NaNoWriMo + 
= #freewritemadness.
17 18 freewriters are gathering at the 
Today’s prompts are: saving and a Photo by Shifaaz shamoon on Unsplash
As usual I started with the freewrite prompt and used themostdangerouswritingapp.com to write the first five minutes:
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Catch up with the previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23part1, 23Part2, 23Part3
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The many torments of Tiny Earl - Chapter 23 (Part 4)
"You are stupid boy," the man said, giving Glenn some of his water, and taking him to his family, where he fed him before leading him out of the desert the next day. "You are not the only stupid boy I am saving here. You people come here you don't understand the desert. You get lost, you alone. Many boys I am not saving. Many I find too late.” He looked at Glenn, his eyes, hard. As if to make sure Glenn understood exactly what he was saying he added, “They dead, stupid boy."
Glenn felt like an idiot. But he learned from that lesson. Always be prepared. Know what challenges you are likely to face and make sure you have what you need to get through them. And work with others. Work as a team.
But that was all well and good.
That only worked if the people you were working with - or assumed you were working with - were on the same side, and had the same goals as you.
Glenn had a decision to make. Trust Clare and Abigail, and work with them. Or not, and go it alone. Somehow.
He suddenly realised he had no idea where Abigail was.
He had left Clare, dealing with the increasingly bizarre Tiny, but Abigail had wandered off, earlier. "To give Tiny a bit of space," she had said. The first thing to do was to find her, find out what she was up to and talk to her.
He found her in Tiny’s room. He decided to be direct.
“Did you know the shopkeeper is not from this reality?” he asked, aware his tone was far from gentle.
Abigail looked up, surprised.
“No,” she said. “What makes you think that?”
“He just told me.”
“Okay…” she looked genuinely shocked. Was she faking it? “Does this change anything?” she asked. Glenn wasn’t sure if she was talking to him, she was looking at Tiny’s bed, the indent from where the body had been still clearly visible.
“Well, I have to ask - is he working in our best interests? Are we working to protect this reality from collapsing, as I had always believed. Or are we stuck in the middle of some kind of vendetta against TIny. He knew him, you know. Or rather one of his doppelgangers did.”
Abigail looked at Glenn, and then back at the bed. “I don’t know what to think,” she said. “What I do know is that Tiny is not a nice guy. The moment I had contact with him, outside I felt as if my head was going to explode,” she shuddered, and looked back at Glenn. He thought he could see a tear well up in the corner of her eye. “He is a cruel man, Glenn. He has done some horrible things to many people. I’ve met the shopkeeper, too. I didn’t get any of that.”
“Could the fact that he is from another reality mean that he could hide stuff from you?”
“Well, TIny can’t. I don’t know, Glenn.”
“And you?”
“And me, what?”
“Are you from this reality? I don’t know what to think, anymore, Abigail. I don’t know who to trust.”
“This is my home, Glenn,” Abigail said. And Glenn realised she hadn’t really answered his question. “I want to protect it.”
“And how exactly are we doing that, Abigail? We’ve brought Tiny to a place where - according to you, the walls between the different realities are so thin, you sensitives regularly use it as a training ground. As far as I can see the shop has been playing some game, but I have no idea what the aim of it is. What now? What are we waiting for?”
Abigail came to Glenn and took hold of his hand. He suddenly had a flash of a memory, of a night they had shared together, early on in their relationship. After a meal, they had gone for a walk together, hand in hand and he had felt so happy it had felt as if his heart would explode.
“Trust me,” Abigail said.
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