Pieces

Pieces of my Heart

Or,

I Wish I Could Quite You, but I Don't Really.

Cutting you out of my life has proven a more difficult endeavor than I’d thought. You’re everywhere. But how not, in this technological world, in which everyone is connected, always?

Some nights when I lie awake, sweating in the humid southern air that no air conditioner could ever hope to cool, all I can see in my thoughts is your face, and all I can hear is the sound of your voice. I can almost still taste your skin, sweaty and sweet and always unnaturally cool, and sometimes I imagine I catch the hint of your scent blowing in through an open window, something so faint and distant it takes me a moment to remember it.

When I dream, I don’t dream of you; but I’ve never had good dreams, so how could you ever be a feature of one?

No, you are a creature of my waking world, haunting every moment. Your laugh. Your smile, curved and inviting; the taste of your lips. The feel of your hair caught up between my fingers. The sight of moonlight reflecting on your skin. The sound of your gasp, your moan, a single indrawn breath as my nails rake the long, perfect expanse of your ribs, your back, your belly, your thighs. The way your oft-rigid expression goes soft as you fall asleep. And the way you always startle, just a little, when I tell you I love you. (or was that only in the dreams I don’t let myself have about you? Did I ever really tell you, or did I only imagine that part?)

Do you know that one of the things I regret most, most, maybe more than not fighting harder for you, is that of all of the times we’ve shared a bed, we’ve never slept entwined. We’ve never even slept with our fingers brushing. There’s always been space between us.

Something has always been there.

Your lover, and then mine.

My fiancé, and then yours.

Our parents.

Thousands of miles.

Even just a few – sometimes than can be enough.

Something; always, something.

We’ve fallen apart, and there are just some pieces that don’t fit together.

And yet, and yet.

If you don’t fit anymore, why is it so damn hard to cut you out of my life?

(maybe because I’m still hoping the pieces of my heart, my soul, my world, will rearrange themselves so that you can fit again.)

Westen POV

For those of you I've asked if the switch between 1st person POV and 3rd person POV is weird, here's one of the third person chapters. Westen, the crown prince, gets his first chapter! Formatting is a little weird, but I've transferred it from Scrivener, so, I blame that.



Westen had visited Eldar half a dozen times since that first time nearly two years ago. His father claimed he sent Westen to further create bonds between the two great households, between the future King and the future Duke, as well as with Westen’s future Queen. It was good for the nation, he said, to see such a friendship. It helped to solidify the crown’s relationship with the oldest, strongest duchy in the north, just as the King’s childhood friendship with Phenoul Coletti had done.

Westen bowed his head and agreed with his father. He did agree, and he understood. When his friends in the citadel, young peers who were sons of great men and young esquires who would one day be knights asked why he went, such was the answer he gave.

But the truth was that he went for Samuel. Even if his father did not ask it of him, Westen would have gone. Although he had known his other companions as long as he could remember, his favorite friend was Westen. The other boy was easy-going and always smiling. He was bright, like sunshine. He was good, in such a pure sense of the word that when Westen envisioned himself as King, it was to Samuel he looked for guidance of how to act.

The boy was rash and a little bit bad, but Westen had never known him to be cruel. He didn’t think the other boy knew how to be cruel.

There were guards waiting at the westernmost edge of the city to escort him to the castle. A single, winding street ran through the heart of the city, but a hundred other side streets led off of it. He had wandered many of them with Samuel, who had often traversed them before with his sister. The main road presented a city of grand splendor. Every house that faced it stood in perfect order, and the merchants who sold their wares all smiled warmly as they passed. There were less savory parts of the city, though, where merchants glared and looked at everyone as if expecting a thief at any moment. There were houses of ill-repute, houses of debauchery and sin, and there were parts of the city much less well kept than this one.

It was a lie that put a good face on the truth that even peace cannot eradicate poverty.

So his father had taught him when he was too young even to walk.

But the four guards in the white-and-gold Coletti livery where in good spirits, and he dismissed such thoughts to turn and converse with them as they rode.

Eventually, they passed through the arch of the inner wall of the city, which protected the palace, and the two guards on duty there bowed low to him as he passed.

His horse’s steel-shod hooves clipped on the white marble the road became. The trees to either side of the road were still green, standing tall and proud.

And before the great steps of the palace, the duke and his family awaited to greet him.

One of his own guards, in the red and silver of the royal House, offered him a hand as he dismounted. Westen ignored him, and turned to bow to the Duke.

Lord Coletti bowed, and his beautiful wife curtsied, the green skirt of her gown swirling as she moved.

“Welcome, young prince,” she said for the both of them in her musical voice, “It gives me great pleasure to see you here once more.” She smiled at him, and then stepped forward to kiss his cheeks.

It always amused Westen how the Duchess subtly took control of any situation.

The Duke echoed her sentiments, and Westen caught the amused smile lighting briefly on Samara’s face. So she noticed it too, the subtle power dynamic in her family. It did not surprise him; for all that he did not like her, he had quickly realized she missed little.

Once more, he bowed low to the Duke and his Lady, and then the sister was before him, the girl who might one day be his queen.

She met his gaze, and all he saw there was his own reflection. Her lips turned in a smile, and she bowed to him and murmured something about how pleasant it was to see him again. But it wasn’t the smile he’d seen her turn on her twin a thousand times. That smile was brighter even than Samuel’s infectious grins. Her entire face softened when she looked at her brother, as if the whole world had melted away and she beheld only the most precious thing in the world to her.

