Young Writers Society

this is an introduction to a story I'm not writing, but if its any good, i might pick it up again.

A high wind frizzled the silent woods, a gentle rush at the tall swaying branches. The sky was pale blue overhead, cloudless and cold as new winter, meeting the great purple and grey ranges far off into the distance. The pale garron tossed tousled its head and snorted, picking new scents from the wind bracing the land, Myrell ran her long fingers along his neck and he was silent. Beside her, a tall, fair haired man stood, thick woolen cloaks pulled close as he set his steady gaze across the low lands below.

“Ï hear of your brother’s return,” the fair-haired man spoke, “he rides in from the west to meet the Sir Dyron.”

Myrell grimaced, “He is Lord now, Lord Dyron. The west gave him a title when he murdered his Arnish wife and her brother,” she paused, “do you remember them, Casteleo?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Your Lord father meets them at the Grey Hall. There is word that your elder brother has not returned from Myrash.”

Myrell smiled faintly. She remembered her eldest brother Luthen before the Wolren march. She was but a child then, and he no more than seventeen. Once, he had been their father’s favorite son, before all this started, before the war had come and before the young began to die before the old. Many things had changed since, but one was sensible not to dwell on the past.

“I’ll take you to Dredport, Casteleo, it is not long out of my way,” she said after the talk was done, but the blonde man declined, as Myrell knew he would. Neither two ever rode anything but abreast together. Myrell thought for a while before she left him, and dismounted where before she preferred to stay mounted. She was hardly an inch shorter than Casteleo, who was a tall Nethel from the North, and her hair hung in thin plats to the small of her back, tied with feathers that flew in the breeze as she rode.

“Come to the Pretoon with me on third day,” she said. “It would be good for Albany to see you again,” she smiled. Casteleo laughed half-heartedly and sighed, shaking his head slightly.

“I cannot. Albany is somewhat different these days, I know,” he replied.

“He is married it is true, with two sons and a third child on the way, or perhaps a fourth, but he asks of you when I visit. Rhyanne is not such a burden to him as you might think, he is nothing but more grounded than we ever thought him to be.”

“Yes, he has changed much, Albany,” but then there was a pause and Myrell smiled for she knew she had him. Her garron stamped his hoof into the soil and the young woman turned to him and laughed, running her hand along his flanks as she quickly mounted him again.

“Brey grows impatient at simple wandering of us humans,” she smiled and calmed him with her hand on his neck.

“I trust we will see you at Preoon then, on the third day from now.”

“Goodbye little crow,” he said after her, as she kicked her feet into the horses’ flanks and disappeared down into the grasslands below.

Casteleo folded his arms across his chest and set his hard grey eyes toward the sun, high and useless on a pale blue sea. It was bitter late summer, and an even colder winter to follow a cheerless autumn. Leaves did not ripen and fall in the south; they rotted on branches and were lost in the snow. There was no beauty in these autumns, not like back home, he thought.