This week, as a part of Neil Gaiman‘s Masterclass on The Art of Storytelling, I was challenged to write a short story in a single sitting. The instructions were simple: “You’re not allowed to go away from the project until you have completed a draft.” The idea is to prevent fear from getting in the way of the words on the page. This is my unedited* draft. I hope you enjoy it! – V

*I did correct some spelling errors, and added the last two sentences after the fact.

The Girl Who Loved Books

Once upon a time there was a girl who loved books. She would read all day and late into the night until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore.

Her mother scolded her, saying, “You better be careful or you’ll get stuck in one of your stories.”

But the girl paid her no mind, and continued to read as much as she could.

One night, the girl was so deeply engrossed in a book, that she read long past her bedtime. She would finish a chapter, and start another, promising herself that it would be the last one.

It was a wonderful story about dragons, and unicorns, and warrior princesses who carried grand swords.

The girl felt her eyes becoming heavy, and she began to blink, and nod her head, until she involuntarily bowed her forehead deep into the book with her nose touching the spine.

When she opened her eyes, she was no longer in her bedroom, but on a great open plain with a heavy fog listing about making it difficult to see further than a few feet in front of her. She called out, “Hullo?”

No voice responded, but she could feel the ground beneath her feet beginning to quake. And then she heard what sounded a bit like thunder, or ocean waves on a stormy day at the beach. But there was another sound too. A chorus of voices, all singing. No, it wasn’t quite like singing. It was more like yodeling or shouting, or some eerie version of the two.

And then she saw them: On either side of her was a great army on horseback. They were all women, holding their weapons to the sky, each side making their great battle cry. The girl realized that she would soon be trampled in the middle of this great battle and she squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the painful blow of hooves and metal to reach her. Instead, her stomach lurched as she was whisked into the air, by a pair of humongous raptor-like claws.

When she opened her eyes, she could see the ground getting further and further away from her feet, and she looked up to see a great dragon was grasping her firmly in his talons. Before she could protest, the great serpent said, “You best be careful with that lot, my dear. They would have crushed you without a second thought.”

The girl was about to thank the dragon for rescuing her when he continued, “They would have spoilt my dinner, and we can’t be having that, can we?”

Horrified, the girl began to thrash against the dragon’s clutches, kicking and wiggling with all her might. The dragon chuckled, “It will take a little bit more than that, my dear.”

And a little bit more is precisely what he got, for right as he said those words, a piercing light began shining so brightly that both the girl and the dragon struggled to see, and the dragon became disoriented, making haste to land as quickly as possible.

As soon as the girl felt the ground beneath her feet, she began running, blindly in the silver-white light that still shrouded everything around her. She only made it a few feet before she ran, with a crash, into the softest, whitest, tree she had ever seen before. The impact knocked her back onto the ground, and when she looked up, she was gazing into the gentle amethyst eyes of a unicorn.

Before the girl could say a word, she realized that the dragon was still behind her, and felt his smoky hot breath on her back. The unicorn stepped forward between the girl and the dragon and said, “You dare to hurt this child in my presence?”

The dragon twisted, uncomfortably and replied, “I didn’t realize you were here.”

“I am always here,” The wise unicorn said.

The dragon puffed a great swath of smoke out of his nostrils and frowned, but did not say anything.

“You may go now,” the Unicorn said. “You will not find your dinner here.”

The girl cowered behind the Unicorn as she felt the great beats of the dragon wings, forcing impressive gusts of wind down upon her tiny body. Then the Unicorn turned to her.

“It’s time for you to go home now, too.”

The girl looked up at the Unicorn and asked, “But how?”

The Unicorn bowed her great horn down, and the same blinding light that had brought the dragon to the ground, and made the world look white, began to emanate out of the tip. The light caused the girl to squint and try to cover her eyes, but the Unicorn said, “Follow the light.”

And so the girl stopped squinting and looked straight at the Unicorn’s horn, focusing on the bright waves of silvery light streaming towards her. The Unicorn moved toward the girl and touched the tip of her horn to the forehead of the girl, and the light seemed to be all around her. It was so intense that the girl couldn’t bear to keep her eyes open a moment longer, and so she blinked.

When she opened her eyes again, she was still wrapped in the bright light and she couldn’t quite see what was around her. She blinked a few more times, and raised her head, off of the book that she had used as her pillow, and looked to the beam of sunlight that was streaming in her window.

She looked away from the bright light and back to her book, to see a beautiful illustration of a unicorn gazing back at her. The girl touched the page and smiled.

Her mother had been right. And she was glad.

The End

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