IT’S HERE, GUYS! YAYAYAYAY! I am so looking forward to reading your lovely chapters this go ’round. 😀

Here is the list of participants and their order. Please let me know if those weeks absolutely will NOT work for you, and I’ll do my best to change it.

1. Allison/Josie
2. Silver Wisp
3. Nicole
4. Lainey
5. K. A.
6. Mukta
7. Megan
8. Zielle
9. Mahriya
10. Hope
11. Mercury Vivian Eliza
12. Anika Joy
13. Chloe
14. Charis (Grace)
15. Mirra
16. Sarah
17. LydiaFinn
18. EnniMorgan
19. Allison/Josie

For a quick review of the rules, I’ll show you the first chapter here shortly, and then the next person, will write the second chapter based on where it ends and the loose plot outline I’ll give you. After a maximum of one week, it’s the next person’s turn. If you finish your story before one week, that would be great too! It will make WordCrafters move forward a little more quickly.

I decided to put the pictures of the characters and their descriptions on the WordCrafters 3 page so this post wouldn’t get insanely long. XD

 

Now for the first chapter. Eeeee, I’m so excited! I hope you enjoy!

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Esme was having a wonderful day. Little waves nibbled at her toes, sun rays warmed her back, and the seashell she had found felt cool and smooth in her palm. Vivi was sunbathing on her beach towel a few feet away, and Pippin… Esme shook her head and smiled. Pippin was sneaking up to Vivi with a pail of freezing ocean water. He beamed Esme a mischievous grin and dumped the bucket over Vivi’s head.

Esme had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Vivi scrambled to her feet, spluttering with rage and surprise, and ran after Pippin, yelling and threatening to dunk him in the water if he so much as touched her again.

She heaved a happy sigh. Life was good.

Esme settled back into the sand and took another fond look at her seashell. It was perfect, spiraling around and around, each spiral smaller than the last. It reminded her of a giant, periwinkle snail shell. She turned the shell over to gaze into the pearly opening. Suddenly, she gasped. Her eyes widened. She shook the shell, tapped it gently on the ground, and finally reached inside with her slender fingers and pulled out a scrap of paper.

“Pippin, Vivi, come quick! Look what I found!” she called excitedly.

They halted the chase and trotted obediently over to Esme.

“What is it, Esme?” asked Pippin. In answer, she handed him the scrap.

Pippin frowned and read aloud, “‘Item 7: fourteen mermaid scales.’ What on earth?”

Vivi snatched it from him, “Wait, and there’s something on the back: ‘Operation Portal Icxylwocig, property of P. Charming.’”

The three friends looked at each other with wide eyes. Was it time to go back?

*****************

Alalia was having a wonderful day. She and her cousin Jacob were testing out his new boat, the “Captain Hook,” at the beach. A stiff breeze filled the sail and they skimmed gracefully through the water. She leaned over the side, trailing her hands in the cool water, and…

“JACOB! Come look!”

Jacob started in surprise. “What on earth, Alalia? You nearly knocked me overboard!” Jacob rolled his eyes, but grinned good-naturedly. He made his way over to her side of the boat. “What-“ He left the word hanging as a flash of green and red flew under their boat. He rubbed his eyes. Alalia blinked.

There it was again – a long, green, fish-like tail, with red hair was streaming out above it.

“A mermaid,” Alalia whispered.

They looked at each other. Could this mean what they thought it did?

*****************

The next day Pippin, Vivi, and Esme all hurried back to the beach. They scoured the shore for more notes, leaving no shell unturned.

Nothing.

Finally the three of them plopped down on a rock, discouraged. Two other teenagers were walking in their direction, chatting intently about something.

“I’m just sure it was a mermaid,” the girl was saying. “What if it was Ariel?”

The boy shook his head. “I dunno. I mean, if it’s really her, why is she in the human world and not in Fairyland? I realize we didn’t see her when we visited but-“

They both stopped short when they noticed the three children listening to them with wide eyes and open mouths.

