Character Letters - June Edition

So, for those of you who don't know, Rosamund Gregory over at Shoes of Paper ♥ Stockings of Buttermilk (formerly A Wanderer in the Shadowed Land) has a monthly feature called  Character Letters, where one has a character write a letter based on certain prompts.  It's a lovely idea, and I meant to do it last month and didn't get to it.  I nearly didn't get to it this month, either, but I was determined, so here goes.

Nora isn't really a letter-writing kind of girl -- more because she hasn't got anyone to write to then because she doesn't like letters.  The theme for this month's Character Letters was villains, but Nora's story  (entitled, by the way, Coffee-Shop) doesn't really have a villain, per se.  It may yet, but it doesn't right now.  You see, Nora creates her own villains.  Mental villains, that is.  She's kind of her own enemy, and I don't mean that in a dramatic dual-personality kind of way.  She just has tendencies she must fight against and circumstances that are against her, like everyone else.  So her "letter" is a diary entry. 

I did try to write it out by hand, but you see, Nora's handwriting is quite different from mine, and I'm not much of a forger.  So I shall just describe it.  Nora writes in that funny half-cursive, half-print style, where some letters are cursive and joined together, while some are just and print as print can be.  Nevertheless, she isn't a careless person, in writing as in everything else, and her handwriting is quite neat and very small, with a tendency to be rather vertical.  It is not pretty, but hasn't got any obvious faults. She dots all the i's and crosses the t's with short, straight lines.  She likes to use pens but usually confines herself to pencils because they are more economical and can be erased if necessary.  Nora writes in a neat brown-covered journal with a key and lined pages.  She uses the key because she feels it's bad enough to have her thoughts and emotions down permanently on a piece of paper without making it accessible.  She wears the key as a necklace, and finds that to be very romantic and heroine-like.  The girl would never confess to something so silly, though.

Without more ado (though that description was ever so much fun to write):

 April 12, 20--

I am miserable.  I've finally owned it to myself.  I'm lonely and awkward and boring and bored.  The fact that I am miserable just makes me more miserable, too.  I guess that's ironic.  I should be grateful, you know.  I have a job that pays for me to live comfortably enough, I haven't any mortal illnesses, and nobody hates me.  But nobody really likes me, either.  Well --- that's not true either.  Nobody thinks of me enough to like me or dislike me.  I'm not the noticeable kind.  And as for my job, it may pay enough to live on, but I have to continue it constantly in order to live.  I shall never be able to go to college, at least not till I'm too old to want to.  I will be stuck in this dreary life for a long time yet, with no happiness apart from library books and the coffee-shop five blocks down.  I wish that awful car crash had never happened, oh, I wish so hard I feel it must bring them back!  But that's stupid.  They're not coming back.  And it isn't like me to be so emotional.  I must stop this.  But I am so very tired and overworked and just all-around miserable.  I'm very alone, just like in the rhyme: "I care for nobody, and nobody cares for me". 

All right.  I'm going to try and get over it.  My lunch break is over, I've got to get back to work.  And I can look forward to the coffee-shop this afternoon.  I'll think on that.

 - Nora Grace

Okay, I'm sorry it's rather depressing.  But you see, this takes place the day the story begins.  When Nora goes to the coffee-shop this particular afternoon, she meets someone (after an uncharacteristic display of strong emotion) who --- oh, but to tell more would give too much away.  Spoilers, sweetie!