•••

Peneloper, like the rest of you, drives a metaphorical car, and for seventeen years, she's been rambling down a very straight path. And like you, she is prone to mistakes - taking a curve to fast, making a wrong turn, having to change out the occasional flat tire - but at the end of the day, there is the sense that all this driving has a purpose. That the destination will ultimately be worth it.

Now imagine a Heavensley shaped roadblock. He causes you to travel along a road you never have, a road, that until he came along, never existed.

So it's no surprise that Peneloper feels like the car she'd been driving competently for so long has careened off a cliff. She wishes for normalcy, a return to the familiar. A road more traveled, not less. I find her a hopeful sort, much like her father.

That Saturday starts like any other, Peneloper too bleary-eyed to notice her notebook lying on her floor, discarded like incomplete homework or dirty socks. Yawning, she stumbles through the typical genre cliches of an early morning's routine. She monologues in front of the mirror, narrating the shape of her body, and fullness of lip in excruciating detail. She laments her wardrobe choice, a second, third, and fourth time, settling on the eighteenth selection which also happened to be the second outfit she tried on. Her alarm clock begins to blare, an hour into her routine, which is an hour too late, but I've always been of the mind to reward effort.

So brava, alarm clock.

Peneloper eats a traditional Auttsley family breakfast - a meal of many strange textures. The toast is burnt, the eggs goopy and uncooked, however, their edges are charred. The juice is pulpy, though I can find no literature on grapes and their 'pulpy' nature.

Overall, the meal is bland and forgettable. But what is not those things, however, and yet still consists of an equally intriguing mix of textures is what happens next, when Peneloper makes a horrendous discovery.

•Wake Up Call•

Peneloper returned to her room to a most grievous sight: her beloved notebook lying on the floor, its pages splayed, corners folded and torn, a spine too long spent bent that had, undoubtedly compromised its strength, stretch, and longevity. She gasped, something she did not take lightly, and picked up the dear the way a doctor would grab someone's arm when setting a fracture.

As if this scene, so early in the morning, wasn't enough to spoil the whole of her Saturday, it got worse, unbelievably worse. The pages the book had been opened to were blank.
Now, blank pages were often the case for works-in-progress as a great deal of authors liked to write at their leisure, leaving stories to manifest over months or years. But Peneloper was a voracious writer, doing so whenever she could, and especially at those times she shouldn't, school the number one culprit in this instance, and though some of her notebook had yet to be maimed by her scratch, these pages had been written on. She'd been certain.

Brain begging her fingers to work faster than they could, Peneloper worked her way to the beginning of her notebook, breath held. Her father's writing was there. She exhaled, ran a finger over his handwriting, felt her heart begin to steady. She turned the page. Nothing.

Peneloper's stomach bottomed out. She didn't often speak to herself, as she could only do one thing at a time proficiently and found she much preferred the feeling of words leaving her mouth to hearing them said aloud, but since the situation was dire, and her panic palpable, she exclaimed, "Where's my story gone?"

More pages flew by in a torrent of white. No words or drop of ink. No mention of Stormholden, young and full of hope, older - angsty and brooding and quick to rage. He and Matilda together in the forest, the war, the plague. The heartbreaking moment Ire had given up his beloved, believing himself too lowly to take her hand, her subsequent wedding, the seas, the Scarlet Reef and the werewolves of Lucifer's Reach.

Where had it all gone?

A queasiness akin to an upset stomach brought on by the poor decision to eat Mother Auttsley's raw, rubbery eggs erupted in her stomach. Bile rose to the back of her throat. She gritted her teeth, bit down on her cheek, tried to remain calm and alert in this moment.

There must be a reason. And like a matchstick struck along concrete - one ignited in her mind. The blob. The ghoulish, shadow-slop from yesterday's meeting with Principal Gale. Surely that was her culprit, the thief of all her lovingly, painstakingly crafted words.

"Nells!" A knock accompanied the youngest Auttsley's beck and call. "Nells! What happened?"

Peneloper inhaled sharply. "What do you mean, 'what happened'?"

"Nell, let me in." Carmichelle's annoyed tapping, dampened by a pair of slippers, shuffled beyond Peneloper's door. She rose, brushed herself off, straightened her nightshirt, though why, she didn't quite understand - nightshirts were, by their very thread count, innately wrinkled and ignored all plucks, pleas and tugs for smoothness that were hefted upon them.

She opened the door, and Carmichelle, a whirlwind of light pink cotton, vanilla lotion, and brown hair pinned up and twisted around small, head appropriate sized water noodles to provide her already curly hair with ample bounce and body, flew into her room and landed on her bed.

