What Heroes Don't Think About

7. wrecked and rotting, Part I

Author's Note: Hi everyone, sorry for the very delayed update. I wasn't really satisfied with this chapter, but I eventually figured I should just post it now so I can move on, and I can always edit it later. And I wanted to post this chapter this month, because Halloween.

This chapter has two more parts. I will post them sometime this month, and then take a month off, because I have decided against my better judgment to attempt NaNoWriMo again.

Thanks to anyone who has commented. Sorry I don't always reply to them. I usually open them, get really happy, and deliberate for thirty minutes about how to respond before becoming overwhelmed and giving up and then forgetting to do it for weeks and then feeling too awkward to actually reply. ...Yeah, my bad and I'm sorry but thank all of you so much anyway. 

"I don't have any more damned books," was the first thing Gaelker said when Didi walked into his shop.

"I don't blame you," Didi said cheerfully. "Clearly, with your limited cognitive abilities, you've had scant exposure to them and struggle to fathom their necessity. The lame, likewise, seldom become cobblers. What I seek is virgin stationery yet unblemished, and bound in leather, if you would."

He squinted at her and gestured towards the corner where the blank journal and spell book lay. "Over there. Urchin."

"My deepest gratitude, kind gentleman," Didi said, amusing no one but herself with her attempt at speaking formal Chondathan. Gaelker's nastiness truly wasn't bothering her today. She was still certain she could best him in combat, but she no longer had the desire to prove that to him. She was in too good a mood.

She was inspired.

Everything seemed right in her world. Even though it wasn't right and she knew it, it felt right. She felt happy, for the first time in a long time. She felt like she had a home. She felt loved.

She knew Dominic loved her, of course. He was her best friend and most reliable ally. But he'd never hugged her close and ruffled her hair. The knowledge of being loved was precious, but it was a different thing than the feeling of it.

And even though her heartbreak, her anxiety over her absent siblings was still there, it wasn't quite so overpowering now. Not to the point that it blocked out everything else.

She wanted to capture this feeling. She wanted to write.

She'd once been a avid diarist and budding novelist. Her first attempt at epic-length fiction, a partially finished romance-and-adventure story, that had been left behind when she and Dominic had left home in haste. She wouldn't have had the heart to try to rewrite what she'd lost, even if she'd had paper.

But now she was filled to the brim with all kinds of stories, none of them directly about her life, but all of them about nice things, all of them about love.

She got home with time to spare before the evening chores, and sat down to write at the humble desk in the lobby. The activity around her didn't bother her; rather, it reminded her of home – the nice parts of home, the windy days in the gardens with the younger children all playing together, herself and Dominic on the patio, as Didi wrote and Dominic studied his spells and every once-in-a-while one would interrupt the other, Didi to read him a newly-finished page or Dominic to show her a newly-learned cantrip.

She wouldn't have taken any interest in the small group of adventurers that walked into the lobby, except for the fact that two of them they were handsome young men who could serve as the inspiration for her fictional heroes. Sure, her romantic leads were an elf and a half-elf, and these adventurers were all human, but they were handsome in spite. One man had long, curled hair pulled back in tight braids – the half-elf could have hair like that, Didi decided. The other had soft features and green eyes and a very lean body – the elf could look like him, if she used her imagination.