NaNoWriMo, Week 2

Every November, I tell myself I’ll do better and NaNo, keep to target, exceed it even. Then when November rolls around again, I realise that it’s the busiest time of year at my day job and, if I wanted to focus on NaNo, I really needed to take some leave.
So here I am, no leave, still working full time during one of the busiest times of year for my job, and writing about half as much as I need to in order to win NaNo.
I do have a couple of big writing days planned, so hopefully that will bump my word count up again.
Today I’m at a shopping centre, hoping to break 11000 words before I go home. Tomorrow I’m hosting a write-in at the library where I work, so that will be another four to five hours solid writing. I’ll miss most of the mid-week write-in locally as I have a work thing on, but I’ll make the Saturday write-in and am also hosting another write-in on Sunday.
The dedicated write-ins seem to work best for me at the moment. My story is coming very slowly so trying to take advantage of an unexpected ten minute wait for something doesn’t work. I barely have time to read through the last scene and start thinking about where it needs to go before I have to pack up again.
I thought I’d share today what I’ve written this morning. This is the first inkling, other than an ancient and irritating song, that Fisher has that he’s something a bit unusual. Btw: Artemis is a dragon (with multiple forms); that’s why Fisher accuses him.

The excerpt:
Air rushed from Fisher’s mouth. His chest ached. Darkness swallowed him. Around him, rock pressed against him, crushing his ribs against his spine, and his nose flat. Granite sliced past his arm, stuck out in front, his fist clamped tightly around Artemis’ bicep. Spots swam in front of him, ghostly lights in the darkness. Fisher chased them, thinking they were light, but soon realized it was because he wasn’t breathing.
He couldn’t breathe. Just like under the water.
Fisher opened his mouth, panic tossing a scream around inside his head, bouncing around like his fractured thoughts. Air rushed in, cool and metallic down his throat. In his head, he screamed. In his ears, it was a whimper. And still he fell backward, as if through molasses, suspended in time. He heartbeat pounded in his ears and his head, and his throat, like it didn’t come from his chest but through every spurt of blood pumping in his veins. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. He screamed again.
Then he landed on his back on rough gravel. Artemis’ arm wrenched from his hold and Artemis landed beside him and on top of him with a thump and a sharp elbow in Fisher’s stomach.
“Oof.” Stars blinked overhead. Stars. They were outside. He lifted his head. They were on a mountain path that skirted the rocky wall of the mountain. As fisher stared at the mountain, a gash in the rock rumbled closed. He wrenched his feet away from the narrowing gap, in the process kicking Artemis onto the path. “What the fuck?” Fisher scrambled crab-like backwards, pushing his heels against the gravel until he was far, far away from the granite wall, his shoulders hanging over the downward slope. The air was cool and fresh on his face and around his neck. His chest heaved and his head spun like he was still short of air, even though he was in the open now. “No way,” he panted. “No way.” That couldn’t have happened. There was no way he could move through rock. He couldn’t have.
Artemis. It must have been him. Fisher rose to his knees and crawled shakily to where Artemis laid, unmoving. Fisher shoved against Artemis’ shoulder. “What did you do?” He pushed against Artemis again. “What the fuck did you do?” His voice rose, hysteria edging his continued prodding at Artemis. Artemis didn’t respond. Fisher knelt over him, put both hands on Artemis’ shoulder and shoved.
Artemis rolled, then coughed. Hacked. Sputtered. Gasped. Panted. Scrambled to his feet, stumbled away from the rock outcrop. Looked wildly at Fisher. “What? What?” Even in the faint starlight, Fisher could see the whites of Artemis’ eyes. “What the fuck did you do?”