Sing Me a Song - Little Women

Prologue - Five Sisters

Concord, Massachusetts - 1861

"Ugh Jo, put out that candle! It's the middle of the night!" groaned Amy from across the room. 

"Sorry, sorry. It's just that I had a brilliant idea and had to get it down." 

"Can't you wait until morning?"

"No I don't want to risk forgetting it."

"It's to do with your writing, you won't forget."

"I've forgotten before, and there's nothing more frustrating! I'm almost done, I promise."

"UGH!" Amy groaned again, stuffing her pillow over her face to try and block out the flicker of candlelight across their walls. 

"Are you done yet?" she asked about five minutes later. She had rolled over in bed, pulling the blankets over her face.  

"Almost. You can't rush this."

"I'll tell Marmee."

"Amy stop being so fussy. If you woke up in the middle of the night to paint something so you wouldn't forget I wouldn't be upset."

"Liar!"

"Shh," came Beth's soft voice from the third  bed.  "Or you'll wake the others.  Amy, just close your eyes and try to go back to sleep."

"How am I supposed to get any sleep with that light and the awful scratching of pen on paper?" Amy buried her face in her hands. 

"What's all the racket about?" The girls turned to see their two eldest sisters, who shared the room next door, standing in the doorway of the younger sisters' bedroom.

"Jo woke me up with her writing," Amy complained. She was then quick to add, "Again."

"Oh quit whining, Amy," responded Jo, not looking up from the page on which she was scrawling something, almost frantically.

"You had another midnight spark of inspiration, Jo?" said Kate, smiling knowingly.  Once her sister was inspired, there was no stopping her. Nothing came between Jo March and her writing, nothing. 

"Yes!" Finally Jo looked up from the page, her eyes shining with creativity. 

"Maybe you should head up to the attic, so Amy and Beth can get some sleep," Meg gently suggested.

"Thank you!" cried Amy. 

"Yes, I think I will." Jo gathered her pile of papers and pen.  "It's too distracting here anyway."

"We're  distracting?" Amy called, but Jo was already on her way up to the attic.  "Finally!" Amy fell back against her pillows. Meg, Kate, and Beth chuckled. And with that, the four remaining sisters returned to bed. 

In the morning, Jo's bed was still empty, in the same state she had left it during the night. But her sisters knew where to find her.

She had fallen asleep on the old couch up in the attic, her pen and papers having fallen to the floor around her, surrounding her, the beginnings of no doubt something great. 

"Wrote herself to sleep once again," said Meg with a fond smile, gently placing a blanket over her sleeping sister and brushing Jo's wild hair out of her face with gentle fingers.  "Rest well, my sweet girl.  I wish you many sweet dreams filled with stories."

"I wonder what she was writing about," said Amy.  "That kept her - and us - up in the night." She crouched down to retrieve the loose pages filled with notes.

"Amy, no!" cried Beth.  "You know Jo's rules: no reading her writing without her permission." 

"It's just a bunch of scribbles, it's hardly writing." Amy let go of the pages, letting them float back down to the floorboards at their feet. 

"Don't tell Jo that."

"You know it's the makings of something great."

"Come on, let's get some breakfast. Leave her to rest." Kate led the others down the stairs.  Time to start the day.

(Hello and welcome to my 'Little Women' story! :) Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! :))