2/10/19 Vignette

This cold, snowy night brings you a vignette from three years ago.

“I dared the knot to slip again, my fingers aching and slick against the well-worn rope. It held. A final tug satisfied me and I left the cleaned and dressed deer to hang in the chill silence of the barn. Like everything else in Mountain Hope the ancient and ramshackle building slanted, worn and tired even before its resurrection. Steaming fog wisped from my nostrils, drifting away in the winter dark. I hadn’t planned on taking the yearling buck, but the opportunity had been too good. Winter was setting in and we could always use more meat. Rowan and Todd wouldn’t have worried about me for another day or so, anyway. Slipping in the rear door of the old farmhouse, I caught myself reaching for the light switch. I jerked my hand away, reminded that I carried a lifetime of habits that couldn’t be broken even after twenty years. The fire in the hearth had been banked, another skill I had to learn in those first early years after the Fall. I had taught Posey, and Rowan. Todd had come to us with things to teach, things we had sorely needed. Teasing out a long splinter of kindling, I used it to light the lantern Rowan had left on the kitchen table. I washed my hands in the basin, stripping in the relative privacy of the empty room. Hauling water from the cistern in the spring room, I scrubbed as best I could and left the blood stained clothes to soak until the morning. So much had changed in the past two decades, I thought to myself. Not just the obvious, the things that were now major undertakings or so very, very dangerous. Before the Fall I would have considered the air in the kitchen frigid, now it only seemed chilly. Working my way up the stairs, their creaks and groans comfortable and familiar, I slipped into my room, donning a worn pair of flannel pajamas. From there I made my way into the twins room, Althea and Maggie sleeping quietly under hundred year old wool blankets and newer quilts made by the hand of their mother. I checked on James next, then Tanner and Steele. I even glanced in on Rowan and Todd. Curled together against the cold, the couple was sound asleep. Satisfied, I returned to my room and sat on the sagging edge of my own bed. So much had changed. Resolutely I turned down the lantern, fighting the urge, the desperate need to pull the photos from their resting place in the bookcase by the window. Photos of my family, my husband and children, taken a life time ago, before the Fall. Before Justin left, walking down the faded blacktop of the highway, on a simple quest for supplies, for antibiotics and aspirin. He never returned. My heart still ached, tears still pricked at my eyes. I would not look at the photos of his smiling face, of Sadie in his arms and Aaron at his shoulder. They were gone. Sadie had left with Posey ten years ago, looking for her father, looking for answers. Aaron had gone hunting during the long winter. When the blizzard set in, I knew I had lost him, too. I was not alone, Rowan had come, and Todd. Before long she had the twins, and then came James. Tanner and Steele had shown up the year before Todd, starving and bold. I was Mama Alice to them all. I had family still, but that did not make my heart ache any less. I did not grieve for a life lost any less for the life I had gained. One lived as one had to, but in the dark hours of the winter night, that family, that life haunted my dreams.”

2/5/19 Dayline POV

Another POV for Dayline –
“His mouth a thin, hard line, the boy listens carefully as his mother explains what awaits. He understands that his knowledge is a brittle shield against what he will witness when his father leads him down the polished marble corridors and through the iron bound doors of the chamber where the captured outCountry man lies shackled. As she plaits his long ivory hair, his mother hums, a soft tune, but one laced with magic also. She cannot prevent the ritual that awaits her son, but she can dull some of the immediate horror until they have a chance to discuss it later. When it is done, and after they have had their talk, the boy lies in his enormous bed, alone, unable to shake the power he felt when his father began to carve the flesh before him. Dark power, red and potent, it pooled in and around his father, stronger than the Light his mother holds within her willowy frame. Light and Dark, blood and fire. These things follow the boy into fitful dreams.”

2/2/19 Dayline POV

This isn’t trash. POV from Dayline Book 3.