Samuel looked at her like that, too. It wasn’t as obvious, since he was always flashing his white teeth in a jaw splitting smile. With her, her entire face changed. With him, it was subtler, but Westen had come to see it.

He was jealous. He didn’t mind admitting to it. No one had ever looked at him like that.

His mother… after she had lost Alciun three years ago, she seemed to have forgotten how to smile at all. She walked about the palace like a wraith, like a ghost, half of herself. As if she died with her son.

His father loved him well; Westen knew it, for the King was an affectionate man, and showered him often with gifts. But the King was preoccupied often with matters of state, and paid less attention to his son than the boy might have liked.

Even Samuel, with whom Westen would spend all of his time if he could, didn’t exactly look at him like that.

There was a connection between the two that he could never sever, nor ever hope to attain for himself.

Samuel broke him out of his thoughts with a bone-splitting hug. With a brief look at his sister, the younger boy led Westen into the palace, all the while chatting incessantly about what had happened since Westen had been there last.

Mostly, he spoke of mischief he’d gotten into with Samara. Samuel led him through the halls, one hand still clasped loosely around the prince’s arm. He launched into a long rant about the terribly dull lessons he had to endure, lessons Westen himself had endured at Samuel’s age, and then Westen saw he was being led to the kitchens.

“Really Sam? Don’t you think I might want a bath after my long travels before we go pilfering tarts?”

“Pilfering?” Samuel gave him his best injured face, which was really so pathetic that it was quite clearly faked, and then he said, “I’m wounded, my Lord. Pilfering, I?” He released Westen long enough to press both hands to his breast in mock-agony.

“Yes, you,” he said. Laughing, the prince knocked his shoulder against Westen’s and then slung an arm over the other boy’s slight shoulders. He really was little for his age. Slight of bone-structure, as Westen had been told the Blessed often were. “What else might we be up to?”

“Why, pilfering, of course!”

It wasn’t, not truly. Westen waited in the entry way to the kitchens in plain sight as the brunette pretended to sneak around the kitchens. He did an abhorrent job of it, really, but the servants merely looked on with amusement and pretended not to see him. An elderly looking woman with flour on her cheeks winked at the prince and turned her back on a platter of sweet meats.

Samuel returned quickly and held out the platter, a victorious grin on his face.

“How did you used to manage that in the city, with actual vendors, when it was actually stealing?”

“Mmm?” he asked around a mouthful of bread. He swallowed, held out the platter until Westen took one, and then said, “It was mostly Sam, really. I was always look-out.”

“Aaah. The bad sister. The sneaky one. That makes sense. I never can tell what she’s thinking beneath that mask of hers.”

“She’s not so bad, you know,” Samuel said, defensive of his beloved sister, “She’s just protective of me. I don’t think she likes sharing. But if you got to know her, you’d find she’s actually sweet.” He laughed. “Though, she is sneaky and a little bit bad, and she can be foul-tempered. She’d be proud to hear you say so, actually, I think.”

“Well,” Westen decided, “I’ll give her a chance if she’ll give me one.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Sam warned, “She’s as proud as you are. She’s not like to bow her head first.”

They ate in silence as they found their way back up to the guest quarters Westen had started to think of as his own. He was pleased to find a steaming bath waiting for him. A pretty serving girl straightened from pouring a last pitcher of water into it. When she saw them, she blushed, gave a startled cry of “Your Highness!” and curtsied so deeply he thought she might topple over.

She hastily beat a retreat.

Sam burst out laughing as soon as the door had closed behind her. “Your Highness!” he mimicked in a passing good inflection of her high-pitched tone. “You’d think you were God descended to earth, the way some people treat you.”

He set the silver tray on the bed and settled next to it with his legs tucked up under him.

Westen pulled his dirty tunic over his head and unlaced his breeches. He shucked off his boots, stepped awkwardly out of his breeches, and made for the steaming bath. “It’s always been like that. You should see how they act around my father.”

“I will someday, won’t I?” Sam asked. Westen could tell without looking that the other boy’s mouth was full again. “I ought to visit you, next time.”

“I’d like that,” Westen told him, and meant it. He slipped into the bath and closed his eyes with pleasure. It would be nice to show Samuel around the capitol. The other boy would enjoy it, he had little doubt, ever curious and ever eager for adventure as he was.

A brief silence followed, and then presently, Samuel asked, “Do they really like at your father like that? All moony-eyed, I mean? Do they blush like that?”

Westen opened his eyes to meet Samuel’s white-blue gaze. “I guess not. That’s new. I don’t really understand it.”

“Huuuh,” he replied, drawing out the sound. And then, with his characteristic deficit of attention, he jumped to a completely different subject. “I’m so excited for the fete tomorrow night! The food! And the presents!” His face lit with that thought, and Westen laughed, splashing water in his direction.

“Everything’s about you, isn’t it?”

“’Course not. But it’s my birth-day. Isn’t that supposed to be all about me? I’m going to be ten. Isn’t that supposed to be an important name day?”

“It’s about your sister, too,” Westen reminded him.

“Of course it is,” he agreed, “It’s a day that’s all about Sam. One Sam, because that’s what we are. One Sam.”

Samara spoke more often about how they were one and the same. It always surprised him a little to hear Samuel speak of it in such a way. But it was clear that the brother thought the same way his sister did, even if he rarely vocalized it. Westen forgot, sometimes, just how close the twins really were.

One and the same. One Sam. Completely inseparable.

