"Loud Mouth"

This is just a fun little piece I wrote for my profolio class, Senior Writing 401, back when I was in college. I was writing Destiny's Fate at the time, and Allurin Blood, my first novel, kept popping into my head.

Anyway, Martie was a name I stuck in. I hated writing "I" at the time, and now I love writing in first person POV. Seems like internal narration has grown on me.

"LOUD MOUTH"

The precipitation in Martie’s room fell at a rate of a paper ball every ten seconds. Though she tried to scribble down ideas and finally get her groove going, the page remained silent, lost to her in a way it never had been before. When she tried to write again, her frustration grew until she crumbled up the paper and tossed it effortlessly upon the other hundred or so covering the carpet, the bed, even the hallway ground.

Another ball. Scribble scribble. Another ball, this time at Olympic speed and strength.

“Ow!” her best friend objected, rubbing his forehead. “Mind aiming that way from now on?”

Martie sighed. “Sorry, Cale, but Kainoa’s driving me crazy again.”

The knight, dressed in a cloak and tunic, sat down on the bed, making sure to accommodate his sword and not tear her mattress. “Again? What’s it this time?”

“He just won’t talk to me,” she exasperated. “He remains stoic and silent, creeping from one scene to the next. He hasn’t exactly gripped the whole concept of ‘writing himself.’”

“Want me to get Zeal? I’m sure he can—”

“Your brother can’t control his power until book three, Cale, so stop trying to make me write him differently.”

Defeated, the knight exhaled and leaned back on his elbows. “So why won’t Kainoa talk? What’s his problem?”

Martie waved her hand. “You know Kainoa’s an assassin, right? Well, those kind of guys just don’t talk up your ear.”

“Not like bastard princes, huh?”

“Exactly. Bastard princes come with baggage, but the baggage is engaging. Kainoa, well…I like some of his package, but it just doesn’t flow as easily as yours.”

“Explain,” he commanded with a gesture of a royal. She almost thought about giving the prince her own gesture with one specific finger but decided against it.

“Well, he was kidnapped by his grandfather at the age of eight, and he kinda holds a grudge against his mother and father for never finding him.”

“He’s one of your characters, right?” Cale asked. “So, where’s the quirk?”

“Just one?” she scoffed. “He can read middle age Japanese since he grew up in the fifteenth century, and he has this long braid—”

“—which Zeal has asked me to plead with you not to give him.”

“It would be completely redundant, but I’ll make a note of it anyway.” Martie squinted and flipped through her notebook. “Where was I—oh, yeah. Kainoa’s pretty much emotional-deprived because his grandfather told him to push away his feelings, so when he finds out he has a little brother, he really doesn’t know how to handle the annoyance.”

“What’s there to handle—”

“Please, Cale. Coming from someone who is raising his sibling, you can’t tell me Zeal’s not a handful.”

“Depends,” the prince objected with a soft smile. “What are you making him do in book two?”

Martie snapped shut her book. “Oh, no. You are not looking at my notes until later. There is no way you can convince me to stop that venture to Sheirsha.”

“Damn.” Cale ruffled his long locks and looked up at the ceiling, where a poster of Nickelback hung. “You still have yet to tell me his quirk.”

It was this way Martie came to hate her characters. “Fine. He’s Destiny, okay? He’s the physical manifestation of it.”

The prince nodded thoughtfully. “Huh. You really like the difficult ones, don’t you?”

“It’s what I live to write, my friend, as you should know. By the way, in book two, you meet your father.”

Shooting forward, Cale spurted, “What! But—But—”

“Yeah, I think it’ll work. Oh, and Quin—not really who you think he is. Should really be wary of him.”

“But he’s my uncle!”

“Yeah, that’s what he wants you to think.”

“That’s what you want me to think,” he corrected.

“True, true, but at least you know what’s going on—for the most part. Kainoa—not so much. He’s been lied to since he was born by the very people who love him. He really has no idea who he is, and his only biological relatives either use him or ignore him. You, at least, aren’t ignored.”

“No, you’re right. You just had my father leave me in the mortal realm and stick me right in the middle of a war between angels and demons. No, you’re right; my life is so much easier.” He snorted. “Wuss.”

Martie never even blinked as the dagger whirled through the air and snagged Cale in the chest. With a grunt and a grimace, the bastard prince fell back on the bed—dead.

Now, Martie did blink and whirled in her seat to the boy with long raven hair and emerald green eyes. He hid in the corner where the sun’s rays failed to touch and unlike Cale, wore the contemporary garb of a teenage boy.

Martie smiled. “You’re right. He was too loud. Sorry about that.”

Kainoa bowed, and Martie went back to writing. For the first time in more than a year, she heard the soft voice of her assassin.

THE END