So before I go on, let it be known that this is the biggest work I've ever undertaken. I know exactly where this story is going and while it's going to go slow because of time constraints, I will be updating it. TW: suicide, death.
Victoria Anne Ingle wants to be a normal girl. She wants to be a kind, sweet, stereotypically feminine girl who her mother will love - but not truly. Her inner nature is one of kindness and agency to justice, but she's got no interest in most typically girlish things, and being bisexual, she faces indirect hatred from her mother directed at the LGBT community on a daily basis. Her three friends help where they can, but no one besides her family knows what really goes on behind the locked doors of her home.
Maladie Morton wants to feel like his art makes a difference - and as someone who can fill up a small venue with his shows, perhaps it does. But if it does, it is difficult for him to see through his alcohol and drug problems, and he doesn't want to view reality through clear lenses anyway. Throughout his life, he has felt abandoned and betrayed by society and his peers, and it has left him with a feeling of discontent and distance from society and humanity. With no true friends and very few fake friends, he has nothing to reconnect him to his culture or Earthly life... and he would not be upset to lose it, most days.
Together, the two make a wild, unpredictable, and somewhat violent team; both have dues they want the world to repay, but while one is a cold, vengeful soul who sees life and death as concrete examples of worldly justice and cares little for objective morality, the other is a wiser sort with a better grasp on morality and decent behaviour.
Follow their adventure as they discover loss, pain, the secrets of the divinity, and the truth of justice while they pursue a firebrand of a man known in the spirit world only as the Dragon.
Geoff and Naomi are dead, and they're depressed, but when Geoff's cat Bernie dies as well, they embark on a wild journey to find it in the underworld.
*****
When Geoff dies, alongside his girlfriend Naomi, they end up sharing an apartment in the Underworld as skeletons. But after a few years, Geoff starts suffering a mid-death crisis. What's the purpose of going through the motions as a skeleton if you can't really live? Then he gets word that his cat, Bernie, just died and he can collect him and bring him home! Geoff and Naomi hurry to get Bernie only to discover that, due to a clerical error, their cat has been lost. With the hunt for Bernie giving new purpose to Geoff's un-life, he and Naomi begin a quest to get back their cat. Battling skeleton pirates, climbing the sky ladder and facing off against the villain who took Bernie, Geoff is determined to find his purpose - or die a second time trying!
[[2018 Wattys Winner - The Originals]]
[[word count: 30,000-40,000 words]]