He might have wallowed in jealousy, but then Samuel was telling him how he intended for them to spend as much time together as possible while Westen was still there. It was hard to be jealous, or hurt, or any sort of bad emotion around Samuel. The other boy’s toothy grin was just too infectious.

The water cooled, and Westen splashed water all over the floor getting out of it. Samuel knocked on the door, and within moments a servant entered to help the prince dress.

The young boy mopped up the water, eyes averted.

Samuel’s lips twitched in a way that Westen recognized as mischievous.

“Samuel -”

“Hey Jamie,” Samuel said, ignoring the crown prince, “Why do the female servants turn cherry-red whenever the prince walks into the room?”

The servant stared at him for a long moment in nervous surprise, but then Samuel flashed his bright grin and the boy relaxed. “Do you mean Gemma, my lord? She’s the worst of the lot. Ever since His Grace,” he looked briefly at Westen, “turned thirteen, they’ve all been acting like idiots.” He made a face, and Samuel laughed.

“It was Mina who was in here earlier acting weird, actually,” he said, “But I saw Gemma yesterday, and she was acting flustered even then. So.” Samuel turned his amused gaze on Westen. “Seems you’ve a few admirers, my lord.”

“They’ve got nothing on your sister,” he dead-panned, trying not to laugh, “Who is the most beautiful of them all, and my future Queen.”

Samuel held in his laughter for half a minute, at the most. When he burst out with it, he nearly fell of the bed. He wiped at his eyes and said, “Yes, we all know how much you and my sister like one another. A real pair, you two are.” And then his expression turned sly, and he asked, “Or maybe you avoid her because you like her, and she you, and it’s not jealousy that makes you hate another after all, but deep, secret love.”

Westen punched him in the arm and pretended to glare. “I assure you, our hate is absolutely genuine, and you are the reason for it.”

“Oh, good. And there I thought for a moment I ought to be concerned you two would run off into the sunset together in the future and leave me all alone. I’m glad that it’s all about me, again.”

The prince punched him again, just for good measure.

Or, rather, he meant to, but the smaller boy rolled over on the bed, dodging the blow and landed spryly on his feet. He came up with his fists raised and grinned. “A good lookout knows when trouble is coming!” He said, pleased with himself. “And I’m the best of the best.”

“Oh?” Westen asked, “Sounds like a challenge to me.” And he jumped on Sam. They crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs, and the prince quickly got the upper hand over the smaller boy. Samuel nearly managed to wriggle out from under him, but Westen caught his wrist and pinned him down.

And then a knock sounded at the door, and the Duchess entered. “I was told you’ve long been out of the bath, your grace, so I had little fear of finding you indecent and - ” She caught sight of them, and her amused smile lit up her whole face. “I see I have found you indecent all the same. Well then, I’d leave you to it, but dinner is to be served, and you know Samara will be highly displeased if the two of you do not show. And you don’t want to anger her, now do you?”

Samuel pried himself loose and jumped up quickly. He ran a haphazard hand down the front of his doublet, shook a leg out as if to fix a rumple in his hose, and then ran off past his mother.

“He’d never do anything to upset his twin, would he?” The prince asked, righting himself and brushing at the dirt on his own clothing.

“No,” she said with her knowing smile, “I don’t think he would. Shall we?”

She took his arm and led him to the great dining hall. There was a seat open on Samuel’s left side opposite the seat the Duchess took.

Westen sat, greeted the Duke at the head of the table with a bow of his head, and then turned to listen to the twins’ bickering. Apparently, he quickly gleaned, Samara had been off in the garden, climbing without Samuel, and he was jealous.

He watched Samara’s face, and wondered if she told her brother only to remind him what happened when he left her.

She pretended anger until the first course came, a white fish covered in a sweet mango sauce with a side of long crisp asparagus, and then she took her brother’s hand.

Westen watched as she silently accepted her twin’s apology. Sam’s voice immediately brightened, and he dug happily into the fish.

Samara met Westen’s gaze briefly. She narrowed her eyes, and then her face softened into what he thought might be acceptance. She nodded to him, once, and then spent the rest of the meal ignoring him.

Girls.

Everywhere he’d been, at home and here and even in the inns where he had stayed as he traveled between the two duchies, they’d started to fawn over him in a way they’d never done before, nearly falling at his feet or running out of the room when he entered. That, at least, he thought he could handle.

But Arianne Samara acting civilly to him? That just seemed too strange.

When she caught him suspiciously eyeing her, wondering if she was plotting something, she merely arched a dark brow at him, raised her glass as if in toast, and then turned her attention wholly back to her brother.

Girls.

Yes, yes.

A Molly-inspired Yes chapter. Or, bit of a chapter, anyway.

This is what happens when I read Ulysses and write, apparently.

Yes, I had told my mother, yes.

Yes, I would become my brother. My twin, who had died, who was lost to me forever. The other half of my soul, forever ripped from me, until in death we might meet again.

For him, she had said, and for the realm.

It would please him, I thought, to know that I still played our game, even without him. He would have loved the magic.

Ah, gods! He would have loved it well.

And what a nuisance we would have been then, we twins who played our game so well already.

With magic that allowed us to be anyone, my brother and I truly would have gotten into mischief.

It hurt to think on, an ache that lingered in my breast, festering. Like a sharp seed caught in my throat, I could not dislodge the pain, and I choked on it, often feeling my cheeks wet with fresh tears.

In those days, I wept often. I was too distraught even for my pride to balk at it, and I hid in my room so knew one saw, anyway.

Mother gave me little time to grieve.

