Hello! Welcome to Writer's Podium Thursday! I have a brand new story in the works, and to keep my butt in gear on writing it, I will be posting new bits here every week. Theoretically I should get a chapter a week done and put up. This week is the first little bit of Chapter One, my creative output has been dampened by, um, other activities *cough*DragonAgeII*cough* that I anticipate should be wrapped up fairly soon and cease to distract me from writing.
For now, and for lack of a better name, the working title of this story is Glyphs. I hope that you enjoy it, please feel free to share feedback (negative and positive). This is definitely a work in progress, so I ask you to bear that in mind.
Feel free to share this, if you are so inclined, by linking to my page. All work below is mine, owned by me, not to be copied, reproduced, reused, you get the idea. Again, thanks so much for reading. Now, on to the story!
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"How are we getting along, dear?" Mark jumped, and the book he had been looking through fell to the floor. The old woman set down a tray bearing what appeared to be tea and cookies, moving forward to examine the dropped tome. He winced inwardly, hoping it was not worth too many mets. "Ah! Bosgart's histories! What an excellent choice Mr. Carver! Did you find anything interesting?"
"Interesting...yes. That...would be a word." Mark looked down at the book, which had fallen open to one of the illustrations in the back that he just been about to turn to when the old lady had interrupted him. Interesting was definitely a word for it, he thought. Utter nonsense, another. Entries about things like "mythics" and beasts being captured for use in fighting other beasts of the same ilk. Beasts that didn't exist. Mythic, indeed. He looked at the illustrations again. He couldn't even begin to imagine. Pure, utter, nonsense.
Even the name, Bosgart. What kind of name was Bosgart? If he had been a historian then his name should be something simple and instructive, informative. Such as Teller. Or Scholar. Or Lunatic. Even if his ancestors had not always been scholars or historians, one would expect his name to denote the profession of his forefathers. Mark supposed it didn't matter, though. He had read the entries. Truly, they were far more interesting than anything he had seen in the real world.
"Yes. It was a...lovely...little tale." He answered her. The old lady, he realized he had forgotten her name, shook her head, smiling. She seemed rather unconcerned about damage to the ancient book. Of course, perhaps it really wasn't worth anything. Mark doubted that many people would dare try to buy something so frivolous. There was just no call for such a possession. The woman spoke up once more, causing him to wonder if she hadn't sensed his chain of thoughts.
"Ah, young Mr. Carver, look at you. Too entrenched in these modern thoughts and beliefs. Not a tale, my boy, not a tale. But. At least now you know! Your world is a little bit richer for it too, I'd wager. If I were a gambling woman, which of course, I am not. Mr. Harper would never have heard of it! When he was alive, of course. Just because he's gone now, that's no reason to pick up bad habits, eh?"
Harper! That was it. Her husband had made and repaired instruments. Pretty little harps to play pretty, boring music. Looking around at the eclectic collection in Mrs. Harper's library, he wondered if perhaps she had not been more than enough to counter such a boring career to the deceased Mr. Harper. Seeing all of the books spread out around him, he realized that he had been dawdling. Mrs. Harper wasn't paying him to stand around reading her books after all, but to catalog them, clean them, and put them in some semblance of order. There were perhaps two hundred books in the cramped study that she so grandly called her "library." He was daunted by the task. It had seemed simple enough when the job had been offered. It still was, he supposed, he just had no idea how he was going to arrange such a bizarre collection.
"Now, I know this work can be tedious my dear," Mrs. Harper chimed in, "so I've brought you a little snack." She indicated the tea tray, now perched precariously on the arm of a small overstuffed chair. Mark glanced at it and looked away quickly, suppressing an urge to race over and steady it. Mrs. Harper seemed not at all upset to find him reading the books he was supposed to be cataloging. "Dinner is in about two hours though, so don't fill up too much! I've got a lovely little roast cooking, with potatoes and carrots and onions, all fresh from the garden." Marked blinked at this information. Dinner? He hadn't been expecting that, most people who offered him work expected him to get on with it and then be about his business as quickly as possible. "I don't expect you'll finish tonight, of course, so I've got the guest room made up for you. I'll have Genny come by in a bit to take your things up. That old arm chair is mighty comfy for reading if you find you want to spend some more time with Bosgart, dear." She patted him on the shoulder, seemingly oblivious to his state of shock. Before he could even begin to wonder who Genny might be Mrs. Harper had bustled back out of the room, humming some indistinct tune under her breath.
Slowly, Mark picked his way through the stacks of books to the chair in question. He picked up the tea tray and looked around helplessly for a more stable place to set it down. The only table in the room was completely taken up by the manifest in which he had been cataloging the books. With no stable surface to be found he set it carefully on the floor next to the chair, glancing at the discarded "history" book as he did so. Bosgart's The Age Arcana remained where it had fallen, open to an illustration of an animal labeled "Phoenix." Mark retrieved the book and poured himself a cup of tea, leafing through the illustrations while he drank. Mrs. Harper was right, the chair really was quite comfortable.
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