"this ride is gonna be rough / this meat is gonna be tough"

Writing's been more of a struggle today. I'm still not sure where everything's headed, though the first bits are fairly clear in my mind. I thought, as I couldn't possibly finish before school starts anyway, that I would be a little more footloose with the whole thing. I still need to work out the destination, though, or I'll just freeze, not being able to make decisions, as I don' t have enough info. Anyway, I thought I'd paste some stuff from today up here -- this shouldn't happen every day (hell, I dunno if I'll be able to work on it every day after school starts), but it seems like a laugh. This is nearly half my day's work:

~~~

Derik had a hand in someone's pocket – he couldn't tell whose it was, as he'd thrust his arm past several people to reach this haven for money and, apparently, large wads of lint. The idea was for the mark to blame any sensation on the press of folks behind him, and they were rousting about, craning necks and doffing caps in efforts to see the fight. Derik could hear a stomach-contracting sort of rustle-bang pattern, with intermittent wet, sploshy-thud sounds. The lady keeping Derik and his mark from ever meeting was bouncing on her slippered feet, ribbons waving about. The smell of citrus and rose-water plumed up and gagged Derik.

Really, he only had his hand in that pocket for a moment. Every cracksman and cly-hander knew not to overstay a welcome, no matter how long they might caper in a friend's doorway after several drinks. So it was just worse luck, then, that the something that had been blocked from Derik's sight as it approached on the other side of Maitesse and Scrivener's goosed him at that particular moment.

“Derik,” this goosing person said, voice full of the sort of gaiety and energy usually reserved for glad-handing politicians and madmen, “it's been too long, you horrible thief!”

This collection of words was delivered, much to the aid of Derik's building apoplexy, as his desired victim turned about and tried to push his face and arms through the crowd – Derik couldn't figure out which he worried about more: fists or recognition. The goosing hand balled up in Derik's grey shirt and pulled him backwards, then it turned him around.

The sky, Derik noticed, really is nice and blue today, with just a few of those dark clouds tooling around. The breeze is pleasant, and isn't throwing the smell of blood and fighting toward me right now. It really doesn't seem like a day tailor-made to kill me, does it?
He finally let his eyes focus on the person that had jarred him in the middle of his delicate money-making activities. She was taller than him by half a foot, wore expensive clothes in yellow and orange, and had her free arm tucked into her chest in a practiced way that lifted her bosom up and forward. Derik would have hacked and sputtered at this, except it was so damn familiar.

“Danielle,” he said, voice low, hissing, and vibrating toward the kind of high-pitched tension that usually signals the snapping of a violin string, “are you trying to get me killed?”