It’s odd how stories come to be.
Years ago I was daydreaming somewhere (I don’t recall where) and I suddenly could see a blinding snowstorm, the sort where the wind is driving the snowflakes almost horizontally. I could see a man on a horse, hood drawn up around his face, going slowly into the teeth of that storm. The wind rises; the snowflakes swirl and the man tries to read a map, but the slashing snow cakes on the parchment and dashes in his eyes. He folds the map away after a moment and moves on. He can see the storm behind him, as though through a transparent curtain, but the wind and the ice don’t touch him. He is in the lee of the building – the gatehouse of an old castle. As he looks up at the weathered, dilapidated stone, he can almost hear the word:
I will be working on this story. I blocked it out years ago and wrote a little on it. It was a magic-less fantasy – alternative history, maybe? The lands are my own invention – full of noble tragedy, courage, a love story, dying for a great cause…
I set it aside to work on more urgent things and promptly forgot about it. It wasn’t in electronic form anyhow, and I’d have to retype it…
I revisited it recently, twenty-some years later. It had changed from a tale of high tragedy to one of –
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