#feebdack is v welcome!

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

This appears in my asks: "not to toot my own horn too much but ik you've expressed interest in my stories before so. there are snippets-" stops reading to go frantically search for Hiraeth excerpts

my dear, catkin, I LOVE YOUR STORIES!!👀

also I am a cheater - what happens someone asks for two?

💬💬

Then, I suppose, you get two! Still from Hiraeth.

“Why?” she asked. “Not why would you follow them, but why would you shift so far away? Aren’t there things keeping you here?” “I want to see the world.” She shrugged, and said, “Fair point. I hope you’ll chase all your dreams and find them well worth the effort.” Neil smiled. “I hope so. Anyway, I want to be a doctor.”

I loved writing this section. It's a conversation between Deryn (Aelwen's younger sister) and Neil. I loved writing (and still love reading it over) about him as a fresh unspoiled young thing, rather than the jaded, bitter and sometimes cruel man he appears as in Adira's story. Even the doctor thing, in this case, means a lot, because it was a dream he'd always had, but by the time he actually became a doctor it was as much out of defiance as anything else, and in some ways, by practicing the profession, he's forcing himself to relive certain griefs that happen between this story (in which he's 13 or so) and then. (It's... complicated. I love him)

One thing I really like about the inclusion of this scene, although it definitely risks appearing to wander away from the main plot, is that it lightens it a bit; the middle was heavy and hard to write, but once I included Deryn a bit more as a POV character it lightened the mood and pulled it away from being a slog. Not certain that the entire scene and some others worked very well overall (I'll have to see what editor thought of it as to how I keep them in) but certainly their inclusion really helped the story as a whole and how I felt about it. (Originally it was literally finding an excuse to include it in this collection, finding some way or character to tie it to Adira's story xD that was it that was the entire motivation for including him.)

And another, still from later on than that. I was so tempted to give you the massive slab of description as Aelwen walks towards a waterfall (the scene was originally patterned on one very specific visit to a waterfall last year, a waterfall I want to go back and visit again someday tho it's far away from me) but I'm not entirely happy with the prose, though what it's trying to say is good; there are a few awkward bits. Instead, this is a few paragraphs later, just before one of the important character beats in the story.

She was careful as she scuttled over to a rock overhanging the deep pool the waterfall deposited into, but nevertheless she almost slipped, and had to clutch at the rock to steady herself. It was cold and wet and rough under her fingers, and felt like the first truly real thing she had touched for far too long. The blanket of apathy, maybe only for a moment, was gone again. Perhaps it was a mere illusion, something she could scarcely appreciate for a moment before it was snatched away—no lasting peace—but Aelwen had already learned she starved without it, and was glad to find something of it. Her thoughts, roving here and there, suddenly caught on a verse she had always loved. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall encompass your hearts and minds. She could not remember where it came from, but she knew it to be a verse, sent from God at this moment for her to remember it. She could have the peace of God again. It might take time, but she could find it again, even if she was struggling right now. There was another verse, too; something about joy coming in the morning. She remembered a day before all this had started, a day so incandescently happy that she had thought there could not possibly be sorrow in all of the world. Now she was both older and wiser, and sadder too; but there was hope.

Oh, and two paragraphs later she prays about everything and cries about it and then her sister comes to comfort her, and it's just a really nice scene. 'what are you doing here' 'I just wanted to make sure you're alright' 'it's half an hour travel each way from home you travelling an hour to make sure I'm alright???' <- that sort of thing

I hope you like these. In some ways it amuses me that I'm reading over some of it and going I know what I was like when I wrote that. How did I write that. More really, how was that so true to my current experiences when I'd never experienced them to this intensity before.

I would love feedback from anyone and everyone, on both of these excerpts (#5 and #6)

#feebdack is v welcome! #suh excerpts #suh #story:hiraeth #currently vaguely gathering together a launch team: dm if interested #excerpts #my writing #ask #thanks for the ask!