The struggle is real, and it continues.

I’m still more than 5,000 words behind. However, I’m also still determined to keep going until the end of November, whether 50,000 looks achievable or not. That being said, I may put myself on hiatus from blogging for the rest of the month. Not sure about that yet. We’ll see.

However, I wanted to post another snippet this week:

“Hello?”

No answer. Like everyone else, Nannie had work to do during the day. He could find plenty of things to do right there in the house without ever having to pick up a shovel.

He grabbed his jetpack and the meagre tools he had access to and sat down at the kitchen table. Quickly popping off the case, he examined the components underneath. He didn’t really know what he was doing, but he had looked inside the cases of jetpacks hundreds of times. If something was missing, or damaged, odds were good that he’d recognize that. Whether or not he could fix that problem would be another questions all together.

While he worked, he re-considered Coak’s question from the previous night. Could Micah make this little community his new home? Anything was possible, but the place had a lot going against it.

The physical labour, first and foremost. When Micah woke that morning, he felt just like the dirt he had spent an entire day working out. Everything hurt. He didn’t feel like a person anymore. It was more like a bunch of pieces that were barely holding together.

Behind that would be the lack of luxuries. In times of hunger, everything tasted rich. But if he had to eat the same thing night after night, he would grow very bored, very quickly.

Coak had mentioned the acceptance of the people. That was probably the least important thing to him, but it would be easier to get what he wanted if people knew him and liked him.

The question that was in Micah’s mind was what he would lose if he decided to leave. It wasn’t meat and potatoes, and physical labour. It was Coak. And Kai. Never before did he have people in his life that he wasn’t willing to walk away from. Coak and Kai were getting dangerously close to becoming the first two. That in itself might have been the strongest reason to leave.

“Hiding from the fields?”

Micah’s head snapped around to look at the hallway, leading to more rooms, and the woman who stood there watching him. Nannie.

“I… I…,” Micah put on his best smile as his mind reached for an acceptable reason.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I won’t tell.”

Nannie was different. Obviously, her age didn’t change, but she didn’t act the same. She seemed less doting. Less innocent somehow.

She walked into the kitchen, past Micah and grabbed a bottle of dark red and a pair of glasses. She put the glasses down on the table and poured some of the dark red liquid into each.

Micah took a glass and put it up to his nose, taking in a deep sniff. The strong mark of scotch, mixed with the scents of cherry, and chocolate, and…

“Leather?”

Nannie smiled. “You’ve got a good nose. Figured you for a man who liked the finer things.”

“Odd colour.”

“That’s the cherries. I make it myself. Like to experiment with different flavours. This combination is one of my favourites.”

Micah put the glass to his mouth and tipped it just enough to let the liquor touch his lips. He swirled the scotch in his glass while he let his taste buds experience all the flavours Nannie’s scotch had to offer. It wasn’t quite the best he had ever had, but it was close.

While he was still basking in the flavour, Nannie slid the jetpack over to sit in front of her. Micah was about to explain what it was and what each component was responsible for. It was probably the first jetpack she had ever seen.

To his shock, she produced a tool kit, that had a wider range of tools that he had.

“You’ve seen a jetpack before?” Micah asked.

Nannie shook her head as she worked. “I’ve seen many, many jetpacks. Repaired a fair number of them, too. Haven’t seen many as bad off as this one, though.”

Micah took another drink of the scotch and watched Nannie as she worked.

“You’re not from here originally, are you?” he asked.

“Depends how you look at it. I was part of the group that started this little town. But, no, this isn’t where I started out. I was born in a land far from here. A place you’ve never even heard of.”

“But you did spend a little time in the crucible.”

Nannie smiled and nodded. “Very astute. I spent a number of years in the crucible.”

“Doing what?”

“Living. Every race is represented there. That included us. We were looked down on since day one. Hated. I mean, everyone hates everyone in the crucible, but we were hated the most.”

Fun fact about this post: Just about to spend the rest of my lunch break writing as many words as possible.