“The Healer walked out, slowly, her footsteps silent on the golden light of morning. He lay back on the linens, fresh, redolent of sun and wind and green, growing things. There was not much more he could do, and her words had shown him just how lacking he was. Not only in strength, but in Light. Pale, shaking fingers brushed the vibrant skin work that spiraled up his arm, over the characters etched with her Light, the ones that had shaken her to the quick. Hope. Dream. Peace. Protection. Love. – Love. That last which she had given him meaning for. He had not known love in all the days of his captivity. Pale green eyes blinked away the thoughts that threatened to tumble forth. There was so much that needed to be completed and no time in which to do so. The chill winter air rasped in his lungs. He did not know how he could achieve all he had need of, but perhaps he could start by following her instruction, and rest. And in resting, perhaps he could allow himself to dream.”

2/2/19 Exposition

One of my favorite exposition paragraphs.

“Yeah, there was a wedding,” Alex rumbled, “One of those drunk on a beach in Costa Rica affairs. I knew that Chloe was into partying, booze and drugs and the wild, wild life. When she got pregnant, it was strongly suggested that she clean up, so she quit it all in a rage, cold turkey. Then she made it damn clear to me that once the ‘fucking parasite’ was clear of her personal space she was going to reclaim her life.” He sighed, walking to the edge of the porch, his hands hard on the railing. “And she meant it. As soon as Alice was born Chloe got herself discharged from the hospital and was high as fuck less than twenty-four hours later. I had been reading, taking classes, going to single Dad support groups for months, the hospital released Alice to me, and I took her home. I raised her. It was easier to find a nanny than I had expected, but it seemed they were all hot young European girls with an agenda. I was not in the market for a hot young European bride, or even side piece. This ended a lot of their contracts early. In the end it was easier to take a step back and come home. I got a call one morning from some mutual acquaintances in Minneapolis. Chloe had been found dead of an overdose in some seedy shithole. I wasn’t surprised. I identified the body, did the paperwork and left town. It was my first time away from Alice. She was four. Six months later I had gigs set up that I could do remotely for the most part, and I came back to Elk Flats. And met you and Trinity.”

1/31/19 POV for world building

POV for world building in Dayline – from Book 3.

“The waist length braids slipped over his shoulder, brushing the map under his hands. Automatically he flipped them back, securing them in the cord at his neck. The two points in his mind seemed impossibly far apart, he was unable to link them in any way that could be deemed successful, yet he had no other options. The whole idea was vastly more theory than reality. The reality was blood and death and a world full of ghosts. Tapping the smudged dot on the paper, he let the scene flow into his thoughts, outlining each fence post, each blade of grass and slowly rustling leaf. He felt the breeze on his skin, the scent of the forest here less the dark green of pine and more the bright sharpness of bark and leaf. Homes surrounded the green square of open meadow. Moving slowly from one to the next, movement caught his eye. Her slim form, now rounded with his half-brothers child, appeared in the shadows of the porch. Illusion, vision, dream. He pushed aside the agony, the rage, moving towards the dwelling, need inside him like a live thing. Even for the illusion of her. For all he had accomplished these past six months, removing that bond proved impossible, they were linked irrevocably, painfully, eternally. The madness drove him, it ate at his heart, it gave him the energy to link impossible distances and save them all. And if he burned out with his effort, well then the pain would stop.”

1/29/19

Today is going to hurt.

“Heyla, Da,” I mumble, my brain still thick with sleep.
“Heyla Sparrowhawk. I got a call-out this mornin’. Jest wanted t’check on ya afore I left.”
My mind fizzes with alarm. Call-outs are routine, something needing fixing on a farm or cot with no mechrat gang attached. Da’s been doing them since I was a mere babe. More often than not they are on the Dayline side of the river, but recently they have been taking Da and the others into Refuge proper. There is no prohibition on coming and going from the city, only the implicit warning that you are subject to the laws and customs of the necro houses while you are there.
My head clears enough to think to ask which it is. “Refuge…or?” I leave the question unfinished.
A sad smile creeps across his sharp features. “Aye, Refuge.”
“Da…” I begin, unease churning in my guts.
“Don’t fret. I’ll be back afore yer done with what Cambria has set for ya today,” he leans down and kisses my forehead as if I was a childing and not a woman almost grown.
“I love you, Da.” I whisper to his retreating footsteps.

