CTFoWaAGCT Chapter 1

             The Completely True Fiction of Wagner and a Girl Called Tree.

      The house was of the scattered variety featuring mismatched shelves of books piled in every direction, squishy, overstuffed couches, and teacups chipped rather randomly in a manner that is less worn and more well-loved. The smell of fresh cedar, cinnamon, and the early onset of fall pervaded every room which was only fitting since it was owned by a girl called Tree.

Tree was an oddity in her own right being older than most of the girls she knew and somehow younger as well. She lived in a perpetual state of childhood with no head for numbers and pockets constantly filled with small, live things. She wasn't beautiful, but pretty in the way that all things are that are too wild to be tamed and too fragile to be allowed freedom without a moments pause.

On the other hand, Wagner was beautiful. Her face held the exotic, sculpted features one expected to find only in fairytales, but these features could be misleading. Her eyes burned with a strength and determination that reduced those heroines to silly, dimwitted victims. Those eyes dared you to offer a poisoned apple.

If you aren't careful, life becomes tedious in its uniformity. Complacency gives was to conformity until, in an effort to stave off boredom, insanity saves the day.

"I'd rather live in fiction," Wagner said rattling her teacup in its saucer.
"What if we could live in it?" Tree said watching the smoke unfurl from the tip of her cigarette.

Wagner sighed, "You'd have to quit smoking. You'd never be able to keep up, Tree: Too much running in fiction."

"But there's a line of truth in every work of fiction," the girl called Tree said quietly, staring at the cigarette as though it might bite before grinding it into nothing in the small misshapen ash tray on the front stoop. "All you have to do is follow it."

"Truth is slippery," said Wagner knowingly. "It has a tendency to get away from you." But the silence presented a challenge in itself, and Wagner had already begun to turn the problem over in her mind, examining it from various angles and directions. "Unless you're faster." She finally said quietly.