kayeaton | second draft || [written]

All right, I've got to know: Are there any publishing outfits here? In a town this size, the chances seem slim, but for all I know, there's a paper no one's mentioned to me. I've got a story or two started, and if I could see them in print, I wouldn't mind dropping my asking price to zero cents a word. It won't hurt them to sit in handwritten piles in my apartment, of course, but stories are always better when they're shared.

It's strange to think that it's May here. It was November back in Manhattan, and that meant a lot of gray skies and windy days, and some rainy ones. Thanksgiving was coming up; between Julius and I, a whole turkey is a waste of a bird, but we were going to have something nice for dinner nonetheless. And in the meanwhile, it would have been a whole lot of pounding on typewriters and talking, no doubt.

At least I left near the start of the month. Just in case time here doesn't run faster than every other world's time, he's got a few weeks to plan out a story or two about the drunken scientist or the mutant hillbillies, and from there...well, ideally, he'd show up here one of these days, too. And if not, he's written plenty on his own before; he's not about to starve to death just because I'm not there to do my share.

I do miss him, though.

((OOC: And just in case you're curious, when she says drunken scientist and mutant hillbillies, she is, uh. Completely serious.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

...Never heard of 'em.

They're, uh, vehicles--[She's never had to explain planes before, give her a sec]--here, I'll draw it.

[Kay draws an airplane as viewed from above, a bit awkwardly. There's a reason she doesn't illustrate her own stuff.] You get into this part, right? [She indicates the body of the plane.] And when everyone's strapped in, they get it going fast enough that it lifts off the ground--and then there you are, thousands of feet above the ground until you touch back down somewhere else. Would you try one, if someone offered you a ticket?

[Mildmay looks gobsmacked and a little terrified.] Fuck, no. Sounds like a great way to die screaming.

I dunno, it wasn't too bad when I went. [She's smiling again, not unkindly.] Anyway, maybe you're just not as likely to take risks you don't have to.

I mean... if I had to, I would. But it wouldn't exactly be my idea of a good time.

[Still sounds awful. Mildmay would prefer not to think about it, or what, exactly, Kay's smile means.] And them things're common where you're from?

No one used planes but the military when I was a girl, but they're common enough now. [Kay shrugs.] Beats taking a ship somewhere, anyway. It's eight or nine hours to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. It'd be a couple days if you sailed.

[This still makes no sense to Mildmay, but he figures he can deal with that, so long as he never has to set foot in one of the damned things.] Make sense, I suppose. Sounds like the sorta thing you'd pay through the nose for.

A good room in a ship isn't exactly cheap, either. [It's rather more pleasant, Kay would admit if pressed, but it's not exactly efficient enough to be cost-effective.] And if you're going all the way to another country, you might as well try and get as much time there as you can.

Yeah, you got me there. But I still wouldn't go in one just for the fuck of it or nothing.

second draft || [written]

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