The admin in my favorite forum spiked the water. Suddenly all sorts of writers are hunched over their keyboards cackling as they spout purple prose.
You know I had to join in, right?
KD knew better. She did. She just…forgot.
KD drank the water.
She knew what had happened as soon as the pink swirly clouds appeared on the edges of her vision. Desperate, she clutched at the nearest of her characters (also known as imaginary friends.)
“Jadzia! Get me out of here! Fast!”
“No.” The brunette pushed KD at the nearest keyboard. “This is my chance! Write Keen.”
“You want angst-boy?” KD stared. “I thought you were the practical one.”
“Have you looked at him?”
Both women paused for a moment of appreciation, picturing the redheaded swordsman training on the beach without his shirt as he liked to do. Both grabbed woobies for the drool, then KD shook an inebriated finger. “No, no, no. He’s not for you. He—“
“Write. Keen. Who else?”
“Taro,” KD announced, turning to the keyboard. “Taro and Rafe. That won’t mess up my plans.”
“Please,” Jadzia snorted. “Like you could keep those two PG for three lines, let alone three paragraphs.”
KD sighed and allowed that was the truth. Jadzia snatched up the nearest plot-beast and shoved it at KD. It was a plot-jackalope. Not being a writer, Jadzia did not realize the significance. KD chortled and began to type.
It was a dark and stormy night as the wind whipped wildly across the weeping moor. The moon—
“What,” Jadzia said, “Is. That?”
“Hush!”
The moon danced drunkenly, darting among torn-fleece clouds.
“The moon,” Jadzia repeated. “Dancing. Darting. Drunkenly.”
“Shh!”
Across the moor a white figure drifted, a shining beacon in the darkling night. Lightning flashed, a pale lovely face tilted to observe the sky. Lowering again, determined jewel-bright eyes settled on a dreary shadow upon the dreary moor.
“You just used dreary twice—”
“It’s for atmosphere!”
Delicate lily-white hands grasped full, flowing skirts. Silk slippers increased their pace, still seeming to trip lightly across some unseen dance floor instead—[from somewhere came the sound of retching, but a clap of thunder drowned it out]—instead of the wild, untamed moor.
“If that’s me with delicate hands and silk slippers, you are so dead.”
“You want in this or not? Keen is in that castle.”
“Then give me a horse so I can get there before the water wears off.”
KD snickered and bent over the keyboard. Over the wind came a lonely sound, the neigh of a horse. Separated from her stablemates, alone in the wild, the wretched beast came willingly to the dulcet tones of—
Jadzia casually placed a cup of mint tea at KD’s elbow.