Short Story - Fantasy - The Emerald of Secrets, Pt. 4

Now, we have finally gotten to my creative writing class, senior year of high school. We had to write a fantasy story, so I decided to adapt The Emerald of Secrets idea once again.

Due to the word count requirements, I start the story after Trish and Christy have already met. Christy was a little annoyed at Trish's enthusiasm and didn't really want to be her friend, but Trish asked if she could show Christy around the town over the weekend, and Christy agreed.

As Trish leads Christy to the gardens, the girls notice that around the neighborhood, fences and doors aren't locking, there are several car crashes, safety breaks on cars aren't working, and more.

When they reach the gardens, it's clear that Christy and Trish aren't having the bonding experience Trish wanted, but there's suddenly a bright light, and a fairy appears. She looks the same as Natalie was described in previous drafts, but she's now called "Nyana." Nyana explains a similar tale as previous drafts, this time she was banished for losing her gemstone, which was the stone of protection. Losing it caused all of the safety in the world to disappear, which explains everything else in the previous paragraph.

The three of them follow a trail of goo and soon meet a bunch of creatures called darklings, which consist of elves, goblins, trolls, fairies, and gnomes who are corrupted by dark magic. Their leader is a dark elf called Dethrad, which is simultaneously an epic villain name and a really corny one. Dethrad and Nyana get into a fight, Nyana gets her stone back and restores the damage.

Now, this was already well over the word count limit, and it's already rushed as hell. I spent about a week trying to trim it down, and nothing was working to make it remotely compelling.

Irritated, two days before the due date, I had no idea what to do. Christy and Trish's relationship wasn't developed at all and they just stood there.

That's when it clicked. And two days before the due date, I started over.

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