If readers could answer these helpful questions in a critique, I'd be eternally grateful!
1. Is it too long for just one chapter/post?
2. Did I introduce the dragon too quickly?
3. Were the people's reactions realistic, or were they too calm? (specifically Penelope)
4. Were the descriptions too repetative?
Thanks so much, and I hope you enjoy it!!!
CHAPTER 1
Penelope glanced out the large window facing the shore, watching the slow drop of rain travel down the glass, joining with other, smaller drops to replace the water it was losing as it completed its long journey. It reached the windowsill and dripped into the growing puddle. Sighing, Penelope glanced down at her small notebook and tore out the page she had begun on, crumpling it and tossing it away from her desk to the bright yellow trash can.
Usually Penelope loved rain, but just now she was attempting to describe a happy, sunny day in Florida, and this weather just wasn't cutting it.
"I have a good imagination, but it's not that good," Penelope muttered. She straightened, bringing her long legs down from the chair and wiggling her bare toes in the air in front of her.
"What was that, Penny?"
Penelope looked over her shoulder and grinned. "Nothing...Mom, are you dusting again?"
"You know Dad is allergic to dust mites."
Penelope rolled her eyes. "Then why do we live in Seattle?"
"Bad mood?" her mother asked, lifting up a small statue to dust underneath it.
"Just can't get this stupid scene written. I think I need a walk," Penelope said, standing up and stretching. She put her notebook and a pen in the voluminous pocket of her long, loose green coat. Tying it firmly at the waist, Penelope flipped up her collar and nodded to her mother.
"But Pen, it's raining," protested Ann, flipping her long brown and gray braid over her shoulder.
"Since when has that ever stopped me?" Penelope grinned. Opening the door, she skipped down the five stairs and into the light drizzle. Avoiding the big wet German Shepherd that whined for her attention, she swung open the low white picket fence and began skipping along the road, swinging a piece of string so it wrapped around her finger, then unwrapped it.
She wandered aimlessly through the streets at first, nodding to everyone she passed and smiling cheerily. Then she caught sight of the tall news building that loomed above the neighborhood only six blocks away. She began striding towards it, her long steps eating up the wet ground.
Pausing outside the long cement stairway leading up to large glass doors, Penelope stomped her feet, jumping up and down to get as much water as she could off her flip-flops and the bottoms of her loose camoflauge pants. She unbuttoned her trench coat and groaned as she noticed a stain on her large tunic top. Sighing, she started up the stairs, taking them two at a time and reaching the top within seconds. Without slowing down she barrelled through the door and came to a skidding stop within the building. Taking a deep breath, she grinned as the familiar smell of freshly printed newspapers came to her.
Whipping out her notebook and a stub of a pencil, she gazed at the yellow wall-paper, decorated with palm trees. This was just what she had needed. She would hang out here, write her sunny Florida scene, and then go say hi to Emma. Biting her lip and glancing at the wall-paper every once in awhile to refresh her imagination, she began scribbling. It was flowing much easier now. Penelope could almost feel the hot sand under her feet, and she curled her toes inside her clammy, cold flip-flops.
"Excuse me, miss."
Penelope frowned. Why had her hero just said that? He was out surfing alone.
"Excuse me, miss, I'm going to have to ask you to -"
Penelope blinked and the beach disappeared from her vision. "What?" she snapped, turning abruptly.
A tall man with light brown hair was standing behind her, dressed in a security uniform, an apologetic look on his face.
"I'm sorry, but you're not allowed in here. I realize it's raining, but the building policy is that -"
"What the hell are you talking about, sir? There's nothing in building policy about people like me," Penelope interrupted him.
"But I assure you there is. I just read the booklet yesterday and it says that nobody is allowed to ask for handouts inside the building."
Penelope took a breath to argue, then stopped in shock. Her mouth opened and closed, and she looked down at her clothing. Sure, it was men's clothing and it was too big for her. Sure, it had a few holes in it, and maybe it was a little dirty, but still. She didn't look like a tramp, did she?
"Wow."
Penelope heard a new voice behind her and turned around in relief. "Emma! Thank goodness you're here."
"This is a new low for you, Penny," a woman with cropped red hair stood there, grinning widely at Penelope's discomfort.
