Posted in Posted by Rudyard Kipling

*strides in, bending her head so she won't whack it on the attic doorway* Greetings, Inklings! Having been *ahem* forced by a certain someone....SYD! Get OUT of R.K.'s chair! *runs and clobbers her* ANYway. After this new deluge of new members [hi ev'ryone, I'm Kipling!] I thought I'd better get around to actually posting some of my writing, it's been ages...oh sure, I'd like a snicketdoodle Snick, merci. Throughout this long, cold winter, I've been busy writing in various novels and...what's that, Chris? Cats? Naturally. What was I...oh. Most of you know, R.K. has been somewhat dormant for a long while. He in not in the leadership position I'm in currently, and he has found other haunts besides our chat room thingy, but he is still here.

R.K.: Hi.

Nobody die of alarm or anything, he's not going to kill anyone. Excepting perhaps me, but that's beside the point. I'm saying he's gonna leave you all alone but he's still here. See?

R.K.: *wild grin*

This is a fantasy novel I'm TRYING to get some headway in; I'd posted the first two unedited chapters ages ago, and thought it high time to post the edited version. Here issa clip:

Rohald Appichello laid her sun browned face against the smoothed wooden fiddle. The young woman breathed in the fresh mountain air deeply, and with it came the all-too-distant smell of cheese and mint. Her father’s special smell. Was he fond of chewing on mint while playing? wondered Rohald wistfully. I remember nothing about him…nothing but his good smell. This one strange memory had stayed with her because her rough linen pants and vest were her father’s and they all smelled of cheese and mint. Roh smiled to herself as she drew the yellowed horsehair bow over the old strings. The fiddle was battered and worn from many winter nights of cheery ballads and many a song played for a wedding or square festival, but it still made the most beautiful music of any fiddle in the village. Roh’s father had been a greatly loved and respected man in the tiny village nestled to the breast of the mountain. But that had been many years ago. Now only his fading essence, remained with his oldest daughter, his only child.

Rohald sat under her shady tree and watched her flock. As she played, she looked at each wooly sheep, making sure they bore no injuries or seemed ill at ease. She raised the best flock in the village, and the people depended on her for meat and good wool. One newer ewe flicked her ears cautiously in Roh’s direction. The shepherdess laughed. Her playing must be upsetting it. No matter how hard she tried, Rohald Appichello could get nothing from her father’s fiddle than haunting music. Sometimes, when she played under her tree in the green, rich pasture, the music came so deep and lonesome that tears would roll down her ruddy cheeks. She was good, too good, at playing her dead father’s fiddle. Miss Appichello was clumsy, everyone said so; she was tall and strong-muscled, and could have been mistaken for a boy except for her long cascade of curly red gold hair. Her brown eyes were nearly always good-natured, except when a person crossed her. Then her eyes would snap and flash, and even young men several years older than her had been known to quaver. The girl had her father’s spirit, that was for sure. She was respected as an equal in the village. But she was nearly nineteen and nothing had come of her hidden strength except several fistfights and a good, healthy flock. The villagers naturally wondered if perhaps she wasn’t the one who would free them from the terrible marauders than prowled the mountains. Maybe her little waif brother Thring would grow up to be a mighty war leader and rally the fearful people into a rebellion against the snowy peaks of the surrounding mountains themselves…but Thring was a runny-nosed child, and his idea of courage during one especially animated scuffle had been to run and hide behind a bush. It took several minutes for Roh to convince him to face his peers again. Rohald's adopted mother despised him, loathed her own son. Maybe Roh would too, if not for the love that had been stripped away from both of them several years ago. Surely to grow up without a mother’s true love was a dreadful thing indeed. At least Rohald had been able to cherish her own mother’s presence for a time before…before…

Roh stopped playing. Her chest tightened as she laid down the fiddle and grasped at the silver locket about her brown neck. Right before her mother had disappeared, she had given her daughter the locket. Roh remembered her dear mother’s words well. They had been whispered in her ear when they were out in a sunny garden. Her father had been so young and merry, his gray hairs could be counted upon one hand. Roh had been a mere child as her mother had pressed the sealed locket into her chubby pink hand and kissed her forehead.

“Only use it during a time when your very heart is dying and your life’s blood is seeping out, when the darkness has consumed the light and the hope has fled before an oncoming evil. Only then shall this locket prove worth opening.”

You can read the rest of this chapter here at Inkstains.

May God bless you, and may His hand guide your pens!

Pip/Rudyard Kipling

*strides back out into the spring sunshine, followed by R.K.*