Salvation in 10,000 words or less

It was dawn. Again.

Agrippa had left the window and curtain open to let the warm air out of the apartment. They were on the second floor, and the heat from below had turned their room into a sauna the evening before. It seemed like a good idea at the time, with the gentle evening breeze and the relatively quiet streets below offering little distraction. But now the first light was piecing straight through the open window and into their eyes, and that was unacceptable. The beast saved the document they were working on before tilting the laptop screen down and reaching out for the thick blue curtain. They pulled it taught, shrouding the bedroom back in a darkness that was only interrupted by the soft white glow from the screen in their lap.

Another dawn meant that it had been two days. Two days since they last slept, or ate a meal, or left their bedroom. A ghost of exhaustion pulled at them, a reminder that the Wyrd would only hold off the fatigue for for so much longer. They would need to renew the contract.

"I know, I know, I just need to fix this one paragraph here. I'm on a roll."

The unicorn mumbled to the Wyrd dismissively as they pulled the screen up again, squinting as their eyes adjusted to the light and found their place. This was the second time they had gone over this paragraph. They had added it in draft two. This was draft four. From the reader's perspective it wouldn't be anything major, just a few details about a side character and the introduction of a minor plot element. But it was setup for the reveal two chapters later, and it needed to be done right. This story was part mystery, part horror, and all atmosphere. The writing had a near poetic quality, which was at once the book's greatest strength, and the thing that made it so difficult to get right.

He sat on the lowest stair, a miserable thing in a woolen coat too large for his frame. The dog sat beside him, something glinting in between her teeth. It looked to be a chain of silver.

Something wasn't right about that sentence. Too much punctuation maybe? Certainly it couldn't be that there wasn't enough. Or maybe they just needed to re-order things. Yes, yes that had to be it. Just a little tweaking-

The Wyrd rewarded their lack of attention to its initial warning with a wave of exhaustion so sudden and profound that it felt like nausea. Agrippa shook their head furiously and reached out to their nightstand for a matte of horsehair. They'd taken some off of the back seat of Kai's car right before she'd dropped them off. She got a cleaner back seat and they got component materials for a contract- a perfect trade, in their opinion. The horsehair was rinsed in a cup of water, rubbed into a ball, and thrown down their throat like a pill of whimsy. They took a swig of the water and spun the Wyrd again to prevent themselves from tiring. Then they turned back to the screen.

He sat on the foot of the stairs, a miserable thing in a woolen coat too large for his frame. The dog sat beside him, something glinting in her mouth. It looked to be a silver chain.

That was better. The whole of last week they'd been waffling on their decisions, but for the past two days it seemed like everything they tried just worked. It was a wonderful feeling, but they couldn't afford to bask in it. They needed to move onto the next thing. Three chapters to go. If they kept going at this pace, they might be done by the evening and they could read it all over again just to be sure they caught everything. With how well this draft was coming along, it aught to be the final one, and it if was they might even be sending it off with a day or so to spare.

Either way, Mr. Hartman was definitely going to have a book on his desk by Spring's final dusk, and it was going to be a damn good read.