Jules you made my day!!!! That part about Mark was great, see, it DOES go to his head, as you shall soon see. Thank you, that was just what I needed. I am honored you both liked the chapter, and that Slim is creepy. That makes me happy, being that you both still like me.
 Word count is now at 45, 314

It was strange being in a place where you had no clue what you were supposed to do in it. Christina, Gabrielle, Mariella, and Beth wandered about for an hour before they came upon a man sitting on a log. He was by another lake and had his long legs in the water; he did not turn as the girls approached.
“Should we leave him be?” Mariella whispered.
Christina seemed to think that would be a good idea. Gabrielle however walked up to the man and touched his shoulder. The man stirred but did not look up at them.
“Excuse me sir,” Gabrielle finally said.
The man did not answer; he continued looking out over the murky water. Gabrielle shook his shoulder and then yanked her hand back with Beth said in ghastly tones, “I wonder if he is dead?”
“Don’t do that Beth!” Gabrielle gasped.
“He looks dead,” Mariella said thoughtfully.
“Very dead,” Christina added.
Gabrielle took another step back, they were right, he DID look dead! “If only that were true, I could be a happy man,” the voice that spoke startled them all. It was a low voice and so depressing it made them all want to despair, why they knew not.
“You’re alive?” Beth finally managed to ask.
“Yes, sadly enough, alive and in good health,” the man turned as they spoke. He had a round face that sagged in a frown. His eyes were full off sorrow and no sign on his features spoke that he had ever smiled once in his life.
“Who are you?” Mariella asked after she studied his face.
He blinked dully, and moaned, “Who cares, who really cares. I am me and that is all that matters. Like is dull and pointless and I am one of the dull and pointless people who are stuck here, that is all that matters.”
“You are a bundle of joy,” Beth muttered.
“Joy, what is joy? That bubble and bounce some people have that drives them on through life, blinding them to the real world. They go through life thinking everything is fine and dandy, thinking there are things worth living for. But in the end they all find out the truth, oh yes they learn that life is pointless.”
Gabrielle looked over at Beth who looked at Christina and Mariella. No one knew what to say, then again, there was probably nothing to say to a man like this. He was watching them dully. Finally he said, “You see, you do not know what true men look like, you four are like the rest of the world.” And he turned his back on them.
“What an odd man,” Christina whispered as the four girls turned away.
“That is putting it mildly,” Mariella said as she cast the man a backwards glance.
They had not gone ten feet when a sign rose up from the misty ground. It read, “No one can leave the forest until they make the man smile.”
Gabrielle scowled at the sign. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I am going to get Cael for this!” Beth said with a sigh. “If he thought the drawing and quartering was bad he has seen nothing yet!”
“How are we supposed to make him smile,” Christina voiced the question they were all thinking.
“Threaten him into it!” Mariella said flashing eyes.
“We can’t do that Mari-mummy,” Gabrielle pointed out. “That would just make things worse!”
“Obviously the man refuses to smile, unless we were to stand him on his head.” They all looked at Beth who was smirking over her own idea.
They all stood about and thought over the matter for a long while before returning to the man who was still sitting on the log. Only now he was sighing, and it was the most depressing sigh anyone had ever heard. They looked at each other again and knew they were about to take on the impossible.
“What is your name?” Mariella tried again as she walked up to the man and rested her hand on his shoulder. “Surely you have a name.”
“No, my mother did not think I was worth naming,” the man moaned.
“Everyone has a name,” Christina said kindly.
“I don’t, because I was not worth the time. I am surprised my mother even bothered having me.”
“It wasn’t like she had a choice, you were coming out one way or another,” Mariella muttered.
“Oh,” the man’s head shot up, and then slowly dropped. “I had never thought about that, but it is true, so true, so sadly true.”
Mariella rolled her eyes and Christina intervened. “Surely you have something you enjoy?” she gently pressed.
“No, I like and enjoy nothing because there is nothing to like and enjoy, all is sorrow and gloom, and depression, there is nothing worth living for, and I wish I could die!”
Christina moaned and Beth moved in. “We are not saying life is all fun and games, there are trails and sorrows, but that is no reason to want to die.”
“How old are you?” the man asked.
“I am fifteen,” Beth answered almost warily.
“You are young then, you still have much to learn,” and once more he turned his back on them.
Beth moaned. “It is hopeless!” she whispered to the others.
“I agree,” the man moaned. “Life is hopeless; I should jump into the lake and drown.”
“Now knock it off!” Gabrielle suddenly snapped. “How can you even think such a thing?”
“Easy, very easy, and it would be easy to do as well.”
“Why don’t you?” Mariella could not help but ask even though she did not want him to do it.
“Because if there is one thing worse then life it is being a dead character with nothing to do for the rest of…whatever,” he had either gotten side tracked or did not care to finish his train of thought. “Maybe I should spend my life finding a way out of this book.”
“You do not like it in here?” Beth pounced on the man’s soft whispered thought.
The man looked at them but said nothing.
Gabrielle stepped forward. “We can get you out of here you know,” she said gently.
“How would you do that?” the man sighed and once more looked back over the water.
“We are authors,” Mariella said with a grin.
“Authors in a book? That is a first,” the man was mocking them.
“We really are!” Gabrielle snapped. “We were put in here by our characters and we cannot get out.”
“Then if you can’t get out how can you get me out?” the man pointed out.
“They told us we have to make you smile, then we can get out of the forest and then back with the others. We have to stop a villain then we will be freed.”
“And then?” the man asked.
“Then we return to our world,” Beth said happily.
“And me?”
“Easy, once we are authors again we will take you out of this book and put you in one you would like!” Gabrielle grinned at the plan.
The man turned at an angle and looked at them with dull eyes. “Any book I would like?” he finally asked after he studied them.
“Any, you just tell us before we leave and in you go!” Beth promised.
The man rubbed his chin and said thoughtfully, “I have always wanted to be an explorer, maybe find a lost treasure or something.”
“We can do that,” Christina said with her bright smile.
The man nodded and asked softly as he stood, “And, could you give me a name?”

