Tuesday 28 April 2015

At Long Long Last - the excerpt ...

So here is a teeny taster of The Epic.  This excerpt comes from Chapter 20 and, just so you know, the character Mono is a small black & white cat ...

Mono knew the Third Howl was coming long before it actually did.  She'd been following The Voices for days and several things had come to her befuddled mind.  It wasn't only that she could understand things a lot more.  It was the realization that she was still in Tracklands - but at a different time to everyone else.  As the days had passed, the environment around her had become more and more familiar.  She recognised certain landmarks.  Here was the wall she had first clambered up as she tried to escape that horrid dog,  There was the place the rats had taunted her.  But with this realisation came a sense of dread, for she was seeing it all not as it had been but as it would be!  Or - the logical part of her mind told her - as it could be.

This realisation had not come to her to begin with.  All she knew was that she was being led somewhere by The Voices for a very specific reason.  It was only as she came upon her tree that Mono truly understood.  Where that tree had been clothed in healthy leaves, what she was actually seeing was a tree devoid of life, denuded of leaves whose once proud trunk had been rich with bark.  Now she could only see a tree that was dead, with gnarled branches and skeletal twigs which pointed accusingly.

It wasn't only the tree that was dead either; the grass, bushes and shrubs around it were brown and dry.  Had Mono been human, she'd have actually wept at this sorry sight.  As she was feline, she could only feel an intense sadness that touched her very soul.

(c) J P Henderson-Long 2015

What do you think ....?

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