Nanoday #21 — Heart of Clouds — how to finish at 10,000 — ! — xxoo!

10,000.

the magic number — my hands hurt from typing! (that was yesterday) — this morning after 700+ words I will be there — hard to believe.  These are the last pages of the book.

If I did this one?  I can do others.  I just won’t ever go past about 2,000 a day — that’s enough!

3050? — your hands! OMG.

xxoo!

back later

boy, I can’t really even believe I have written this book but I have and I’m almost done, too..

excerpt! (Teenie and Devlin at the beach!)

“When I saw you crying that day I knew you had a heart,” he said.  “Because only people who have hearts cry.”
“Do you know what happened that day, Dev?”
“I was looking at the little journal my dad left me and the pen he gave me right before he left the village.  He told me I had a heart made out of clouds and that I should never forget that.”
“That’s really beautiful, Teenie.”
“And then I was looking up in the sky at the clouds and it was like it was magic or something because all of a sudden I saw a heart-shaped cloud up in the sky.  It was like my dad sent it to me or something.  I just really felt that.”
“I bet he did send that cloud to you,” Devlin said.
“I bet he knew how much you missed him.”
And then Devlin leaned over until he was really close to Teenie.  He did something that she had never had anyone do in her whole life, well, maybe except her parents.  He kissed her on the cheek.
“The girl with the heart made of clouds,” he said.
“That’s how I’m going to think of you too.”

Teenie just sat there in stunned silence the minute after he did it.  Her heart stared to race inside her chest.  Devlin Underwood had just kissed her.  He kissed me, he kissed me, he kissed me, she thought.
A boy named Devlin Underwood just kissed me.
“You know which note was my favorite one so far,” he asked her.
Teenie just shook her head back and forth.
Devlin looked right into her eyes as he spoke.
“The one with the little heart and the clouds.”

I think this book is the most beautiful thing I have ever written, no kidding.

As she drifted off to sleep, Teenie had the strangest dream.  In the dream she was looking out the door of the sea hut when a very large cloud came right to the door where the seaweed curtain hung.  Standing in front of her right on the sand was the largest turtle she had ever, ever seen.  In his mouth he held a very large red heart, almost like a valentine would look.  Teenie couldn’t tell what it was made out of though.  It must have been carved from some kind of shell in the sea.  She had never seen anything like it before.  Just behind the turtle were two dolphins, and they were pushing what looked like a very large book before them.
How can that be, Teenie thought.
A book would get all wet if it were in the ocean.
The dolphins pushed the book right into the wave that was about to break and it washed right up to shore behind the turtle.  it looked like it was completely dry!
The turtle flipped it up onto his shell and walked it to the door of the sea hut where he placed it at Teenie’s feet.  The he dropped the little seaheart on top of it.  He looked at Teenie Alexander for a very long long time, and, he had a look of great happiness on his face.  Teenie really wanted to ask him who he was but she did not know how to speak the language of the ocean.  And so, in the dream
they just communicated with their eyes.  The book looked like it had been in the sea for a very long time.   It seemed as old as time itself, in a way.   Teenie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do next, but it seemed like the turtle wanted her to look inside of it.  He was motioning her with his flipper so that she would come near to it.
As she approached it, it opened magically to the very first page but not before Teenie had looked for a long time at the beautiful cover.  It seemed to be made of all sorts of shells that had been inlaid into a kind of very dark and shiny hardwood.  It looked like someone had written words but they were the strangest words Teenie had ever seen.  She just didn’t know how to understand that language and so she had no idea what the words said.  Whoever had written it must have done so at the very beginning of time, she thought, as she looked at the very first page.
The turtle just stayed motionless watching her and smiling.  Little did she know that the turtle in her dream was Tut, the king of the sea, and what he had brought to her was the very book that his grandfather had shown him at the bottom of the sea so many years ago.  You see, the book contained a page for every living creature on the earth and it was like a book of the heart in a way.  It explained that everything on the earth had a heart inside.  From the littlest crab to the biggest bird to the fiercest lion.  And it explained that
everything on the face of the earth knew how to speak the language of the heart, but they had just forgotten.
As the book’s pages magically turned before Teenie Alexander’s eyes she saw every species on earth.  There was a page for each one and a special drawing of each as well.
If only I could read this, she thought.
If only I could understand this language I would know how to talk to anyone and anything on the face of the earth itself.
“Everything on earth has a heart,” the turtle said.
He spoke to Teenie Alexander in a language he knew that she could understand because he said it only with his eyes.  She noticed that his were filled with tears just as Devlin’s had been.
As suddenly as the dream had come, it was gone again and the images faded back into the mists of the place where all dreams begin and end, for every living thing on earth.

I wrote upwards of 3000 today and I’m on page 192

That’s 42,457 words! — not far to go, now — !