This chapter isn't so much fantasy as is the one after it but it sort of just stagnated and I doubt I'll ever finish. Anyway, here goes.
Prologue
Danica Holden was perched high in the warmly scented evergreen tree her eyes dancing over the words printed on the page of the book. But she wasn’t there. No. Danica was lost within the great Sapphire City singing with gypsies for the sheer joy of it.
Her legs swung back and forth under the branch as the magic within the book held her seated even as the light outside began to fade and the tension of the story continued to build on top of itself as she was chased down the streets. The beat of her heart was audible in her eyes.
The buzz of her watch snapped her back to the treetop and warned her that she had half an hour to get home.
“By Carmen’s feet,” she hissed a line from the book. Disappointed to have left off at the climax of the novel, Danica closed Gems of the North and tucked the book into her lager-then-normal pants pockets.
With routine precision, she jumped down from one branch to the other. That was the reason she crossed town just to perch in this one specific evergreen. It was about sixty feet high at the very top where the branches were thin and young. But about three yards down, the branches began to cascade in the manner that only stairs seemed to possess, making the tree an amazing place to read.
At the ground, Danica dusted off several shards of clingy bark and started walking east. Normally she would have had her bike with but it was in the shed with a flat tire. She suspected that it had been one of her six brothers. Danica was the middle of seven children and currently the oldest at home. Three of her brothers were away at college.
The chilly early spring air bit threw her thin baby tee and cargo pants. The shirt was mainly blue but the big S for Super Man was in the middle of her chest in faded red and gold. Danica had bought the shirt at a second hand store for fifty cents. It was two sizes too big for her tomboy torso.
But no one was ever amazed by how small she was, rather there attention was held by her hair. She had dark hair, black as a moonless sky with those little hints of blue that appeared on her head as well as in her gray eyes.
As she walked, she began to imagine herself back in the Sapphire City dancing again. The music became so real and buzzed in her ears, thrumming to her heartbeat.
“Why can’t I be there? Why can’t I be there with the magic of the city at my fingertips?” Danica whispered her wish.
In the next instant, she wished he hadn’t.
She was standing in the middle of the crosswalk when the 76 Mustang with a flaming red paint job blazed around the corner. Everything moved in slow motion as Danica let out a scream as loud as the blaring horn and screeching brakes.
The impacted threw her back and pain wracked her body. Her head connected with the cement with so much force. Everything went black.