Yes, I told her.

For the realm.

Our family was an ancient one, and had long in the service of the King. Even before the Usurper King Ricard betrayed his brother the King Fredric Sumner and led an army of soldiers and common folk alike into the north, the Colletti line had served the crown faithfully.

There were only two of the great lines that had remained perfectly unbroken since the beginning of our history: ours, and that of the house of Moreth in Antion. They were the favorite of the true king in the days of the war, as we had been of the usurper.

Perfectly unbroken. Only true heirs had inherited the dukedom, since time out of memory. In the other great houses of the peerage, at some point in their histories, a Lord had been unable to father an heir of his flesh, and a cousin or other relative had needed to step in to rule when he was unfit for it. For some, heirs had died; for others, they had never been born. Some had been killed treacherously; such were the ways of politics.

But ours was unbroken.

For the realm, she had said.

Mayhap a cousin could have served the realm better than I could. But in that, I did not question her. I rarely did. My quick-witted mother was rarely wrong, and I accepted her opinion that the realm would suffer if any but a true Colletti heir ruled the duchy.

Who could say, in truth, how things might have otherwise fallen out? My magic, I have learned, is strong in its own right – but I do not have the Seer gift, and I could not guess what might have happened otherwise. And even if Arendil had blessed me with her power to see into the future, she gave to no mortal the ability to divine what might be, but only what was and what is what will be.

There are others, I have since learned, who might have been able to tell me. The elves, for one, were said to have been able to divine the possible threads of the future, but they had long since sailed from our shores before the Blessed first touched soil in the North. And there were the dragons, certainly; they had known them all, the vast web of maybes and could-have-beens, teasing out the best future for themselves from their impossible knowledge.

And yet, even they were no Gods, and they had been unable to avoid all sorrow.

Who could say? Well and so, I could not, so in that regard, I deferred to my mother unfailingly.

I would do it, too, for my father, who had always loved Samuel better. It stung my pride, but I understood it. How not, when I had loved my twin so well myself? I would have always chosen Samuel first. Even if father did not love me best, I loved him.

My father took pride in our unbroken lineage. I would do this for him.

And for me, because his pride was mine. In that, we were similar. We were both over-proud, and over-quick to anger.

And…

Gods, but I hated to admit it.

At the core of it all, I also did it for myself. I, who had always felt slighted. I, who had been born first. I should have been the heir, not my brother. I never begrudged him the title. I loved him too well for that. He was good, and kind, and his oratory skill far outshone mine. I never doubted he would be a good Duke, so I never would have done ought to attempt to take the title from him.

But deep down, I had resented it. Not him, but maybe father, and the law.

And so I took what could have been mine, had our laws not been so biased towards men. Had they not placed men above women, I would have been the rightful heir, anyway.

The Blessed prize the maternal line first and foremost.

Their God, and mine, was female. The Golden Arendil.

But the God my paternal line worshipped was male, and thus our law.

And thus the need for concealment.

Yes, I agreed without hesitation.

Yes.

And so, though I still grieved so fiercely it left me weak and exhausted, I threw myself into the studies that would allow me to become Samuel.

Stars

So, I've got a new story in mind that deals with the world actually ending in 2012, such that physicists realize that the sun will go out billions of years before they ever expected it to. And as these things often go, when the protagonist realizes she is going to die in less than a year, she makes a number of changes in her life - especially returning to the love of her life, who was both too different and too similar, and such issues had driven them apart. The protagonist is a realist who doesn't believe in magic - and very much believes in the sciences. She considers the man she loves and the way she feels about him in relation to such beliefs:

We were all stars once, and maybe we’re close because we were created in the same star – made up from the same base materials, and maybe we shared some of the same atoms in our make-up in past selves. Atoms probably don’t have memories quite the way one would attribute memory to souls in a past life, but certainly there’s got to be some sort of attraction, some similarity, and maybe in our last life all of the atoms that are in the two of us now were only in one person before, or at least we share some of the same atoms that were in two similar men or women who loved one another. Maybe, at a very basic level, beyond even memory or animalistic desire, there’s some attraction between us, indescribable and unknowable, nearly science but beyond even that.

Perhaps the atoms in our flesh once came from the same star – from the outer material of a neutron star that collapsed, shattering and exploding, sending the heavy atoms at its outer edge deep into space before it darkened, sucking in all light, and became the gaping, infinitely curved space-time that we call a black hole. (maybe we even came from the star that created one of the greatest black holes, the supermassive ones, that exist at the center of galaxies.)

And so we survived the darkness, and the materials that would one day become our physical selves wandered through the universe for hundreds of thousands of years, until atoms came together to beget the earth, and then slowly, eventually, more came together to create life. And that life changed and evolved, sharing atoms and DNA, until we were born, and no lifetime would be sufficient for tracing the long paths our flesh must have taken before it came to be ours.

How did my body, before it was my own, react to your touch, before it was yours? How did we interact, how did the flesh, on an atomic level, interact? How do the elemental particles in our bodies interact when we touch?

I will not call us soul mates, because I do not believe in God or in souls, but I do believe in physics, in the real and the concrete. So I will venture to wonder if we are body mates – mayhap even heart mates, as at least such a term, while metaphorically based in our emotions, stems from a physical part of ourselves.

When our hands meet, grasp, brush, do the particles in our flesh interact at a subatomic level to produce light?

When our lips meet, do the protons and neutrons and electrons in our flesh spark in some miniscule way that our mortal eyes cannot see but our flesh can feel? Is there something specific about my atoms and your atoms that remember one another, and interact best with one another?

