I’m having a really hard time believing that November only consisted of one month this year, I feel as though it’s been an easy six since we lost the van in Centralia. Between that moment and this there have been fevers and flus, birthdays and doctor’s appointments, holidays and anti-depressant debates, picture taking and sunshine and gray days and South Park marathons and weaved betwixt and between them all, the writing, writing, writing. 50,000 words of a potential novel, with 34,643 of them written in the last 8 days because clearly, I am insane.

I owe my thanks to the usual crowd, most of you know who you are. But there have been a few standouts this month – what I might term angels if I were inclined that way. Which I’m not, not really, but it’s as nice a way to describe them as any and if nothing else it might piss off Frank to know that I’ve counted him as such. Ronnie, too. Krista, of course, and Lisa as well.

Obviously I owe everything and more to my amazing husband and kids – Shane who always carries my weight when I don’t think I can keep going, my two boys full of mischief and love, and my brown eyed girl, worrying over me always. My writing group, the Amorphous Group Not Participating in Competitive Sports (AGNPCS for short and “aging pecs,” affectionately and a bit nonsensically), Kristy, Mike and secret ingredient Renee, who have made this month both magical and bearable. And finally, an extra special thanks to Rebecca Anderson, without whose support I might not have made it to and through November. (And I mean that in every single way except the literal, Beck.)

I don’t know yet if this story is doomed to recede into the shadows like most of those that came before it. For what it’s worth, I hope not. I feel like I’ve only just gotten started with it. And then there are the goblins, which no one expected, least of all me. So how could I let it alone now? But for the time being, one last (remember it’s rough!) excerpt.

A tickle started at the roots of his whiskers as he made his way along the dark passageway. His nose wrinkled compulsively from the smell that seemed to emanate from everywhere at once down here. It wasn’t exactly a bad smell so much as one that was off. Foreign in the original sense of the word. Alien, in the same way. It was a smell that told you that you didn’t belong here, or perhaps that here didn’t belong with you, and either way you’ll want to conduct your business quickly and then move along home. Which was precisely his intent today.

It wasn’t that he had a bad boss. Not unfair, not really, nor was he particularly demanding, in the main. He was, though, utterly terrifying, and that was the part that made Mr. Nab’s whiskers tickle every time he had to deliver a message to his Lord and Master. Not that his boss had ever shot the messenger, but he always looked as though he could, or might at any moment, probably the very next time.

Nab came upon a puddle in the middle of his path and he paused for a moment and glared, taking the obstacle a bit personally. He shuffled his feet delicately around the edge of it, forced to scrape himself along the passage wall. Once past he quickened his step slightly, concerned about delay, even as he focused his eyes warily ahead, trying to pierce the dim enough to avoid trodding directly into the next bit of sludge. Sure enough, at the faster pace he almost didn’t see it in time, hopped and skipped and nearly pirouetted his way across in an effort to keep his shoes dry and unmucked. Especially unmucked. He brushed absently at the back of his suit jacket, then, and followed it with a nervous rubbing of his tickly chin whiskers.

Mr. Nab tried not to think of how it had once been, when he and his Master had lived in the World nearly full time, in a house full of magic and secret passage ways and no otherworldly smell. Where crossroads met and his Master had been happy for a time. Mr. Nab knew that he was a terrible sentimentalist, but he couldn’t help but view that whole time period as though it were some kind of movie dream sequence, the days all lit by the colored light that comes in through a stained glass window imported from Austria, especially.

But the tender light of what was will often increase the clammy darkness of today, so Mr. Nab was inclined not to dwell. Particularly when there was a job to do, regardless of how unpleasant it might be. Mr. Nab was meticulous and precise, which, he suspected, was exactly why he’d not yet been shot. Not yet.

Despite his impeccable comportment, his tickly whiskers made him jumpier than usual, and he nearly gasped aloud to come around the corner to find his boss before him, standing placidly in the dank passageway, looking expectant.

“I’ve been waiting, Mr. Nab,” he spoke mildly, the tips of his voice colored lightly by some long ago Gaelic connection up in the World. Long before Mr. Nab’s time, and Mr. Nab didn’t dare to ask specifics of his Master’s origins. As far as Mr. Nab knew or even cared to know his boss had existed for as long as Existence. It had little bearing on how he took his tea today.

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Nab twitched and bowed and resisted scratching at his whiskers. “Terribly sorry, sir. I wasn’t sure whether you were East or West today.”

This was as close as Mr. Nab would ever get to either an excuse or a reprimand to his boss. The truth of the matter was that the Master liked to wander when he wasn’t working, and in either case could be found nearly anywhere except the place that you’d found him the last time. Mr. Nab had a good instinct for this generally, which was another probable reason that he hadn’t been shot, but he never did consider it altogether fair of his boss. Not that he would judge his boss, of course. It wasn’t his place.

His whiskers tickled a protest of even this small show of insubordination, but the face of his boss didn’t change, remained pointed in his direction and expectant.

Mr. Nab reached into the inside pocket of his dusty suit jacket and withdrew a thick cream envelope with one word engraved on the front. His boss took it from him without expression, and then turned away. It was only after he’d disappeared from sight that his voice came back from out of the gloom, seemingly whispered into Mr. Nab’s ear.

“That will be all, Mr. Nab.”

Mr. Nab’s chin whiskers tickled and twitched and he turned and moved, slower than he wanted to move, back the way he had come. The entire way his vertebrae vibrated in protest of its terrible vulnerability, but he was a gentleman of a certain position, he was not going to cower or snivel or even check the darkness behind him compulsively. It made no matter that his boss had no reaction to the message, not that he could see. It made no matter that not being able to see a reaction, he had no way of knowing whether the news was bad or good or nothing at all. It wasn’t his business. He walked with his chin up and tickling.

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