I've been working on editing the As Yet Unnamed Story, and I found one spot that really bugged me. In it, Diddle was just arriving at Avon's house, and was just beginning to get an idea on just how much of a lunatic his uncle is. The dialogue seemed really stiff, and not much really happened, and I've been searching for some way to revise it. God only knows how I came up with this...

...Whatever Avon had been about to say was abruptly cut off as something gave a loud ‘pop’, followed by a soft hissing sound. Something small and round materialized at Avon’s feet right between him and Diddle, causing both of them to hurriedly step back. A single spark sputtered from the object, flaring like a firework and giving off a smell like burning metal. Then the sparks died, and all that was left was a black glass marble.

            Avon frowned, leaning over and squinting suspiciously at the marble. There was nothing remarkable about it, and there was nothing else there other than a small starburst of burnt black on the otherwise perfectly white polished floor.

            Finally, Avon’s mouth curled back into a pleased smile, and he straightened with a laugh.

            “Looks like the professor’s powers are diminishing,” he said aloud to no one in particular, his beetle eyes glittering and his mouth still twisted in a gloating smile. Diddle was about to ask what exactly his uncle meant by that when the floor suddenly burst into flames.

            A huge column of fire suddenly rocketed up towards the ceiling from the spot where the spark had landed, clipping the chandelier up above and physically blowing both Diddle and Avon backwards with the force of the explosion.

            Diddle hit the ground with a ‘thud’, causing his eyes to swim, and he saw Avon sprawled across the bottom steps of the stairs just opposite him. Between them, the column of fire was twisting and writhing about in unnatural, jerky motions. The top seemed to be collapsing in on itself, and a vague shape was beginning to form at its base, as if there was something trapped inside.

            Another explosion—this one directed outwards—nearly took off Diddle’s head. He managed to duck at the last second, though he could smell burning hair and he could feel the back of his neck getting lightly roasted. Fortunately, the second blast didn’t last long, and Diddle was able to look up without fear of having his eyeballs toasted in his head.

            Avon had managed to duck as well, Diddle saw. His uncle was curled in a trembling ball on the other side of the room, his knees drawn up to his face and his arms wrapped around his head. Only one eye was visible, poking through a gap between his knee and his elbow and wide with terror as he stared at the apparition that stood between him and his nephew.

            “B…balefire!” he squeaked, his voice tiny. Diddle really didn’t blame him.

            It would have looked like a person—roughly six feet tall, with broad shoulders and powerful arms—save that it was made completely from what looked like living coals. The surface of its skin looked like half-cooled lava, with a charred black base spiderwebbed with trails of glowing red that seemed to be constantly changing—flickering and twisting as if they were alive. The creature’s head was smooth and rounded, and Diddle could see little of its facial features save for a pair of glowing black eyes. Diddle had no idea how that made sense, but it did. It was as if the creature’s eyes were made of black fire.

            The apparition barely seemed to notice Avon, or Diddle for that matter. It was looking around at its surroundings, its eyes flickering as it took in the huge room and the scattered fires that it had started on the walls and on the stairs. Its gaze eventually fastened on the door that lead into the next room.

            “No!” Avon screamed suddenly. “Not the oak doors!”

            He needn’t have worried. The balefire didn’t bother using the doors. It simply raised one hand and sent another column of fire blasting through the wall next to the door. Burning wood and sawdust insulation flew everywhere, peppering the white marble floor with even more scorch marks and setting sections of the stairs on fire. For a minute, Diddle couldn’t see the balefire through all the thick, black smoke that had filled the room, and instead found himself seized by an uncontrollable coughing fit, his eyes streaming with tears. He could hear Avon doing the same over the crackling sound of the new inferno that had started in the hole the balefire had made in the wall.

            The smoke eventually cleared, yet Diddle found that he still couldn’t see the balefire. He did, however, see Avon, who was scrambling like crazy across the marble floor towards the hole in the wall, his eyes wide.

            “It’s heading for the kitchen!” he said, his voice panicked. “Somebody stop it!”

            Diddle didn’t really care what happened to his uncle’s house, but he didn’t want to lose sight of the balefire. Heaving himself to his feet, he set off eagerly after his uncle, his feet slipping on the polished floor—now even slipperier because of the bits of ash and wood scattered like ball bearings across it.

            The fire in the wall was beginning to spread outward, but Diddle found that he could still dodge through the gaping hole in the wall so long as he covered his face with his arms to protect it from the heat and smoke. Running blindly as he was, he accidentally bumped into Avon on the other side. Avon didn’t seem to notice.

            “My tapestries!” he wailed, clutching at his hair and staring with wide eyes at the now-burning swaths of cloth that draped the room. Diddle could see two or three that were as yet unburned, most of them depicting various kingly figures either slaying monsters or standing in dramatic, heroic poses. These, too eventually caught on fire as well, and soon the walls were completely consumed in flame.

            The balefire itself was standing at the far side of the room with its back to Diddle and Avon, just behind a long, mahogany table that took up most of the room. The flickering oranges and reds that made up the creature’s body were at the moment accented by pools of deep blue and green that were spilling through a series of tall, church-like glass windows that stretched towards the ceiling on both the northern and southern walls, making the balefire look as if it were made of rainbow-colored flames. For some reason, it seemed to have stopped, as if there were something in its way. It took Diddle a moment or two to realize why.

            “Back!” shouted a voice—powerful, female, and totally in command—causing the balefire to flinch and take a step backwards as a person emerged from the doors that led from the next room, a bucket held in her hands. A drop of water sloshed from the bucket and plopped onto the floor, causing the balefire to hiss angrily and back away even more. The woman wielding the bucket smiled grimly and advanced, her eyes locked with those of the balefire and her mouth set in a grim line.