The bed, angered by this new, unwanted guest, reared up and stuck a spring in the youngest Auttsley's thigh. She yelped. "Jesus, Nel," Carmichelle said, rubbing at her flesh. "How do you sleep on this thing?"

Peneloper didn't respond. She reeled, unable to get her head wrapped around the water noodle of truth. All two hundred of her hand-written pages vanished. This was by far, the worst travesty to befall her since her father's funeral had brought about a finality even she couldn't write away.

Carmichelle swung her legs, phone in her hand. She frantically swiped at the screen, grimacing. "You probably haven't seen it since you just got up," she raised her phone so Peneloper could make out the screen. "But look! All of the Cap's story is missing!"

Peneloper couldn't believe it, though she should have believed it with great ease. The words had left her page, why would a mobile phone and free writing app be any different? "That's absurd, Carma. I haven't touched at the app since Thursday."

In response, Carmichelle thrust her phone forward. Lo and behold, Peneloper's story, Storm Bound, was no longer tacked to her profile. "Did you return it to your drafts?" Peneloper shook her head. Carmichelle tapped her chin. "Could someone have hacked your account or reported you to an admin?"

She shook her head more fervently than before. "My password is a mix of twenty randomized letters and numbers, which, due to its difficulty, I often find myself forgetting and resetting it, choosing another handful of letters and numbers at whim."

Carmichelle wilted on Peneloper's bed, overtaken by a drought of hope.

"And the story contains nothing that's in violation to Fic Hub's terms of agreement. Therefore, it should be preposterous-"

"But it's not," Carmichelle completed. She balked in the way only younger siblings could manage - pouty lips, fattened cheeks, hunched shoulders heavy with the weight of a world who had shown them nothing but contempt, disagreeability, and defeat.

Peneloper seated herself beside Carmichelle and did something she hadn't done with Carmichelle's permission in years - she pulled her younger sister into a side hug. Miraculously, Carma didn't complain. "It's probably just a glitch, Car. I'll place a ticket and before you know it, the story will be back."

Carmichelle perked up. "As if by magic?"

Peneloper rubbed her sister's back. "Sure." She grabbed Car's shoulders and shook her. Carmichelle scowled, though it wasn't without its pleasantness. "After all, there has to be magic in the world, if it's allowed you to go five minutes without needing to check your phone messages and," she leaned in hands raised, fingers wriggling, "allowed your older sister to bring you into a hug." Peneloper altered her voice so it sounded as spooky as the narrator of one of Carmichelle's favorite horror anthology flicks.

As if with the assistance of milk of magnesia, Carmichelle's system cleared of whatever sisterly affection she'd found buried in her misery and rose to her feet, pocketing her phone in her nightdress pocket. "You're the worst."

Peneloper smiled. "Be sure to tell Paisley, Parris, and Pom of our interaction, in full. And don't you dare think of omitting our embrace. I'm sure it'll be the best tidbit of gossip they've heard in a while. There's nothing worse than two sisters' admiration and love for one another."

Carmichelle grunted and swept the hair from behind her hair, so it covered her face as she turned to leave. "Love you, too," she said shyly, closing the door behind her.

Unintentional as it most certainly was, Carmichelle's appearance had given Peneloper a distraction she desperately needed. But the moment exhausted, Peneloper tossed aside her slippers and threw on her rattiest pair of sneakers.

She needed to see Crispen, the reason of their meeting her missing story, its connection with the blob, and what exactly was going on. She would voice all these questions - or think them, as Mr. Heavensley had no problem overhearing whatever danced around in her head. By god, she could even use her aura and flash him her questions in that manner, though, having no knowledge of how auras worked, this option would be the hardest to bring to fruition.

Peneloper grabbed a hoodie, the same peeling grey one from yesterday, and though it was still wet, it would suffice. She slung it over her head and pulled her arms through the sleeves. Pleased with her attire, though that was a low bar an ant could vault, Peneloper snatched her notebook off the bed and turned to leave.

You must know what's coming here. Peneloper has every intention of leaving, so it goes without saying that something must keep her where she is. A tap came upon her window.

Crispen Heavensley. He'd heard her inner turmoil and had flown to see her on the first wind he could wrangle. Surely, one main character helped another. Peneloper turned and there, perched on her window ledge, a huge, fat blackbird pecked her window.

"Do open up, Miss Auttsley," the bird said, despite everything inside Peneloper screaming that birds did not, in fact, talk. They had no lips, no prior knowledge of the language, they didn't attain degrees in linguistics or lug around lexicons.

The bird ruffled its feathers. "It's quite frigid out here, I'm afraid. Your human falls are proving most debilitating to my delicate disposition. Besides," it gave a stretch of its wing, "My visit requires utmost urgency. Much as I hate raising alarm, time, young Auttsley, is not on our side."