Cael glared darkly at the screen. This was not what he had been expecting and the sudden twist annoyed him. How dare one of their characters do something like this? This was unheard of, not that he had not done something like it himself. But that was beside the point.
“What should we do with him?” Cael asked Anna and Meg. He had not been looking forward to working with two girls, but what could he do, and as it turned out they were that bad of partners.
“I say we have him struck by lightening,” Anna said without blinking.
“We can’t just kill him, we need him,” Meg reminded.
“But he is rebelling; he was not supposed to agree to help them!” Cael glared at the screen again, but all it did was reflect his glare back.
“What do authors do when characters do this?” Meg asked.
The other two cast her meaningful glances and she fell silent. That was right, she was one of those characters, and she was killed for her rebelling, that was why she was here, writing about her author. She blinked several times, this was getting confusing. Now a character, of a character, was rebelling on, a character.
“Oh, this is getting a little out of hand!” she gasped.
Cael smiled as he said, “And we are going to stop him!”
The effect of his sharp words were ruined when Coridin, Jo’s character, cried, “Cael smiled!”
The next moment everyone was staring at Cael who had dropped his smile and was frowning again. “He smiled, I saw him smile!” Coridin continued repeating and those who had seen made a big deal out of it.
Cael, needless to say, found no amusement in their making a big deal out of his smile; after all, it had not even been a real smile!

