Happy Wednesday!

Today has been a beast! I had to go to CPR/First Aid training this morning and then to a probation meeting for my job, and then I’ve had appointments all afternoon and I just now had a chance to sit down and do this. For those of you wondering, I’m a social worker and a lot of my clients are on probation, so I meet with them monthly to give updates. I’m not on probation. I see now how that may have looked.

Anyway, with no further ado, here is your WIPpet. Math afterward when I figure out exactly what I need to do to make it work. For context, Amaya has given the monks at Saint Catherine’s their miracle and they are taking her and Deacon to show them how to go into the Garden of Eden. This is the first snippet of that.

Amaya let the monks grip her by the arms and take her deeper into the water. They scooped up the red liquid and poured it over her head, murmuring prayers in a language she thought she recognized as Aramaic. She felt a gentle pressure against her knees and relaxed, allowing herself to float as the monks chanted and prayed. 

In one smooth motion, one of the men clamped a hand over her nose and mouth and she was plunged beneath the water, red engulfing her. Coughing and sputtering, she found the bottom of the river with her feet and stood, her head breaking the surface as she spit out water. 

“What the hell, guys? You couldn’t warn me?” 

The rest of her outburst slid back down her throat as she realized she was alone. Instead of standing in a skinny strip of water in the desert, she was in a lush lagoon surrounded by thick greenery and brightly colored flowers. Above her, the branches moved with birds and monkeys and in front of her was a thick carpet of dark green moss dotted with tiny white and pink flowers.  

“Holy hell, I did it.” Amaya hiked her pack higher on her shoulders and trekked out of the water, turning in a slow circle to take in her surroundings.  

She had barely reached the bank before there was a large splash and Deacon was breaking the surface, scraping his hair out of his eyes and blinking rapidly as he tried to get his bearings. Relaxing when he saw Amaya, he walked from the water and dropped to the moss next to her, untying his wet boots to remove them. 

“Seeing you disappear was fucking creepy.” He looked around the jungle. “Any sign of things that can eat us?” 

Amaya laughed and laid her socks next to herself to dry. “Not that I’ve seen yet, but I’ve only been here thirty seconds longer than you.” She wiggled out of her wet camp shirt and laid it down. “We need to lay out all the wet stuff and let it dry or we risk mold on everything in our bags and developing blisters on our feet from walking in wet boots.” 

Deacon nodded and began unpacking his bag. “Then it looks like here is home for the day then. By the time everything dries, it’ll be nearly dark if time is the same here as it is there.” 

“No reason to think it isn’t.” She stood to peel off her pants. “It’ll only take an hour or two for our clothes to dry. The shoes will take a lot longer than that. We could venture a little ways barefoot, maybe find some fruit or something to eat.” 

Deacon glared at her. “We’re in the fucking Garden of Eden. You’re not eating any fruit off any tree, Amaya Winslow. There’s no telling what bad things could happen if you picked the wrong one.” 

There you have it. 24 lines for the 24th. For those of you just joining me, a WIPpet is a weekly snippet of a Work In Progress. Once you’re done reading mine go here and read all the other lovely contributions. Don’t forget to tell my fellow authors what you think of their work! We all thrive on feedback!

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