Pearls

I stood in silence, watching him as he retrieved a box from the other side of the room and returned to me and placed it in my hands. “A gift for you,” he declared with a whisper that once again made me shiver—it was as if his voice was made of ice.

I looked at him suspiciously for a moment before I looked down at the velvet box in my hands. Slowly lifting the top, I gasped as I looked down at the string of black pearls, strung into a necklace.

Looking back up at him, I must have had quite an amusing look on my face because he threw his head back and laughed at me. “I like to keep you on your toes,” he joked as he lifted the necklace from its box. “For you, my dear.”

I looked at the gift in his hands, then back up at him. We were one step away from being enemies and nowhere near close enough to be considered friends. Gift giving was not in our nature and I didn’t trust him.

He could either sense my trepidation or simply read my thoughts (neither would have surprised me at that moment). He smiled, entertained by me, I guess. “You’ll want to think about wearing this,” he assured me.

“Why?”

“It will help to keep you alive.” Simple. But effective.

I didn’t want to trust him but I was reminded of how he healed me after the Forsaken attack. If he wished me ill, he would have just left me out there with them, easily forgotten as if I never existed. But he didn’t. He came after me. For some strange reason he cared about this whole thing—this bet.

Slowly—not liking the idea of taking my eyes off of him for even a second—I turned my back to him. I could sense his smile as his fingers gently brushed against my neck, his touch leaving an icy trail along my skin. He collected my long auburn hair in his hand and softly placed it over my shoulder, careful not to pull a single hair. His cold hands unclasped the hook of the pearl necklace and he slowly wrapped it around my neck, locking it into place. His hands remained on my shoulders for a moment longer than needed, making the hair on my arms stand on end.

“It’s beautiful,” I admitted to him as I quickly turned back around—that was all the trust I had within me for the day. “But what exactly will it do?”

“You know how they say a cat has nine lives?”

“Yes.” I nodded my head not sure where this was going or how it connected with my question.

“Well, think of these as your nine lives… Though I think you’ll need more than just nine,” he explained. “If you ever find yourself in a mess and something happens to you, one of these,” he tapped a pearl, “will absorb the damage. Where you would have died, a pearl will vanish.”

“Whoa,” I whispered, looking down at the mundane little pearls in awe. He was right—I should think about wearing these little guys.

“Whoa, indeed,” he echoed, his eyes continuing to watch me intently. “The Betwixt is a dangerous place, Rebecca. I can’t have you dying on me anytime soon. If you do, your damn angel will kill me.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

And with that, NaNoWriMo has officially begun! This month will be crazy, busy, and super hectic on top of work and NaNo and life just having a way of getting into trouble.

 

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month where you have 30 days to write 50,000 words and for the 6th year in a row, I am going to attempt it... though this is my first time trying to do it with a full time job and a husband! My story is about a girl named Becks who is caught in the middle of a bet between her guardian angel and the god of death. Here, Lord Death gives her a sort of insurance policy for protection in the Betwixt.

 

Where I tried to keep the posts spooky and scary in October in honor of Halloween, this month, most of (if not all of) my posts will be bits of writing from throughout the day. Enjoy! And happy writing to my fellow NaNoers.

 

a.r.w.