Barber, if you so desire). It's a first draft and it's out of context so *shrug* feel free to have no emotional reaction at all (to the writing, not the music... if you have no emotional reaction to Barber's Adagio then you must be dead inside :-p):

Meg dipped her finger into the water and then dabbed the water onto the third eye chakra in the middle of her forehead, saying:

"May this water aid my power
And lend me magick in this hour."

She had placed the amethyst ring on the middle finger of her left hand. She now touched it to the same spot on her forehead and recited:

"May this stone aid me this night
And strengthen gifts of second sight."

She took a deep breath and looked into the water in the bowl and focused on thoughts of Skye. She finally saw an image start to form in the water. It was Skye, but Skye as she’d been in Meg’s apartment or when they’d gone for coffee. Generic Skye, as it were, not Skye tonight, her life possibly in danger.

She picked up Skye’s necklace and held it in her left hand, the one that bore the ring. She repeated:

"May this stone aid me this night
And strengthen gifts of second sight."

Then she plunged the necklace into the bowl of water and held it fast against the bottom, saying:

"May this water aid my power
And lend me magick in this hour."

She felt the stabbing pain over her left eye, the presentiment of her migraines that she’d come to associate with the magic working through her. She kept her hand in the water, clenching the necklace, fighting off the migraine. She wasn’t sure how long she sat this way. Her hand gradually growing numb in the water, her migraine increasing. And then she was somehow inside Skye’s mind.

Her senses were dulled. But she was aware of the sharp, little stones underneath her knees as she knelt on cold, wet, sticky concrete. She was leaning forward, chest resting on her upper thighs, forehead resting on the same uncomfortable surface as her knees. Her arms ached. They were stretched behind her. She didn’t seem able to change their position. Something was chaffing her wrists. Her hands must be tied behind her back. Her eyes were closed. Too much effort to open them.

Open your eyes, Skye! Meg yelled in her head.

Skye’s eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. There was a sharp pain in her scalp. Her hair was being pulled. Someone’s hand had grasped a hank of her hair and was pulling her up to a sitting position by it.

She felt something cold against her neck. Cold and sharp.

Skye!!! Meg’s thoughts reverberated through a transcendental plane, disturbing the thoughts of everyone in the city with any ounce of psychic power.

Wake up! Get out of there!

Skye’s eyelids fluttered again. Then opened briefly. Long enough to look in the eyes of the man who held the knife to her throat. His eyes widened in surprise at this display of consciousness. Then narrowed as if he sensed another presence behind them. Then, in a single swift motion, that felt like it lasted an eternity, the cold, thin steel sliced Skye’s throat and Meg was briefly aware of the hot, spurting blood, of Skye’s body falling to the ground in slow motion, and then a of final few weak heartbeats echoing in a void, pumping the last vestiges of life out of her body. And the connection was severed.

NaNoWriMo Word Count: 24,056 down ~ 25,944 to go

Labels: writing