First #nanowrimo check in

Okay, I wanted to check in more often, but I've been busy busy busy busy.
At any rate, this has been a good writing weekend, even if I'm behind.

Anyways, here's an excerpt:

He could feel the edges of a song rising in his head. A song of panic and confusion. A song of fear and failure. But even as he grasped at it, it fled out of his reach.

Why?

The rougher edges of his headache had dissipated in the fog, but it still felt as if bands of steel were holding him in his own head.

What’s going on?

He grasped the baton tighter in his hands, feeling reassured as it started to glow slightly. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate.

Sing a song of confidence. Sing a song of faith.

But he couldn’t find it. The melody seemed to slip through his fingers, the rhythm stumbled over itself and the words seemed to be pulled right out of his throat. The baton glowed and sputtered in turn. He could feel his power and talent being sucked right out of him through the fingers that grasped the slender golden tube.

Drop it? Is it turning against me? Has it rejected me? Drop it? Maybe?

What are you doing?

His thoughts jumbled in his head and more than once, he wondered if there were someone else talking in his head.

The baton slipped out of his fingers.

What are you doing? Why did you let go? Would you so easily give up your one chance?
How do I know it is a chance and not a threat?
Find your centre, boy. Hurry. Find who you are.
Leave him alone. Let him find his way.
Pick up the baton; It’s your only hope.
Find who you are. Find your centre.
Who are you?
Who am I? I am…

The boy crumpled to the ground in tears. He couldn’t remember who he was. He couldn’t remember what he was there for. All he knew was that he was in a strange, terrifying place, with voices that argued against itself in his head. Something poked into him and he sat up, grasping the long, slender stick in his hand. He searched his memory, listening to the odd feeling in his heart that this was once very important to him, had been very important to him for a large portion of his life.

A surge of power flowed into his body and he gasped as it filled every cranny of his being: he felt as if he were on fire, as if hot gold flowed in his veins, as if he would explode if he did not burn up before that. The boy threw back his head and Sang.

The notes, soft at first, full of anguish and pain, dipped in confusion, soared into bittersweetness, running through the minors and grazing against the majors. Wordlessly, he sang – he sang pain into existence, sharp barbs that stung and bled; thick oozing blood that stained and would not be washed away. When he ran out of pain, he dipped into the depths of loneliness, the strain of always being together but always apart, the secret knowledge that he denied himself: that Beauty only wanted him for what he had, and not who he was, the knowledge that if he married her, if he pursued her, he would always be alone; her heart was not made to be shared. But what of his? He searched for the right notes, for the right swell, for the right flow to ride. He sang of comfort and contentment, of the pride of being, of the way he hid his heart, how he carefully held in his generous spirit and loving nature because it would never do, never ever do, as a Prince of the Land to fall in love with – with Cherry. Cherry, the sweet girl who had once brought his dinner every night without fail, who had once listened to him ranting without a word, who still managed smiled at him when he was exceptionally mean, who told him in the quiet of the night before he went to bed that he was an insufferable prick and his mother would be disappointed in him as a man, who he had dismissed without a word because she – he – she - his song softened as the tears flowed again, releasing the pride in him, releasing the pain and the hurt and the confusion, as he consolidated himself, throwing away the things that were bad, digging deep again for the boy he once was, and trying to become the man, the Prince, the King he would one day be.

Song opened his eyes.