When our bodies press hard together, hard enough to bruise, does the hot rush in my blood come from a thousand miniscule nuclear fusion reactions that can only happen with you and no other?

The Seer's House

Another excerpt from my NaNo. Samara/Arianne, who has been masquarading as her brother, hears rumors that the South might mean to attack her Northern nation. The King does not believe them, but she can't shake the feeling that there might be truth to it, so she seeks out an old wise woman, who has served the king sometimes as a counselor. The wise woman, Sibel, is one of the Sealigan, the Blessed, Children of the Goddess Arendil, and she is a powerful Seer. The trader mentioned is one who has brought news of the war to the King. Sam met with him and his family to hear him out when the King wouldn't, and he suggested that she go see Sibel, who "is both wise and learned, and will know the truth even if no one else does."

When I finally made my way through the winding city streets to the Seer’s home, I found the front door wide open. I announced myself, but no one gave an answer, so I followed the long front hallway, passing closed doors, to a small back room, where I heard murmured voices.

The room was crowded with books and loose papers and strange objects, and the air was thick with incense. Every surface seemed cluttered with something, and every sitting place in the room was heavily cushioned.

The old Seer sat in the middle of the room in a wooden rocking chair, bent over a table before her, fingers roving across something. Her lips moved, forming letters I couldn’t quite hear. She was old – very old. Her face was deeply lined. The deepest, I couldn’t help but see, were the laughter lines around her lips and eyes.

Next to her knelt one of the trader’s sons, the youngest, Michel, diligently taking down all that she said on a sheaf of paper in his lap, a serious expression on his young face.

And then he saw me, and all seriousness melted away as excitement took hold. He yelled out my name and rushed across the room to wrap his little arms around my waist.

He called me Samuel, but when the crone looked up from her table at me with unseeing, milky-white eyes, she said in a scratchy voice, “Ah, Rani. I wondered when you would visit old Sibel.”

I started at the use of my given name and cast a nervous glance at the little boy, but he merely smiled at me and returned to her side, sitting on the floor at her feet, cross-legged. She touched her fingers briefly to the top of his head, as if to affirm that he really was there, and then she gestured me forward.

“Come see, little one.”

So I did.

“I’m Sam,” I corrected, hesitant to offend.

She waved a hand as if to dismiss my words. “Yes, you are,” she agreed, and said no more.

I was startled to find what she had laid out on the table – a game I’d played with a Samuel, a child’s game of Seeing. It was a long, unrolled length of fabric with the letters of the alphabet and the numbers from zero to nine pressed into its surface in dark ink. With a hollow triangular planchette, the players maneuvered about the board, making words out of the letters – it was said that the spirits spoke through the hollowed out triangle, and that the players did not move the piece themselves.

It was a silly game, but a fun one.

She smiled at me. “Yes, my dear, to you, I’m sure it’s only a child’s game,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “But sometimes it is the simplest ways that are the best. Will you look with me, and see what can be known?”

I frowned at her, doubtful. “What might I learn?”

“Anything,” she said, a secret smile on her lips, “Everything; nothing. It might speak to the past or the present or the future – but it is oft hard to know which is which, for time is cyclical, and the future can look much the same as the past. Even the most skilled can get it wrong.”

“Then why do it at all?”

“Because there is much to learn. Even if all we see is the past, it can teach us much about the future.”

“Then why not just study history?”

Sibel grinned at me. “Because the future may mirror the past at times, but there are always differences, and these tools can help us foresee those before they happen. The tools and the abilities given to the Seers are not so great as the foresight of the Great Dragons of yore, whose breath is so hot that they can breath gold into liquid, and use it as a mirror into all times, but we do get glimpses, snatches of possibilities, and those can help us to determine the right path to take.”

“Dragons?” I asked, bewildered. I’d seen drawing of dragons and other mystical creatures as a child and enjoyed them nearly as much as Samuel had, but it had never occurred to me that they could be real. I’d seen bones of the giant cats that used to roam the Ironwall forest and the Kamphuis mountains, and some of the old giant wolves still lived, but dragons?

She laughed. “That is all you heard from what I just said, isn’t it? You’re certainly your mother’s daughter.” Before I could ask, she nodded and said, “Yes, I knew your mother.” The old woman touched Michel’s shoulder and pointed to one of the shelves behind her. “Fetch me the golden tome back there, won’t you? The one on the right – no, the other – yes; exactly.” When he returned with it, she set it out on the table before us and carefully turned the old, crackling pages, feeling with her fingers. Eventually, she tapped a page decisively and bid me look.

It depicted dragons much as I’d seen them in the books mother had shown my brother and me – except these beasts were fiercer, more dangerous, more real. They were no caricatures, meant to amuse children. They were monsters the size of small mountains with great wings that could block out the sun. I flipped through the pages and found more images of them, green and gold and red and blue ones, and finally a great black beast that seemed to dwarf the others, as well as strangely beautiful men and women, tall and fair.

Text accompanied many of the images, but I could not read it. When I asked the Seer, she nodded and said, “Few can read the script of the elves. It’s a strange language -”

“Elves!” I cut in, startled. I turned the page back from the black dragon to an image of an enchantingly beautiful couple.

“Yes child. But you did not come here for a history lesson, did you?”

“No,” I agreed, and then, barely hesitating, I repeated, “Elves?”

