Snippets | November 2018

NaNoWriMo has been going rather well this month, though the last week has been a lot busier with holiday and travels plans and such. But it’s been a good week, with a little more writing progress than expected, and I like how several elements in this draft of Unto Ash are coming together.

  Her fingers reached out for the dress and lifted the elegant fabric toward the beam of light falling across the blankets. The deep red shimmered under such close inspection, a remnant of a lifetime ago and all the things that should have been.

  The clashing of two dozen swords echoed across the courtyard.

  With her eyes closed, she could almost, almost let herself lapse into a memory and stay there. Could imagine the quiet of her old rooms, the whistle  of the wind outside her window in the winter months, the crackle of the fireplace.

  He adjusted his scarf again and set off against the sea-salt wind, the lantern swaying gently in his right hand with his quick steps.

  Tealdyn looked toward the map hanging on the wall beside his desk. An older one, with territory lines and landmarks still depicted that no longer existed as they had at the time of the cartographer’s commissioning. A relic of time long past, of centuries ago when the world had been a place of things now faded to legend.

  Perhaps the distraction of an old story or two was just what she needed to keep her from thinking too much about the turns events could take.

 

  He peeled off his gloves and laid them on the space between them. “Even though I threw snow at you?”

  “You implied you were innocent of such things.”

  “But then I confessed.”

 

  You look lovely. The words were there, hovering in his thoughts, but he couldn’t say them.

 

  Aveirna climbed the stairs and wandered among the shelves, running her hands over the edges of the stained cherry wood and the leathery spines around collected pages.