Chapter Seven
Vera
This is worse than I ever could have imagined. Not only am I somehow in my story—or at least in a world that closely resembles it—but so is James.
I suppress the urge to groan. Of all the people I had to be stuck with,James?
I turn my attention back to Prince Frederick, our timely rescuer. Or at least, it would have been timely if it was not a predestined date that I came up with.
This is how Naia and Moira meet the man they both have feelings for. Officially meet him, that is. They both stalked him across the seas whenever he sailed. But the first time they cross paths when they are human is when he rescues them from Captain Hook, who had rightly suspected them of being sirens.
Frederick took us in, believing we were innocent stowaways and that began Hook’s obsession with me—um, I mean Moira.
So, how exactly is James going to play a role in this? He isn’t going to care that I’m a siren. And he certainly isn’t going to be driven by an obsession to see me again. I kind of doubt he is going to try to kill me either. All our differences aside, he doesn’t seem the type.
He would rather slowly bury me in a never-ending list of edits than actually off me.
This whole ordeal is somehow his fault, of that much I am certain. Why else would he be here? And I am the hapless victim in all this. No writer should be forced to live out their story. We ought to be free to tear our character’s lives apart at will and not have to live with the consequences. It may sound cruel, but how can you have a good story if everyone is happy?
The viewer will get bored.
But now I’m living it, and I’m certainly not bored. I kind of wish I was bored. Now that I think of it, being bored is a nice feeling. Being bored isn’t painful or sad, it’s just boring.
You know what’s stressful? Knowing that you’re taking part in a series of events that leads to your untimely death.
My stomach twists at the thought, but it’s still something I need to consider. If I’m Moira and Moira dies at the end of the script… then I’m dying at the end of this story unless I alter some facts quickly. Although… I’m not so sure how I will die because if James is Hook, I doubt he will be the one stabbing me.
“I can’t believe it,” Naia exclaims flitting across the large room that the prince had given for us to stay together. She is racing back and forth, dressed in a gauzy dress, also on loan, not the least bit concerned about my spiraling.
I rest my chin in my hand as I watch her go. Why couldn’t I be filling in her role in the story? I want to be the happy-go-lucky side character that doesn’t have anything bad happen to her. Naia lives a charmed life, now that I think of it. She isn’t evil like the other sirens. What’s with that? What right does she have being so nice? To top it off, she gets the guy.
I made Prince Frederick to be the man of my dreams, and coincidentally also always the unattainable man of Moira’s dreams.
Next time I write a screenplay, I’m being nicer to my main character. I’m killing the side character not the protagonist. I don’t care what is “gritty and realistic”. Right about now I’m wishing I wrote fluff instead.
But what about James?
Already the plot is altered if just slightly to the right. After all, James is apparently Captain Hook. As if someone could be worse at filling the role of the pirate captain. Still, it has to change things, right?
For one, I’d never fall in love with James, so how can we have a short and tragic romance before we both wind up dead like Moira and Hook are supposed to?
“If the story goes off the rails… does that mean I can go home?” I murmur to myself. I don’t know anything about this world, but it seems to be trying to push me to the inevitable end of the story. Already I’ve met “Hook” and the prince and have arrived at the setting where most of the script takes place.
But what if I change that end? The world will have nowhere to push me, so it might as well just send me home.
I straighten my shoulders as I start to think it over. No, send usbothhome. I have to figure James into my plan. As far as I can tell, he is the only person here who isn’t a character from the script. I don’t know why he was picked of all people, but as it stands, he is really my only ally here. The other characters might not mean me ill, but they also won’t understand what is going on. And I highly doubt they will believe me if I try to tell them that I’m actually from a totally different world, that I made them up, and I know what all our predestined endings are.
No, I can’t see that ending well at all.
Naia pauses in her skipping and her praising of how perfect the prince is to turn to me. Her skirts sway around her bare feet, it’s hard to process the fact that roughly an hour ago she had fins.
But not as strange as it is to remember that I had fins too.
“Aren’t you changing?”
“Huh?” I ask, straightening from where I am sitting slumped against the marble stairs that lead up to the platform that has a bed on it so big that it almost makes up the whole dais. It’s not the most comfortable position to be in and as I lean forward, I feel pins and needles rush to my rear. I sit up, grimacing as I adjust the pants I stole from Hook—James?—ey, forget it.
I didn’t change out of my clothes because even though these hand-me-downs are a bit loose, they are maneuverable and if the plot continues the way it does in the script… I’m going to need to be ready to run for my life.