Vivi spoke first. “Are you guys talking about… mermaids?”

The two teenagers looked embarrassed. “Oh… um, we were just…”

“And something about Fairyland?”

“Well, we-“

“So we aren’t the only ones!”

The boy looked startled. “Wait, what?”

Pippin hopped off the rock and held out the mysterious note. “Have a look at this. We found it yesterday in a shell.”

A look of recognition flitted over the girl’s face. “Icxylwocig. I saw that on a sign in the forest, when I first came through the portal.” Then she caught herself. “Oh, I mean…”

“Really? You guys went through a portal?!” Vivi was excited now. “So did we! Well, kind of. See, one day we found this huge, weird-looking egg…”

And with that, everyone started talking at once, racing each other to tell their wonderful adventures.

After many words and tales and names were exchanged, the five children felt like they had been friends for years. It was easy to become friends with the only other people in the world who understand your biggest secret.

“But now we need to figure out what this note means,” Pippin said, getting back to business. “It could be some sort of portal instrument or something, to take us back.”

“Or maybe it has something to do with our mermaid sighting? You know, the part about the mermaid scales?” Jacob suggested.

“Maybe…”

Esme had been listening quietly to everyone else’s talk, until at last she spoke up shyly, in her soft voice: “I-I have an idea.” Everyone turned toward her expectantly.

“Well, you know how it says, ‘Operation Portal Icxylwocig? And the mermaid scales section sounds like part of a recipe. Maybe P. Charming, whoever that is, was trying to make a sort of recipe for a portal to get to Fairyland?”

Everyone nodded their heads thoughtfully.

“Yeah, and you need mermaid scales to make it!” Alalia jumped in. “And maybe the ‘Item 7’ part means it’s the 7^th ingredient or something.”

Vivi jumped up suddenly. “Guys, wait. What if we found all the ingredients and made the portal ourselves? Then if that really was Ariel that Jacob and Alalia saw, we could take her back to Fairyland, and everything would be perfect!”

At that, everyone started talking excitedly.

“HOLD IT!” yelled Jacob. “Does anyone know a P. Charming? If we could find him, maybe he’d give us the rest of the notes.”

“But if he knows all the ingredients, maybe he’s already made the portal… maybe that’s how I got to Fairyland in the first place,” Alalia pointed out.

Everyone was silent for a moment, thinking.

Suddenly Esme’s face brightened. “Oh, I just remembered! We have Katri’s diary! Maybe there’s something in there about portals!”

“Brilliant!” Pippin shouted in delight. “Let’s go check!”

*****************

Precious minutes ticked away as Pippin, Vivi, and Esme introduced their new friends to their parents, but finally the five children were safely in the girls’ bedroom at the beach house. Esme held out a violet leather journal studded with glittering stones.

Jacob wrinkled his nose, “Ew, you can tell that’s a fairy’s diary. Look at all that purple sparkly stuff.” Everyone laughed. “So are we going to read the whole thing or what?”

Vivi frowned. “Nah, that would take way too long. Here, I’ve read the first entry already, so I can just give you a summary while Esme looks for the entry about portals.”

Vivi cleared her throat with a mock-serious expression, and began. “So Snow White got banished from her home in Fairyland after she herself banished Ariel, Katri’s sister, out of jealousy.”

Jacob snorted. “Number one, how can a mermaid be sisters with a fairy? And number two, she banished her out of jealousy?”

Vivi sighed impatiently. “Number one, I am not an expert on family relations in Fairyland. I don’t know, maybe one of them was adopted or something. If Katri wrote in her diary that Ariel’s her sister, I’ll go with that. And number two, yes, she did. Because Ariel had married her prince while Snow White’s prince, Prince Charming, had suddenly disappeared one day and never returned. No one knows why. Snow White was so heartbroken and jealous of Ariel’s happiness that she banished her – she only meant to move her to a different province, but her plans went awry. Now Katri, her father, and Snow White all want Ariel back, but the problem is, they don’t know where to find her. They think she might be in the human world, but if so, they can’t go and get her. Residents of Fairyland are too obvious in the human world, and plus, there are other physical complications of adjusting to a different world. That’s why we all went to Fairyland – they wanted to force us to find Ariel, but we escaped before they could make us do it.”

