Keeping Up with #NaNoWriMo

Hello, from #NaNoWriMo land!

Today, I’m featuring a bit of my work in progress Between Lake and Tent Stakes.

 

The frosty air clung about the walls of the two person tent. Its yellow dome blended into the autumn’s vast color palate of reds, gold, oranges. The thick colorful foliage cocooned the tent in a private forest, lush and lovely. Faint whispers of the wind aroused the leaves upon the ground. Stirring them up into a hot and wild ecstasy, then allowing the leaves to fall back down upon the softness of the earth, exhausted and spent.

The smell of wood smoke and rumblings of other campers jolted Lula awake. She never meant for this to happen. She lay on her back facing the tent’s ceiling. Tangled up in a nylon blue nightie that she bought on clearance at Sears, she breathed in the cool air and exhaled out her mounting frustration and growing fear. The soft snoring of the body next her continued unabated. Lula’s mind raced trying to plan a way of escape, or better, a way for her all-knowing father not to find out. Donald Eugene Klass was neither cruel or loving. He was simply a businessman who happened to love Dorjan Lake more than any familial relation. Towering over six foot, Donald demanded respect from his family and his employees. His dark black eyes pierced those who crossed him or softened when he needed to be more tender. The tender moments usually occurred with campers or his wife, Lillian. Lula rarely saw the kind glances of affection from her father. With Lula, he was grim and self-absorbed, and worse still, overly protective.

Each morning, her father woke up, dressed, and made his way to the campground office. He made coffee, checked the sites with patrons, then sat down to read the newspaper. This took an hour of his time, but it was more likely he just wanted to finish the coffee he had made. Donald didn’t like wasting anything. Lula knew that she didn’t have long before he would make his rounds of the campground. Now, he didn’t physically wake up any campers, but neither would he approve of her dressed in a slip of a nightgown scampering away from a tent. She believed her father could sense her presence through its thin walls. Perhaps, even rewind and play back the night before. Lula rolled out of the arms of her one night lover. Quickly, she pulled on the old pair of weather blue corduroy pants, flannel shirt, and old tattered coat.

“Where you going?” yawned her sleepy bedfellow. Wyatt turned to face Lula. Deep gray green eyes, olive skin, and a bright smile greeted her.

“Home, to change,” whispered Lula convinced her father was standing nearby.

“The sun’s just up. Stay,” his only pleading. The richness of his baritone voice and gravelly way sleep affected its pitch stopped Lula from her dressing. Slowly, his hands reached around her waist and gently pulling her down again. The clothes didn’t take long to remove.

, , , , ,