Sibel smiled fondly at me and shook her head in rueful amusement, wearing an expression I’d often seen my mother wear. For the span of a heartbeat, she looked so much like my own mother that I couldn’t help but wonder who she really was, but then the moment passed, and her expression shifted, and she was only an old woman again. She was probably a mother once, too, I told myself, And all mother’s must have had naughty children with an insatiable curiosity.

With a sigh, she said, “Elves. They lived with the dragons in the winterlands beyond the Ironwall, before the All-Mother lead her children south from the island that is now known as the Grey Hinterlands, the Grey Waste, where our ancestors were born and lived until the first Cold came and made that part of the world unlivable. Even the All-Mother, in her infinite wisdom, could not have foreseen it. We traveled south, and the elves left our continent to look for warmer climes. Our ancestors beyond the Ironwall live still in the palaces left beyond by the elves, who were beautiful and had power beyond our reckoning, and sung magic into the very walls of their homes to make them stand against time.

“The north froze, and the southern half of the continent cooled and became livable. Once, it was a terrible desert, but the great cold made it a summerland, where your God Cynin created your father’s people, after His Thatelles Fell, and some became Arendil’s Ronin, Her Companions, and He left Her in anger and disappear, too proud to repent of his actions.”

I nodded slowly, taking in all that she had said. She left me then to think it over, disappearing into the front of the house. It sounded like a grand, impossible story, but in its own way, it did make sense. Except… “Cynin?”

“Your Lonely God,” Michel answered for her, eager to help.

“But…. He did not give His name to His children to know. How could you know it?”

He smiled at that. “All children know it, who are children of the All-Mother, for She hides nothing from us. There are texts that speak of the Goddess Arendil’s brother, Cynin, who she loved dearly. Your people do hold that He was Her older brother?”

“We do,” I agreed, withholding the truth that, although I had been taught it, few believed in the relation. Especially in the south, people tended to ignore any relation to the All-Mother with great fervor.

He nodded, and continued, “To your people, a God’s true name is a thing of power, isn’t it? But to us, it’s merely a name, a way to be closer to the Gods. It’s known.”

“It is known,” the old woman put in as she returned. She settled into the rocking chair with a teacup full of something hot enough to steam. “And that is why it is important to study all religions. All ways lead to one another, and one can learn much about their own Gods by learning about others. They are often all interconnected.”

She smiled at me, and sipped her drink for long enough that I began to think she’d forgotten about me. But then she tipped the cup back, swallowed the last of it, and set it on the floor next to her. I could see the dregs of what looked like an early tea, and I wondered if it was for her health. She clapped her hands loud enough that I jumped – Michel didn’t, and I wondered if the behavior was regular for her. How often was he here?

“Go on now, Michel. It’s time for the grown-ups to talk.” She waved her hand in a shooing motion. He opened his mouth to argue, and she fixed him with a stern look. “We will continue your lessons another time. Now, Sam and I must speak about the past, and that is not a topic for children. You are young, and your time is the present and future.”

He argued briefly with her, but he quickly gave in and bowed his head with a deference that surprised me in one so young. He gave me a quick, fierce hug, and then left us.

When he was gone, she said, “There’s some potential in the boy for the Seer gift. It’s a pity his parents mean to take him before I can really teach him anything, but then again, if the All-Mother means for his gift to manifest, I suppose it will, with or without me help.” She spread her hands and considered me with her blind, murky gaze. “Now, ask your question.”

“I don’t –”

She made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat and said, “You do have one. You cannot lie to me child. I can see the truth in your thoughts, which is a good deal more honest than the truth you wear on your face, and the truth you speak with your tongue.”

I inclined my head in apology and then remembered she couldn’t see it. “Sorry, grandmother,” I said, using the term as one of respect. She smiled a secret smile, as if I’d said something amusing. I considered her a moment, and then asked, “Who created the elves? And the dragons?”

“The same God as created the Great wolves and cats, and the mermaids and their seductive kin, the sirens, I expect,” she replied with a shrug, “But little is known about Him. Many documents were left by the elves – and a number of them, by appearance, seem to be religious tomes – but there language is hard to translate. It’s a flowing, poetic language, that seems to reach for a musical affect more than a literal one. Even where we think we know what the words say, it is hard to know what they mean.” She gestured in the direction of the book in my lap. “You see that they use different glyphs than we do. The letters themselves are different, much the way the Gods use a different set than we do.”

I touched the birthmark on my ribs, remembering that the Priestess Lillian had told me it was a glyph in the God’s language that meant ‘beloved’.

“The elves, and the dragons, I think, where closer in creation to the Gods than we are, even we mortals who have the God’s gifts flowing in our veins. Some believe He is the same God briefly mentioned in the History of the Gods who was at one time Arendil’s lover. But that is not the question you had,” she reprimanded me, smiling. “Ask the question you came to ask, Rani.”

Sibel was right, of course. But I was afraid to ask, because I was afraid of the answer. I was afraid that the whispers of war were true.

“You want to know if what they say is correct,” she said, when I was not forthcoming with anything. “You want to know what I know.”

“Yes.”

“Well then, I will tell you. What I have seen is this: darkness. A shadow on the land. Something is coming, but I cannot tell you what. War? Maybe. When I look back through records before the war that sundered the First Nation into two, there are descriptions given by Seers of the world covered in a dreadful shadow that sounds much the same as what I have Seen. But it could also mean that a second cold age is coming, like the one that drove our people out of the north in the beginning, or it could mean something else entirely, for it covers the entire continent – even the places beyond the Ironwall.” She tapped the board. “Sometimes, it is easier to see when others help. Will you look with me?”