“So do you think they sent us the note on purpose, to take us back? No one else but us could figure out what the note meant,” Alalia said.

Pippin shook his head. “Nah, because how could they know we would find that specific shell?”

Jacob nodded. “Good point. It’s still a little weird, though.” He looked over at Esme. “Did you ind anything yet, Esme?”

“Actually, yes!” Esme smiled. “Here, Vivi, you can read it.”

Vivi cleared her throat and read…

Dad says portals to other worlds must be made with resources native to that world. For instance, if I wanted to make a portal to the human world, I would need wood, nails, and other human things to make it. So for Prince Charming’s portal to work, he has to take some ingredients from Fairyland to the human world and build it there. I don’t know why he thinks it’s worth the risk – what if he gets an ingredient wrong and gets stuck in the human world forever? I personally never liked Flynn Rider that much anyway, but I guess he and Charming were pretty close friends. Rapunzel just isn’t the same since he’s gone missing, and I’ll admit it’s quite heroic of Prince Charming to try to rescue her dear husband.

“Woah, now everything is starting to make sense,” Vivi said. “So Prince Charming must have been making a portal to get his friend back to Fairyland, but he messed up his recipe and the portal didn’t work.”

“GUYS! I have it!” Alalia shouted. “Why didn’t we think of this sooner: P. Charming is Prince Charming!”

Everyone blinked. Oh, duh.

Jacob got to his feet, rubbing his hands together. “Well, now that we’ve got all this figured out, let’s go make the portal and save everyone!”

Vivi looked at him scornfully. “You can’t just do that, Jacob. What about our parents? And how are we going to find the other notes? We don’t even know if there ARE other notes. We need to get prepared, first. We’ll need food, and water, and some way to make shelter, and-”

“That’s our girl,” grinned Pippin, poking Vivi. “Always prepared.” She glared at him.

Esme, who was still leafing through the diary pages, suddenly jumped up and shouted, “EUREKA!” Then she blushed and lowered her voice. “Oops. I mean, look what I found!” She had opened the journal to a page with a list of ingredients.

Prince Charming’s portal is coming along pretty well. He even told me what he has so far. (But it’s top secret, so don’t tell anyone, diary. Ha ha.)

• Item One: Oak wood

• Item Two: Generous amount of fairy dust

• Item Three: Stepping stones

• Item Four: ???

• Item Five: ???

• Item Six: ???

• Item Seven: ???

I sure hope Prince Charming’s expedition goes well, because if he can’t find the right ingredients, he might never return.

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Ooooohhhhh! 😀 And lastly but not leastly, here’s the revised plot summary, to aid you in your writing:

It all starts with a mysterious note tucked inside a seashell. What could it mean? Who could it be from? And could it be time to go back? Five friends, Pippin, Jacob, Vivi, Alalia, and Esme work together to solve the mystery, and come up with a surprising solution: What if Snow White’s prince, Prince Charming, was working on constructing a portal between the human and fairytale world, but he got stranded in the human world and couldn’t get back to Snow White? If the five friends could find the rest of the notes, perhaps they could build their own portal to bring Ariel back to Fairyland – and maybe even Prince Charming with her.

Thus begins the biggest adventure so far as the children track down pieces of Fairyland hidden in the human world. But unbeknownst to them, there is danger lurking in the shadows – banished convicts from Fairyland that will do almost anything to get their hands on those mysterious notes. If this is a fairy tale, where is the happily ever after?

Exciting? I think so! I cannot wait to see how the story turns out! If you have any questions about the story or the participant list or WordCrafters in general, please just drop me a comment.

Thank you all so much for participating, and have fun!

***Allison***