There was a strange tone in Brody’s voice when he replied. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’d like that too.’

Chapter Thirty-Seven

BRODY WOKE UP feeling unusually energized. For the first time in ages, he’d slept through the night without tossing and turning or spending at least a couple of hours staring at the ceiling in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe it had something to do with the phone on the bedside table next to him. He’d drifted off listening to Anna’s soft breathing as she slept.

He practically sprang out of bed, startling Lewis, with the idea of going on an extra-long run, but as he began to get dressed, he realized it wasn’t a run he needed; it was something else.

This strange buzzing feeling needed to be let out, but he knew instinctively that a run wouldn’t help. It would still be there when he returned, muscles aching, damp with sweat. And he definitely needed to do something to expel this feeling. Not because it was bad, but because that’s what you were supposed to do with it.

So that was why, after a strong coffee and a steaming bowl of porridge, he found himself at his desk. His heart was pounding as it always did when he sat there these days, but something was different about that too. It wasn’t fear alone that was making his pulse race; there was something else in the mix.

Instead of reaching for pen and paper, he opened a drawer and pulled out his laptop. Initially, he’d abandoned this method of capturing words because it had been too hard, returning to pen and paper, which somehow helped his imagination flow better, but after a while, even that had become stagnant. Holding his breath slightly, he clicked on an icon and opened up his preferred writing software.

New project. New document. New everything. He stared at the blank rectangle on the screen in front of him, waiting for letters and words, sentences and paragraphs. But that white space was no longer an impenetrable fog, because as he waited, it began to clear. He could make out a figure, a child, standing with her hands on her hips and her chin lifted in defiance.

He closed his eyes to shut out the picture, shifted in his seat, readying himself to stand, but as he opened his eyes and planted his feet on the floor, twisting to do just that, something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. The elf. Or the ‘not elf’, as he’d begun to think of her. She wasn’t looking his way, just staring past him into the distance, but it was as if she’d whispered something to him. Brody sat back down, placed his hands on the keyboard, and his fingers began to move.

Thirty minutes later he was halfway through what might turn into a short story, maybe even a novella. It was rough. No planning had gone into it – he’d just written what he’d seen inside his head, whatever had come out of the fog. It started with the Not Elf sitting in a woodland glade, the sunlight warm about her shoulders, the grass cool and full of daisies. He’d described her in detail, then how she’d woken up from a deep and dreamless sleep. Without a kiss. Without a prince or anyone else to save her, just because she was ready.