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to, but I’d come this far, and I knew it would be rude to deny her. So I knelt across the table from her. She held out her hands for mine, and I placed them obediently atop hers. Her touch was surprisingly firm for such an old woman.

Sibel met my gaze, then, and I felt as if she was really seeing me.

She smiled and said, “Sam, indeed. You are no Seer, I think, but you have a connection to the other world through your brother’s half of your soul.”

I remembered all of the dreams I’d had of my brother since his death, and didn’t argue with her.

The wizened Seer guided my hands to the little triangular planchette so that only the tips of my fingers touched it, and then she placed her own hands on it in the same way. “You have done this before,” she said, not asking, “But it will be different this time. Are you ready?”

“What must I do?”

“Nothing. Let happen what will happen.” She closed her eyes then and said nothing else.

I felt silly kneeling there, willing the wooden piece to move so that it framed some letter. It didn’t for a long time.

And then I felt the piece jerk under my touch as if impatient, and I realized I was bearing down harder on the board than I knew I was supposed to. I loosened my hold until I was barely touching it, and the planchette rushed across the board.

I was too surprised to register anything but the movement, and I withdrew my hand in my surprise. Sibel had to prompt me with an amused, “What letter is it, child?” before I thought to look.

“It’s a B,” I said, and she nodded.

As soon as I touched my fingers back to the board, the triangular piece moved again, this time with less excitement. When it settled, I said, “E.”

And so on. I knew the word before it had finished, and I could see the edge of a smile on Sibel’s lips halfway through it.

“Beginning,” I said, when the piece didn’t seem inclined to move beyond the final ‘g.’ “What does it mean?”

“That’s easy, isn’t it? It means that you must seek for your answers in the beginning.”

I frowned at her, not understanding. “What beginning?”

Sibel shrugged. “The beginning, a beginning. Who knows? Since we have gotten this answer only with your help, I assume it pertains to you as much as it does to me. Your beginning, our beginning.”

“So I should go home?”

Smiling, she tapped the board. “I don’t know. But that beginning is not mine. Will you ask again without me? Perhaps it does only mean you.” I considered the spirit board. Her fingers still rested on the planchette. After a moment, I touched the wooden piece, too. Nothing happened. She removed her hand, and still it didn’t move. When I told her as much, she said, “Ah, well, the answers are never clear except in retrospect. I imagine, when this is all over, and you know what it means, you will wonder how you could have possibly been confused.”

I didn’t particularly like that answer, and when I left the Seer’s little house, I left as lost as I had when I left the palace that morning.

Possible Actual Beginning

So, beginnings are ridiculously hard. I've been working on many variations of the same beginning for awhile now, and then I realized why I didn't like it - because it just wasn't the right place to start, no matter how I re-wrote it. So, I flipped through the first few pages of some fantasy novels of which I'm particularly fond, and I decided that I was just starting to much at The Beginning. So, for more of an in medias res beginning... I give you the (maybe hopefully possibly) first short chapter of my NaNo - The Changeling: One and The Same

(The formatting is a bit screwy, but I didn't feel the need to fix it.)

Madison caught me just as my fingers closed around a soft, sweet peach. I’d been so careful; we hadn’t gotten caught at the tart stand, or the apple seller’s, or the cart full of fresh, hot loaves of bread. I struggled and managed to wrench out of his grip, but he was after me quick.

Samuel gave a yell as I tried to dodge the guard, and I realized my twin had already been caught. Two other guards held him firmly between them, and I couldn’t leave him behind. And besides, I’d dressed as the girl today – I had less of a chance of getting away in my stupid skirt as I would have if I’d dressed as my brother. I let Madison catch me around the middle and haul me back over to my brother. He flipped a coin at the merchant, who bit it and gave my brother and me an amused scowl, and bid the guards a good day.

“Poor lot you’ve got there, chasing after those blasted miscrea’ts all day long!” he called after us as the guards pushed us back in the direction of the palace.

We struggled as best we could as they led us through the streets of Eldale, but they had long practice in keeping us in place. Sammie got in a good kick to James’ shins. He winced, and I knew he would be bruised for a good week, but my brother didn’t manage an escape, held on both sides as he was. I was faster, but he was stronger, and they knew well enough how to keep a-hold of us, by now.

My guard tightened his grip on me in case I got the same idea. They would have liked to give us a good, hard shake, I had little doubt – but father would never allow violence to be used unless necessary, even on repeat offenders, as we were, and his guards knew it.

It galled them, I was sure, to have to tramp all over the city after such recalcitrant children, but such was their lot – in times of such long peace as we lived in, even a Duke’s guards had little use beyond trailing after his spoiled children, protecting them more from themselves than any imaginary threat.

The guards who trooped my twin and me back to the palace brought us to the Duke’s solar. It was too late in the evening for him to be taking petitioners in his great audience hall, and this sort of chiding certainly didn’t require more than the Lord and, of course, his Lady, who the realm agreed could sway any decision of his with a single look.

James and the third of the Colletti household guard, Rian, held us in place while Madison explained to their Lord exactly what they’d caught us at. As soon as they left us there, ragged little children in mud-stained silks, the Duke turned angrily on us, but his wife remained seated at his side, her secret smile half concealed by a white lace fan.

“Filching. Again. When we have a full larder in the kitchens and scores of servants, ready to serve you. Care you explain yourselves?”

I didn’t, particularly, so I scowled at him, daring him to yell. Sammie took his cue from me and held his tongue, but I could tell by the way his hand shook in mine that he wanted to explain.

