NaNoWriMo: Prologue

Since I'm a certifiable nutcase, I've opted to do National Novel Writing Month. Because two AP classes, three articles, a term paper, and musical just weren't enough for me. I'm not entirely sure what my novel's about, but that's okay. I just have to crank out 50,000 words by the end of the month. No editing, no nothing. Just words. And since I started late, that's 2,000 words a day. No sweat, right?
Ha. Wrong!
Oh well. As my father would say, "It's an adventure."
Here's my first chapter/prologue. I rather like it. :)
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She walked through the smoky graveyard. She couldn’t tell if it was night or if the ash was simply obscuring the sun.
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation…
The tomcat wouldn’t leave her ankles. She’d shooed him several times, but all he did was pounce back at forth at her feet. She couldn’t bring herself to kick him. They’d both been through too much for that.
…conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
The cat couldn’t be more than two years old. He was gray with a black spot on the back of his right leg. Though he looked a little thin, he obviously hadn’t been starving, and had probably eaten more recently then she had.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war…
The corner was missing from his left ear.
… testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.
She bent over and tried to pick him up. No sooner than she had touched his belly, his claws swept across her forearm.
“Fine!” she shouted, massaging the scratch. “Get out of here!” The cat skittered off into the fog, lost to the darkness. A cold breeze blew through the graveyard, as though she’d disturbed the slumber of the dead with her shouting.
We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
“Oh, shut up,” she told the ghosts. If they had slept through the last few days, they deserved to be awakened now. To know what had happened. To share in her pain.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract.
The gravestone nearest her was so weathered that only God would henceforth know its owner’s name. She ran her finger down the rugged stone of the cross at the top. It crumbled into pieces before her eyes.
The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it cannot forget what they did here.
Her eyes flicked to a monument in the middle of the cemetery. A lady standing on a pedestal, surrounded by other statues. Inexplicably captivated, she began to walk through the rows of headstones.
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on.
The statues were odd. The first was a bearded man dressed in some sort of uniform and a sad look in his eyes. There was a single word engraved in the stone beneath his pedestal: WAR. She knew that word all too well. He didn’t look like any soldier she’d ever seen. His outstretched hand and his glance pointed to the next statue, a woman with a wreath upon her head and dressed in a long gown. She held a book and seemed to be writing in it. Her title read HISTORY.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion…
What was history?
… that we here highly resolve that those dead shall not have died in vain…
Puzzled, she continued to gaze at the title. She saw “story”… his story? Whose story? Who was he? Puzzled, she moved to the next statue: a fat woman holding some sort of plant. It looked like grain. Her name was PLENTY. She scowled at the woman. While she knew what the word meant, “plenty” had never been part of her regular vocabulary, even in the good days.
… that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom…
The final statue looked down at her sternly, as if to say, “You don’t belong here.” He held a hammer in his hand and was surrounded by machinery, a mechanical man, born of metal and cogs. She looked at his name… PEACE.
“Peace.” She said it out loud. The word left a bittersweet taste in her mouth, like the dark chocolate bars she used to get on Christmas. She remembered peace. Out of the four words, that was the only one she really understood, felt to the core of her existence. She knew war, but she would never understand it.
On a nearby plaque was engraved a rather long quote by somebody called “Abraham Lincoln.” What a weird name.
…that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
She laughed bitterly at the poor dead man whose words, though immortalized in stone here in the graveyard, had died to the rest of the world.
“Nobody knows your name, Mr. Lincoln,” she mused to the chill night air. “Nobody has a clue what you’re talking about.”
A gentle “mew” broke her reverie. The cat was back. Its glowing orange eyes stared widely at her from behind a tombstone, frightened and hopeful at the same time. She wasn’t in the mood to care, but his little eyes pleaded with her, and she couldn’t leave him alone in this haunted place as the world had chosen to leave her. Massaging her forearm tentatively, she reached for the cat’s underbelly. When she sensed no hesitation, she quickly scooped the cat up into her arms.
“Okay,” she said. “I guess we’re friends.” More like allies, she thought, as they stepped out of the circle of graves and into the world.