New Story

Ugh.
Maybe I shouldn't react this way. Maybe I should welcome each new story with open arms and a resolve to do the  best I can for it. Maybe I should be thrilled at the thought of a new story.
But starting a story is like having a baby. It's that much work. Love and pain and tears and effort. Yes, it's a joy to have stories just like it's a joy to have kids, but at about 25 kids one starts to get a little fed up. Especially if they never grow up.
So here I am with 25 stories at least, none of them finished or grown up, and now a new one has shown up at my door, and I can't say no to the precious thing.

I've wanted to write a story in Italy for a while, anyway.  Here's how I started it out.
Oh yeah. And the dialogue's all in Italian. Good luck.

I wrenched my eyes open, gasping for breath as I stared at the ceiling, the cold sweat clustered on my brow.

"Ero solo un sogno, ero solo un sogno," I cried. The horror was still fresh before my eyes, evil and clear and real, but I was awake now and perfectly safe. I had to be. It was only a nightmare. I had those often, almost every night. I just had to push it aside. I could handle it. My breath began to slow down after I had been awake for a moment. All I could see was a vague inky greyness as the above ceiling merged with the wall. Blackness clawed across my vision, blotting out everything else in the familiar room. I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead, sat up, and clutched my blanket in my fingers, feeling its softness.

There. That was real. The little lumps of cotton on the bottom that gave it a worn but fuzzy consistency, and the smoother, doughy cloth on the other side of the blanket. It felt nice, even though my hands were so sweaty.

I stayed there for several minutes, leaning against the wall and breathing in the dark. I felt better, but the nasty feeling of the dream still hovered about me. I couldn't go back to sleep. I didn't want to fall asleep and risk going back to the same nightmare again.

Maybe I'd stay up for a while, and then try sleeping again later. That sometimes helped. I turned my light on and reached for Son of Neptune, and tried to read a while. But the words swam into each other and I couldn't get more than a page done before I dropped the book. No point in this. I was too tired to stay up and I just didn't want to go back to sleep.

I switched positions restlessly, turned onto one side and then the other, sat straight against the wall and slouched low. Finally I sighed. Grabbing my pillow under one arm and dragging my blanket over one shoulder, I stumbled out of the room and into the next one over.

Ambrosi's room was a little lighter than mine, or my eyes had adjusted. I could see his sleeping form and mattress on the floor. His room was cluttered with junk he'd picked up who-knows-where, and still I could not for the life of me figure out why he kept useless old  door-knockers or boxes or candy-wrappers that he was never going to use.

I bumped something hard and heavy with my toe and couldn't help grunting, "Ai," under my breath.

Ambrosi stirred. Ugh. He was such a light sleeper. Yeah, we'd tried sharing a room when we'd first found this place. We were still scared and insecure and flustered then, and it had been a strange place in a strange neighborhood. We'd stuck as close as glue then. Every noise or movement was someone waiting to attack us. But gradually we'd gotten used to the place as we settled in, and it started to get annoying sharing a room with a brother.

For one thing he really did seem to wake at every sound. And while he went to bed early and slept quietly and woke up quietly, I snored and talked in my sleep and tossed and turned and fell off the bed and basically did everything possible to disturb the quiet of the night. At least I didn't do that on purpose. He left his junk all over the floor, all the time, and I got sick of telling him to clean it up. Now that - he did that on purpose.

I shoved clusters of knickknacks out of the way next to Ambrosi's bed and dropped my pillow there, bundling myself up in my blanket and settling in.

"Che problema, Giada?" Ambrosi's voice came softly, muffled by sleep and slurred by drowsiness. He lifted his head a little as if he could see me in the dark.

"Niente. Solo un incubo."

"Capisco."

Good for him. I was glad he didn't ask anything more. His tone said he understood and he cared, and that was all. No interrogation, no further information needed. He didn't try to say something helpful. Nothing he could say would really help. I just needed to know that he was there for me, close by, and he was willing to endure my snores for the rest of the night and let me stay in his room.

That's more than I would have done for him. Bravo, Ambrosi, I thought, as I drifted off to sleep. Bravo.