1/28/19 Writing Exercise

Just keep writing….

“The forest rang with it, echoing off the trees in waves of agony. I tried to cover my ears, to block out the sound, but the ache, the despair lanced through my being sharper and more accurate than any archers arrow. Earsplitting cries threatening to tear me apart, leaving me raw and bleeding. It ripped my shielding away, I was exposed and naked in the howling maelstrom of his suffering. My Light bled into the dust, my heart with it. Tears burned fire down my cheeks, great shuddering sobs joining the cacophony in the twilight.”

1/25/19 From Lost Lands

Sometimes we can become so fixated on a goal, that we fail to realize the wonder and magic of what we actually achieve.

From Lost Lands:
“I dreamt of inconsolable loss. Nightmares of a pain in my soul that was unbearable. The only image I ever remembered was of a woman, a woman and a lion lying together in red, red sand. I knew the lion was dead, and this was the hole, the emptiness that gnawed at me. As I grew I became obsessed with becoming a lion, no matter what games my friends and I played, what fantasies we told each other I was always a lion, not a superhero, not a cop or an astronaut, always a lion. The only way to make the ache stop was to become a lion and find the woman.” He looks down at his hands, lying limply one inside the other. “Imagine my horror, the complete and utter failure that filled me when I became a tiger instead. So close. I had come so far, so close to fixing everything, I had spent twenty one years convinced that if I could become the lion from my dream I could make all the pieces grinding together inside me fit, make them into something complete. But I was a tiger, not a lion… I never even stopped to think about the impossibility of becoming a tiger at all.”

1/22/19 Snippet from Dayline that got cut.

Another little snippet from Dayline that got cut.

Fun flavor text, though.

“Some of the mechrats were more tidy than others. Still, Doolie insisted that the shop be kept clean and organized. The bunkroom stretched off one side of the main shop floor, the storage area opposite. I searched the maze of equipment, tools, bins and boxes and bales for any sign of Finch. Eventually I stumbled on Copper and Marten, working on a thresher behind a tangled mess of fencing wire. They hadn’t seen Doolie’s first-born all day, they said, but he was currently partial to spending time in the orchards, usually in the company of Rye Morgan. I sighed at that. After the fiasco with the applesauce, he hadn’t been particularly kind to any of our requests. If he was sporting with Rye, there was a good chance he’d dismiss me, even if I told him it was Mae who was wanting him.”

1/20/19 A little backstory from Dayline

Working with some of my POV exercises last night, and this just tugged at my poor heart.
A little backstory from Dayline.

“The boy watched from behind the thick, shaggy bark of the enormous tree. His mother often met her sisters on the days when his Father was sequestered with the other mages, sometimes she let him play in the dim little dugout cabin hidden under the thick copse of ground oak, but today she had insisted he wait in a cluster of trees a little ways off the dusty track. His mother’s sisters were not like her. One was tall, and graceful as she was, but her long hair was muddy red and unruly, her skin golden brown. She spoke like fire and wind and moved with heavy, deliberate strokes. The other was small, with quick eyes and words and skin like coffee and milk. Her hair shone like raven’s wings, braided in a thick crown about her head. He knew his mothers sisters were outCountry, just as he supposed his mother must have been. His father called the outCountry mechrats and farmers lowly, less than human, but as he watched the three women, he wondered how much his father really knew of the outCountry, of the trees, the wind, the sun, the Light and the people. The boy longed to know more of the forest, the streams and meadows, so much more. There must have been others like him, children, who lived among the tall trees, in houses or burrows or perhaps even structures built among the windblown branches so high above. Sometimes, when his mother left him in the copse, he would work spells, spells to hide the stooped entrance, to make it unseen and unnoticeable. If his mother could not find it again, perhaps she would forget him there and he could live under the sun and stars instead of the mists and rain of the city. She always found him, and used her quiet, firm words to coax him from his dreams, to show him the reality of his power, and of the line the land had drawn between the forest and the city.”