Hello! I hope you’re doing well. I already know what I want to write for NaNoWriMo this year. It’s a best friends to lovers story. Over the weekend, I decided to write a short story about how they met. Here’s the beginning:
Melody wanted to see them again.
Last night, Daddy took her to the top of the hill just outside the village to see the stars. The moon was a sliver in the sky, and it was so dark, she had to hold his hand to make sure she didn’t trip over anything. They lay down on the dry grass and stared upward.
Most of the time in the summer, Mommy and Daddy made her go to bed before it was even dark. Melody thought it was unfair because she was never tired that early. When they closed the shutters, the room was mostly dark, but she could still see a sliver of light through the middle, teasing her.
Above her, the stars were strewn about the sky like countless pinpricks of light. She knew there were lots of numbers in the world, but she could only count to ten. Mommy and Daddy could count higher, but even they probably couldn’t count all the stars.
“Watch,” Daddy said.
“What am I looking for?” Melody whispered. She didn’t know why; they were far enough away from all the houses in the village that a normal speaking voice wouldn’t reach them, but somehow she felt like she needed to be quiet, almost as a form of reverence.
“You’ll see.”
She was in awe of all the beautiful stars in the sky. Daddy had told her that in the capital, the king had an astronomer whose only job was to watch the stars and look for signs in the sky. When she asked if she could have that job, he told her that boys usually had that job. When she told her she wanted to be the first girl, he ruffled her hair and said that maybe she would.
If she was going to be the first female astronomer to the king, she’d have to be more familiar with the night sky, right?
After Mommy and Daddy put her to bed earlier that night, she lay awake, insistent on not falling asleep. She listened to their quiet conversation in the main room, waited until they were in their beds, and glanced over at the crack of light streaming through the shutter until it dimmed into darkness. They weren’t going to check up on her. They were asleep.
She got up, put on her clothes from earlier that day, and unlocked the shutter. There was no glass in her window—only the king and nobility were wealthy enough to afford that—so she climbed through the window, careful to place her feet on the wood of the flower box instead of in the flowers. Mommy would find out—and yell at her—if she stepped on her flowers.
She looked around before heading toward the road out of town. It was a dirt path wide enough for wagons and carts. Most of the time, the path was packed hard with the footprints of horses and people from the village’s earliest beginnings, but in the middle of the summer, like today, it was dusty, although in the rainy season it could turn into a muddy mess. There weren’t any people out, which was good for her. If she was caught, any adult would send her home to her parents, and her parents would probably spank her for sneaking out.
A sniffle behind her caught her by the ears.
It wasn’t the cry of an adult. Whoever was crying was a child, just like her. She couldn’t leave another child crying in the middle of the night, so she turned towards the noise.
A boy about her age was huddled behind her family’s barn. He looked a little familiar—perhaps she saw him on one of her trips to the middle of the village with her daddy, or maybe she saw him before at the Midsummer festival.
He looked up as she approached. He had dark brown hair that curled at the ends, olive-toned skin, and dirty smudges on his face. A high contrast to her wispy blonde hair, pale skin Mommy washed before bed, and clear blue eyes.
“Are you okay?” She sat in the dust next to him, not worried about dirtying her dress since it was the one she had worn earlier that day.
You can read the rest of the story on Wattpad.