What is The Ending? The Ending is my first serious fantasy story, which will first be a treatment (hopefully to be completed in time to be entered in the SAICFF treatment competition) and then, Lord willing, a screenplay, and maybe, just maybe, a film someday.
The Ending has to do with The Controllers, but it's not really about the Controllers.
The Ending is about a young woman named Heather.
When Heather was a little girl, she started a fantasy story. She worked on it for years, but when she was about thirteen or fourteen, her parents were divorced. Shaken by this ending to her previously secure world, she stopped writing -- partially because it didn't seem important anymore, but partially because she became afraid of endings.
Afraid of stopping the way things were. Afraid of things coming crashing down like her world had when her father left.
On the eve of her wedding, she's afraid. Afraid that her marriage will end up like her parents'. Afraid of moving on from the life she has in her home with her mother. Afraid, again, of endings. She falls asleep wondering if she's going to be able to go through with the wedding tomorrow.
When she wakes up, she's under a dark, cloudy sky, laying on the brown grass in a cold world.
At first she's confused about where she is. Then she begins to wonder if she is dreaming about the fantasy world she created. She gets up and looks around. She stares at the horizon for awhile, feeling cold wind on her cheek, then when she turns around she is shocked to find herself confronted by a young man, staring her straight in the eye.
He introduces himself as Wind, and his austere companion, who stands a few feet away with two horses, as Mineral.
Now Heather has no doubt that this is the world she created. These are two of the Controllers that she wrote about. She betrays surprise and says something about having written them.
Instead of showing confusion, they suddenly grab her and shove her onto Wind's horse. They start to ride away with her. She screams, and tries to ask what they want with her.
When they stop for a meal, Wind sits down and explains that they just did that to keep his father from finding her first. They've been waiting for her for years.
Ever since she stopped writing the book, nothing has progressed. The people live, but no one gains the upper hand in the power struggle, and nothing can ever change much. They've been waiting for her to write the ending.
Now Wind and Heat want her to write it their way.
But just then, the fire is put out and the stars and moon darken, leaving them in pitch black. Heather finds her hand grabbed in the dark and she's pulled away and set on another horse. It's not until they're far away that the lights come back and she finds that she's on a horse with a girl a couple years older than herself, and a middle-aged man is riding next to them.
When they stop, they introduce themselves as Light and Water, more characters from her book. They too want her to write the ending, but they want her to write it for the good of all the controllers and the people.
Heather's skeptical, but they will at last convince her to come with them to write the ending so the world can at last move on.
In order to write the ending, two things must happen:
1. Without the Book, the Writer cannot affect the story in any other way than a normal character. She has to have the Book in her hands. So they have to take her to the Book, which is in a stone sanctuary high in the mountains, which also happens to be the place that legend says the Controllers must gather to release their power and usher in a new world order.
2. They have to find the Plant and Heat Controllers. No one knows who the powers got passed to after the previous Controllers died, not even Heather, because she hadn't figured it out when she was writing the story. But she can't write the ending until she sees and talks to them, because she needs to write about them too.
So Light, Water, and Heather set out to find Heat and Plant, and then travel to the Book. The elderly Creature gets sent off ahead, and sends help from time to time. Wind and Mineral chase them and cause all the trouble they can.
Eventually, they find Plant, a farmer's wife, because of the plants that grow around her home. They realize that Heat must be either her husband or father, and when they find that her father has died, they realize it is her husband -- but Wind and Mineral get there first, and kidnap Heat.
They take Heat to the sanctuary, trying to get Heather to follow so they can convince her to write their ending. Light, Water and Heather follow, and meet Creature there.
All the Controllers end up at each others' throats, and keep each other at swordpoint while Heather walks up to the book.
She realizes at last, as she holds the book in her hands, what Light's been trying to tell her all along.
An ending isn't an ending at all.
It's just a new beginning.
I'm still deciding on what will be the ending that she writes that signifies that.
Then she goes back home.
Thoughts? Comments?
) I have is that it sounds like it has a lot of potential. 
Are the controllers now more at peace together? Will Wind and Mineral continue to mess things up? How does Heather get home?