“So, if you smile then we can get out of here,” Beth was saying. “That is simple is it not?”
The man looked at them all, and then his eyes widened.
“What?” Gabrielle asked in dismay.
“I do not remember how to smile; in fact I do not think I have ever smiled once in my life!”
“Of course, of course,” Beth moaned as she flopped down on a rock. “I mean that would have been too easy would it not, just have the man smile and all will be better, well it turns out he can’t!”
Christina shook her head sadly and Mariella got a thoughtful look on her face. “Maybe if we did something very evil you would like it so much you would smile.”
The man looked closely at her to see if she was serious but could get nothing from her expression.
“Mari-mummy, world domination does not work in books, especially books being written by our characters,” Gabrielle said as she looked kindly at the man.
“What if we gave him a name?” Christina suggested.
The man looked over at her as she stood under a tree. The branches hung down low and the leaves, dark, silvery green, brushed over her hair. “What kind of name?” he asked doubtfully.
“A dashing name!” Beth exclaimed.
“And one that is easy to say,” Christina said. “Seeing as this is his first name.”
“It should have a nice sound to it,” Gabrielle threw in.
“And one that can strike fear into an enemy’s heart,” Mariella added all the while thinking, “If his face does not fill them with fear I doubt his name could do any better.”
For a long while no one said anything, they all started to think and think hard. But really they had no idea whatsoever as to what to name the man. Mostly they were thinking, “What kind of name would make him smile?”
“I like Phillip,” Beth finally said.
Gabrielle wrinkled her nose. “No, Phillip is too common.”
Beth rolled her eyes but went back to thinking.
Names where then tossed out such as David, Daniel, and so forth. But these were all too common wherein Lorin, Dilus, and so forth were too complex for a first name.
“This is harder then I thought!” Mariella said after a while. She had been pacing but she finally dropped onto a stump and sat in gloomy silence.
“See, it is hopeless, no one can name me,” the man moaned and moved back toward his log.
“Enough of that, this moment!” Gabrielle scolded him. “I am not going to put up with your constant complaining about life being so rough and unfair! We are going to find you a name; we just want it to be the right name because we like you!”
The man shook his head. “No, you don’t like me, you just need me. It is alright, you can tell me the truth. I can handle it; it is nothing I am not used to after all.”
Beth moaned. “We do like you! We would like you more if you were not so depressed, but we plan to help you get over this!”
“There is no hope for me, none at all, you four might as well give up, I would not blame you one bit,” the man sat back down on his log and turned his back to them.
Mariella jumped up and ran at the man, probably with the intent of pushing him in the lake. Gabrielle and Beth grabbed her, holding her back as she fought in their arms.
“Might as well let her go,” the man was saying. “At least then I would be done away with and no longer an unnamed burden to everyone.”
“Let me at him!” Mariella gasped. “I will show him how to smile!”
“Claim now Mari-mummy!” Gabrielle was saying.
Their racket was short lived in a low moan cut through the fog which had grown thicker. Everyone froze and the girls looked at each other. The man lifted his head out of his hands and groaned aloud.
“What was that?” Mariella asked after the silence had returned.
“The wolves and they are coming this way, though that is no surprise. I knew when I died it would be at the jaws of them, they are killers but they also like to kill slowly so that you suffer a great deal first. I always knew I would die in agony.”
Beth rolled her eyes and then looked at the other girls. Their faces all showed a mixture of fear and uncertainty, they all remembered what the villain had told them and though they thought it could not be painful being as none of this was real, they were still not excited about the idea of being eaten by mean wolves.
“Should we run?” Gabrielle asked the man. He just moaned and mumbled something about drying by being eaten alive and how it might be better then drowning but who could really know as no one could be eaten alive and drown.
“We should stay and fight them!” Mariella exclaimed with a flash in her eyes.
“With what?” Beth pointed out. It was true they had no weapons whatsoever.
Mariella tossed back her head and yelled, “Come on you guys help us out here! I am sorry Anna! Can’t you forgive me and help us?”
A bolt of lightening struck close to Mariella and caused loose ends of her hair to stand on end. “That is not funny!” Mariella yelled up at the sky.

In the Inklings room Anna was laughing gleefully and maybe a bit insanely, as she said, “Revenge is so sweet!”
Maddock looked over at the screen as he walked by; he read a few lines and shook his head. “You three are rather creepy!”
Cael looked up at the ring leader and said grimly, “You have not seen anything yet!”
Maddock shook his head and moved on all the while grinning as he thought over his plans for Sybil.
At the computer Meg was moving into place while Cael and Anna watched on eagerly, adding advice when it was needed. Even Cael could not resist another smile as they moved the wolves into place and set their plan into action. Oh how their authors were going to suffer! And they were so deserving of it. Cael looked at the two girls and they all seemed to be thinking the same thing, revenge was sweet, very, very sweet!

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