"Could you convince this young gentleman that I'm not a beggar?" Penelope asked patiently.
"I'm sorry, miss, do you know this woman?" The security guard asked, confused.
"Yeah," said Emma. She patted him comfortingly on the arm. "You're new here, right? Don't worry, it takes everyone awhile to get used to Penny here. She does free-lance writing every once in awhile for the paper."
"But I'm in the middle of a novel right now, so I'm just here for inspiration," said Penelope, waving to the bright yellow walls. "Too rainy out for a Florida scene."
The security guard nodded. "Well, I'm Jeremy. I'm sorry about the confusion. I hope you can find it in you to forgive me."
"Fine, fine," said Penelope. She pulled out her notebook and wrote one more sentence, then stuck it back in her pocket. Linking arms with Emma, she strolled down the carpeted hallway towards the offices. As they turned around the corner, Emma stole a last glance at Jeremy, who was hitting himself lightly in the face and groaning.
"He was really cute. You should have stuck around and made friends," she remarked to Penelope.
"I make friends with all the security guards eventually anyway," said Penelope. "And I didn't notice that he was cute. Stop trying to hook me up. Men don't like me, it's just that simple. As soon as you accept that, we'll all be a lot happier."
Emma shrugged, then grinned, blue eyes dancing with mischief. "Guess what? We had a really weird story come in today. You should come check it out."
They arrived at Emma's office and Penelope, after greeting all the other writers who were tapping away at their keyboards intently, sat down. Emma handed her a handwritten page and Penelope scanned it quickly.
"Dear newspaper people...I've recieved a note...a dragon?" Penelope turned to Emma and raised an eyebrow.
"Keep reading," Emma said, grinning.
"Fearsome dragon...blah blah...demands a beautiful virgin to appease it." Penelope threw the hastily scribbled note onto the desk and shook her head. "Some kook, or what?"
"He called in later to follow up on the note," Emma explained. "He lives in the country, and saw the dragon flying across his field. He thought it was huge kite or something, and went down to investigate, and the 'dragon' dropped a note for him."
"Do you have the note?" Penelope asked curiously.
"Yep." Emma scrabbled through her papers and pulled out a small envelope. Carefully she removed a small scrap of heavy paper and handed it to Penelope. She took it in the palm of her hand and surveyed it carefully. It was made out of some strange sort of tree bark. The tiny, exact writing was burned into the bark.
"Bring a beautiful virgin to the top of the space needle by midnight or Malchesda will burn the city." Penelope looked up at Emma. "This is totally weird. Did you investigate the farmer?"
"Yeah, it's all been done. According to the man's neighbors, he's always been a plegmatic, normal, dependable guy. His wife was contacted and she seemed very surprised by his behavior."
Penelope walked over to the window and looked out across the city, surveying the spindly space need sticking up above the rest of the buildings. Tapping her lip, she grinned as Emma joined her. "I wonder..."
"What's that?" Emma pointed across the city. Next to the space needle a little brigh spot circled high in the air. "Is it coming towards us?" she asked, biting her fingernail.
"This is weird. Hold on." Penelope got her camera out of her pocket and snapped a few shots of the rapidly growing spot. Emma ran for her own camera and Penelope turned to one of the other reporters.
"Hey, look at this," she said. She and the reporter turned together to face the window and froze. The other reporter screamed and turned in three quick circles before fainting dead away. Penelope's mouth dropped open and the camera dropped useless from her fingers. In front of the window there hovered a huge dragon. There was no other explanation for the massive creature. The long, scaly body, the fiery glow that seemed to come from within, the huge jaws slobbering drops of fire to the sidewalk below, the red-hot teeth glinting menacingly from within the dragon's fiery mouth. Huge orange eyes glinted from beneath hard, scaly brows, and the rain hissed as it came within range of his heat. A fog was forming around the huge, hot body of the dragon, obscuring it from view.
