A Meeting

A standalone story fragment from the Eastsong Cycle (fifth epoch)

Atop her horse, the young woman removed her helm and rested it on the pommel of her saddle. She peered around its camel-hair plume at the spirit standing in her path.

“Where do you come from, stranger?” the waist-high fellow asked in an odd, clipped accent. He fidgeted with the belt of his tunic, but his beardless face seemed earnest.

“From the realm of the Prophet, where we uphold the glorious name of the Wright from the setting to the rising sun,” she recited.

The spirit clucked his tongue. “So you are the cursed ones.” Then he tilted his head in apparent bemusement. “I thought you’d be taller.”

She could only gape at him.

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Note from the Author

Happy Friday! I wanted to share that the thematic inspiration for this week’s snippets has been chapter 1 of the book of Malachi. If you were to read them over and compare, I imagine you’d see the connections.