The Fate of Destiny (Fates #1) by Danielle Bourdon Read Free Book Online Page A

ears.

    . . .

    Shut away in her bedroom, lost in the current story, Farris was oblivious to anything but the events pouring out from the end of her pen. This particular character (as she thought of it), had a roller coaster youth that transferred over into his young adult life. Leonard Augustus Moon wore braces, loved jelly beans, broke his wrist riding a skateboard, had a severe case of chicken pox and owned a pet turtle named Scooter. He was shy, ambivalent, nosy and secretly mischievous. In his teens he fell for the most popular girl in school (who didn't know he even existed), tumbled off the stage during his debut in Macbeth, caught his hair on fire and failed his driving test twice.
    Farris was never happier than right now, filling out all the fantastic details of her creations. She loved the whole process, loved the energy that flowed seamlessly through her when she wrote.
    Some day she would do this for a living.
    Grinning down at the crinkly parchment page, she finished the last sentence and straightened her back. She got so caught up in writing that often her shoulders and neck cramped under the strain. Setting down her pen, she traced her fingertips over the slightly yellow edges of the paper, re-reading Leonard's adventures. His 'story' would be ten or twelve pages long by the time she was done.
    Occasionally, she started a characters antics mid-way through their life, instead of from birth. It almost felt like she was picking up from where someone else left off, because those stories flowed as easily as the ones she started from scratch. Now and then, she fished back through her stacks and pulled out a finished story to change something critical in the middle.
    Why this happened, she didn't know. Farris just understood she needed to make the changes, and so she did. Speaking of which, there was a story she needed to fix.
    Standing up on her bed (there was no desk in the small bedroom), she turned around to face the tier of shelves she'd erected on the walls to hold the stacks of paper. Farris knew exactly which shelf, which stack and what color paper clip held the story she needed together.
    If the shelves ever fell, it would brain her into her next life. Finding the green paper clip in the fourth stack on the third shelf, she eased it free of the rest.
    So many papers. It was like Pick-Up-Sticks to take one in the middle out and not topple the rest.
    Liberating it, she crossed her ankles and twisted around, falling into an Indian style sit. For sleep, she'd changed into her favorite crushed velvet lounge pants and pull over shirt, a rare purchase from Victoria's Secret, her ultimate shopping destination. Every time she had a surge in tips, had paid all her bills and tucked away fifty bucks for gas, she hit up the store for something new.
    In every day life she was a jeans and tee-shirt girl with a yen for flowery dresses on hot summer days. But at night she was all about her crushed velvet loungers when the weather turned crisp.
    Gathering Leonard's story together, she paper-clipped it together (turquoise for old Leonard boy) and pulled off the green for the next.
    Before she could pick up her pen, she caught a faint whiff of smoke. Farris paused and sat straighter. She took another deep breath.
    The scent of smoke lingered.
    Immediately she thought perhaps the lightning from earlier had caused a fire nearby and it had spread into Farmer Henson's fields. She scrambled off the bed and ran to her window. Because her bedroom was at the back of the loft, all she saw when she looked outside were the fields and the treeline.
    No fire anywhere.
    Except the smell was much stronger.
    Leaning out her window, she glanced up at the eaves. Over the top of the loft, she saw wisps of smoke.
    Gasping, she yanked back into the bedroom, crab-hop-crawled across the bed, and ran to open the door.
    “ BEELAH! GET UP!” The hallway was so short that she arrived in the living room in time to see Bee, who was sleeping on the couch,