Day 5
October total: 6500

Still in the opening chapter. Fraught with melodrama, yeah, but I'm quite enjoying it. I'm a bit behind schedule if I want to hit 50,000 words by the 31st.

Got a "no" from Analog for "The Resort." I don't know why I keep sending them the cynical stuff. A masochistic streak, that. I'm planning on papering the bedroom with all the copies of their form-letter that I've amassed over the past year.

Ahhh, rejection feeds my angst--and what's vampire-gothic without angst? Keep 'em comin' Dell magazines.

[snip]
He tried to extend his fragmented awareness out to identify his pursuers, but succeeded only in losing his way. He should be near the cliffs, surely. The roar of waves buzzed in his ears—no, not his ears, Elisabeth’s. Where was he? He felt borrowed terror. It was overhead, back at the manor. Whose? Elisabeth’s? The hunter? He couldn’t separate, couldn’t find an objective perch from which to witness the various spheres of concern. It was a great morass that engorged him. He fell onto softness.

Is this me? he asked the patterns beneath his cheek. But I am on the shore. I am in a burning house...

The altar room. The knot-work patterns belonged to the rug that covered the floor of that sacred space. It was appropriate that the place had drawn him in his half-lucid state and that he had responded to it, irresistibly pulled by the gravity of their union. It warmed him, despite the danger. Ah, Elisabeth...

As if in answer, she was beside him. He felt her sure hands again.

“You were outside,” he said.

“Hush, now.” He saw the splintered shaft protruding from an ugly gash on the outer edge of her collarbone. She was here. Vertigo gripped him as his thoughts were momentarily super-imposed with hers. They shared the recognition of place: it was the place of the ritual of her Becoming. And later, it was the place of Union.

And it would be the last time. The impression descended on them simultaneously. They both knew it with the excruciating certainty born of the Sight. He sobbed under the sudden weight of it. She knelt before him, her eyes full, and gathered him in her arms.

It was her Becoming. He cradled her in the same way she cradled him now, when it was her struggling with fear and the darkness of her own senses, when he could comfort her and she could trust in that comfort for all eternity. It had unexpectedly suffused him with awe to see her gaze up through pain and terror with such total trust. Awe and immeasurable gratitude.
[snip]