Penelope stepped back from the window as the heat from the dragon's huge body started to penetrate the thick glass. She gulped as she saw the glass beginning to sag outwards, and knew it was only a matter of seconds before it either melted or shattered. The dragon turned it's massive head to the side and opened its jaws. An extremely thin line of fire streamed out across the streat and hit a stop sign, melting it instantly into a blob of metal on the sidewalk. Then the dragon lifted its head to the sky, shoved off the ground and winged away, its wings dissipating the fog around it, drops of fire raining down as flame leaked out of its jaws. Penelope's eyes stayed glued to the fiery beast until it was again nothing but a dot of brightness in the distance.
"Oh, God." The reporter that had fainted lay on the floor, moaning. Penelope helped him sit up and he held his head. "Did I just imagine that? Please say I just imagined that."
Emma felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to find Emma's wide eyes staring down at her. "Penelope, are you okay? I almost threw up when I saw that thing out there and you just standing there."
"Did you get any pictures?" Penelope asked, standing and buttoning her trench coat.
"Yeah...yeah, I did, but. Oh my God, Penny, it was a dragon! D. r. a. g. o. n." Emma spelled it out for Penelope.
"I know, Emma, thank you for that. Let me see your camera."
Emma's hand trembled as she held out the digital camera to Penelope. Penny flipped through the pictures, suppressing a shudder at the memories the pictures brought up.
"Get these developed as quickly as you can and bring them to me. We only have till midnight," she said, handing the camera back to Emma.
"What?" Emma asked, dazed.
Penelope sighed, raised her hand and gave Emma a hard slap across the face. "Emma, pull yourself together. The note, the note! Obviously the dragon is the real, so the threat must be real too. We need to get to the police station, see what they can do about finding a beautiful virgin to set up on top of the space needle. Maybe they'll have ideas as to some sort of trap we could set for it."
Emma nodded and hurried off to the building's developing shop. There were a lot of times when quickly developed pictures were necessary, so they kept one in the news building itself.
Penelope wandered around, giving drinks of water to shocked reporters and surveying the damage to the glass. She frowned and studied it. It was bulging outwards where the dragon had been, and was thicker at the bottom than the top, but it still looked fairly sturdy now that it had cooled.
"Should we get the glass replaced, do you think?"
Penelope turned at the sound of the Jeremy the security guard's voice. She nodded in recognition and turned back to studying the window. "Well, it seems to be fairly sturdy but I don't know how long it would hold up in extreme temperatures. Why don't you take care of it?"
Jeremy nodded, running a hand through his wavy hair. "Sure. Are you all right?"
Penelope sighed. "Well, I've been better. It's not every day one sees a dragon, you know. I had always assumed they were just mythical creatures from fairy tales. But there's something a little fishy about this."
"What do you mean?" Jeremy asked.
"Well, for one thing, how could a dragon like what we saw write something as delicate as the note? It looked to me as if every part of the dragon was basically made from fire. How could it have gotten hold of the bark without burning it up?"
"Well, I haven't seen this note you're talking about, but what you're saying makes sense," said Jeremy. "What are you thinking?"
"That there's someone else involved," said Penelope firmly. She turned as Emma came panting through the doorway with a large yellow envelope. She gave it to Penelope, nodding Jeremy a greeting. Penelope sorted through the pictures, pulling seven of them out of the envelope. She handed them to Jeremy and he whistled.
"Why were you just standing there?" he asked, pointing to one of the pictures. It was zoomed out, and showed Penelope as a tiny, ragged figure, dwarfed by the fiery head of the dragon. The other reporter was sprawled out of the floor at Penelope's feet, and papers were fluttering down all around her. Laughing shakily, Emma winked at Jeremy.
"It looks like some sort of horror or fantasy movie, starring Penelope Erose as the savior of mankind."
Jeremy chuckled with her, nodding. Penelope bit her lip. "You know I'm not, though. The problem is, someone will have to be willing to take on that role."
"Some beautiful virgin, to be precise," Emma answered soberly.
"Well, let's get to the police. Maybe they'll have some ideas," said Penelope. She patted Jeremy absently on the shoulder. "You stay here and get things straightened out. If you don't see me again you'll know I've been run through by a unicorn."
Emma linked arms with her as they hurried down the long ramped hallway towards the entrance. "Not funny, Penny, not funny. My head hurts."
But you don't need "clammy" AND "cold"... that's repetitive. ^_~