There wasn’t anything to say, though, that wouldn’t make matters worse.

We did it because there was no fun in being served; we did it because we could.

When it was clear that nothing was forthcoming from either of us, he launched into a lecture I’d heard a hundred times before. It began as it often did.

“You’re both nearly eight! You should have learned well enough by now not to go about stealing like ruffians!”

I tightened my grip on Samuel’s hand, and he shot me a brief glance. He relaxed a little under the influence of my composure; I felt the shaking in the hand clutched in mine cease, at least.

Father continued his rant, words I’d nearly memorized I’d heard them so often, and I chanced a glance at mother.

She had lowered her fan and was wearing her perpetually amused expression, a look that always made me think she knew more than everyone else – that a spectacular joke had been told, and she alone knew the answer to it.

She met my eyes, and her lips pulled into a deeper smile, and I couldn’t fear the anger in father’s tone when she sat next to him on the edge of laughter.

My brother, though, quelled under his glare, unaware of mother’s poorly hidden mirth. She’d told me, once, that father’s inability to tell us apart annoyed him more than our pranks, and it made him gruffer with us than was truly necessary.

“How do you think it makes me look? The price of thievery is a hand! How can I possibly punish starving children for such acts when my own are running about doing the same?”

To my knowledge, father had never taken the hand of a starving child. Under his stony exterior, I knew he was a fair ruler – certainly, my good, sweet mother would never have loved him so faithfully, otherwise. Only true crimes deserved such severe punishments, and I knew he only said it to strengthen his point, but it set Samuel to shaking again at my side.

Mother saw it, too, for she finally intervened, touching a slender hand to the Duke’s shoulder. She merely gave a slight shake of her head, and the anger completely drained from father’s face. With them, that was all it took.

He sighed and gestured us forward. I nearly had to drag Sam up to them.

“Honestly,” I hissed into his ear, “He’s our father.”

When we stood before him, he leveled his gaze on me and said, “It’s bad enough that you’re being brought into me in such a way, over and over again! You’ve both ruined your fine clothes. You certainly look like no-good ruffians. But what’s so much worse is that my only son and the heir to the province is tramping about in a dress! For God’s sake, Samuel, you are too old for such games! Just because the two of you look alike enough to swap places does not mean you ought to!”

Being One and the Same was our favorite game, and we switched places as often as we could. But in this instance, we hadn’t switched. The best part of the game was confusing others, and Sam seemed to enjoy confusing father enough that he overcame his nervousness and, grinning said proudly, “I’m not wearing a dress, father. Can’t you tell us apart?”

He opened his mouth to reply and then snapped it shut. He looked between us, back and forth, suspicious. “Of course I can. I’m not wrong.” He nodded at me and said, “You’re Samuel,” and then at my brother, “And you are Arianne.”

We denied it again, and mother had to intervene. “For once, they speak the truth, Henry,” she told him in her best placate-the-angry-Duke tone.

He looked us both over once more and then, in an uncharacteristic show of frustration, threw up his arms and said, “You know I can’t tell you apart. Go on. Out with you both. And I’d best not see you dragged up here by my guards again!”

Grinning, we promised avidly that of course it would never happen again, and then we made for the door.

“And get out of those rags!” he yelled after us, and Sammie waved a hand at him as we darted out of the door. Before it snapped to behind us, I saw mother lean over and press a light kiss to his cheek, laughing.

Dragons!

A theoretical scene from the sequel to the fantasy novel I started in November.

Basic premise: The Evil Overlord wants to awaken a dragon that the Goddess, named the Golden Grace by the God who created the dragons, turned to ice/stone. He means to use it to subdue the world of men/take over the world. Basic Evil Overlord business. (The Goddess turned it into ice/stone rather than actually killing it because She saw it as the child of another God, and She couldn't bring herself to kill the child of another God, even for the sake of her children.) The heroine finds out that the dragon had a hatchling that the Goddess also turned to ice, and she surmises that it attacked her ancestors simply out of an instinct to protect its young. The night after she learns this, the God who created the dragons (and other magical beings, like the Elves) speaks to her in a dream. Additional notes - The Thetallos were created by the Goddess' brother. They're much like the Christian God's Angels and, like the Angels, a number of them rebelled against Him. The Evil Overlord is working with/for one of these dark Thetallos in his goal of world domination.

That night, Samara dreamed fitfully, of blood and fire and ash. Of great cities ruined, thousands of lives brought to ruin, all of the bright green places in the world aflame, and above it two great dragons, perfect opposites in black and white, terrible chains dangling from limbs chafed bloody from their weight. And then through it all, a single voice stilled her thoughts, until there was nothing but the voice, deep and rich and all-consuming.
So you understand, do you, child of the Golden Grace?
She twisted in her sheets, trembling as the words rippled through her thoughts.
The Golden Grace understood, and she did not kill my dragons. If the time comes that your black king has the power to control all beasts, remember that it might be the Golden Grace’s magic that holds the dragons as ice, but they are my children, and will answer to my call above all else.
She shuddered from the power of the strange god’s presence in her thoughts, feeling at once cold and hot, her legs sticking to the sheets twined about her thighs from the sweat beading her skin.
Relax, child. All will be well. There are greater powers at work here than even your black king can understood – more than his dark Thetallo can handle. Relax.
And so she did, falling into a deeper sleep, and when she woke, her body hummed with a lingering warmth, the touch of a God whose children were dragons, creatures of living fire.