            She wasn’t an overly tall person, but she was taller than Diddle and comfortably plump about the middle. Her hair was dark brown—going on gray—and was kept curled in a neat bun atop her head with a mesh hairnet to keep it in place. Her face was pleasant—though fiercely set in determination at the moment—with a rosy complexion and laugh lines around her soft blue eyes. She was wearing a simple gray dress, with the sleeves rolled up and her arms white with flour from cooking. A well-used apron was tied around her waist, the white cloth stained from long use mixing ingredients or standing over a smoky fire. Somehow, the heavy wooden rolling pin sticking from a pocket in the apron didn’t diminish from her somewhat intimidating aura at all.

            “I said get back, flame!” the woman snapped, brandishing the bucket like a sword. The balefire retreated again, whining and hissing piteously like a boiling tea kettle. The woman kept walking forward, pressing the apparition ever backwards towards the hole it had made in the wall. Diddle and Avon quickly scattered to opposite corners of the room, neither of them wanting to get between the fire and its escape route from the terrifying woman pursuing it. To do so was probably a form of suicide.

            With a final hiss of fear and disappointment, the balefire turned and tried to make a run for it. The cook leaped at the chance and heaved the bucket after the fleeing fire-wraith with all her might, catching it in the back with a large wave of soapy dish water.

            The effect on the balefire was instantaneous. With a rattling cry, it suddenly collapsed in on itself, its arms—now mostly black—waving feebly as its body began to dissolve beneath it. Billowing smoke filled the room, and Diddle could barely breathe, let alone see, as the smoke clogged his lungs and sent him into violent fits of coughing. Amid all the confusion, only he somehow managed to hear the soft ‘clack’ of something hard hitting the marble floor, and the grating sound of something rolling across  the floor. Dimly, he felt something tap gently against his foot....

Avon, I've found, is much more fun to write when he's thrown into the middle of a raging catastrophe of some sort or another. He doesn't exactly panic, but instead tries to assert himself in control of situations where he'd be better off hiding under the bed. 

The balefire I'm proud of. Usually, the term appears in stories as a sort of weapon--like normal fire or electricity. Here, it's a conscious being in itself. I won't spoil anything, but I will say that I'm happy I came up with it, because it helped get me out of a tight spot later on in the book. 

Thinking or Not

It's sometimes scary where my brain will go if I let it. 

There once was a girl who started writing a novel.

It wasn’t easy.

“Crap, crap crap crap…” she muttered, staring at the empty notebook and tugging at her ponytail. “Why can’t I come up with an idea?”

The large, black and brown-brindled tomcat on the chair in the corner snorted derisively and licked a paw.

            “Because you’re thinking,” he answered her, licking down the length of his foreleg and up his back. The girl gave him an annoyed look.

            “I’m thinking as hard as I can,” she grumbled back irritably.

            “No, you heard me wrong,” the cat said. “I didn’t say you weren’t thinking, I said you were thinking. There’s a difference.” He moved on to his hind legs, his back toes splayed so he could get between them with his tongue.

            “What do you mean by that?” the girl asked, annoyed.

            The cat finished with his toes and moved on to his butt. The girl rolled her eyes as he extended his leg upward and his head disappeared around his haunches. When he was finished, he eased back into a relaxed position, licking his chops satisfactorily.

            “That’s disgusting,” the girl said.

            “What, you don’t do it, too?” he asked innocently. The girl rolled her eyes.

            “You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

            “Nor do I intend to.”

            “Oh, come on! Stop being so cryptic! You mean I shouldn’t be thinking?”

            The cat sniffed and melted backwards into the chair cushions. His tail twitched lazily, and his eyes closed in a satisfied squint.

            “You won’t tell me?” the girl asked.

            “Didn’t I say so before?” he countered.

            The girl glowered at him, and turned back to her blank page. “Fine. Be that way,” she grumped.

            “I will.”

            The girl stared at the sheet of paper for a moment, tapping the pencil eraser against her forehead. Her mind was still blank, but she’d forgotten about that for a moment and was now contemplating what her life could have been had she not gotten a cat. Without really thinking about it, her pencil scrawled down a few lines on the paper:

            There once was a girl who started writing a novel.

            It wasn’t easy…

I guess that's true, though. I generally don't come up with ideas when I'm thinking hard about it. Sometimes, yes, but my best comes by surprise when the logical part of my brain is shut off and the somewhat crazy, creative part is allowed to run rampant. I believe this is indeed what a cat would say if it could speak. 

The next chapter's up in the As Yet Unnamed Story (I really need to come up with a name already). It's still laying out the setting and the characters, so bear with me. I build slowly, but when the action comes, it keeps going steadily until the end. I hope everyone's following and enjoying the story, and that they will continue to do so! In the meantime, if you're bored, scribble something down on a blank sheet of paper (works best if you're half-asleep). From there, there's no telling where you'll go...

           

Cover Page Progress...

Well, time for a bit of art.
The surface of my desk now looks something like this:

...And if you're a bit of a neat-freak, you'll be appalled to know that my floor is about ten times worse (I had to wade through knee-deep junk to get to my desk).

I've  nearly completed the As Yet Unnamed Story (Finished writing, that is--editing, re-editing, and editing yet again is an entirely different story), and have begun work on the cover image. This involves resurrecting some ill-used watercoloring skills that I probably haven't employed for three or four years now. My basic assessment at the moment: painting grass sucks. However, the penciled image that I came up with is my greatest to date, and I have an extra copy in case of a fatal screw-up. So far, my mistakes have been small enough to blot out with a paper towel, so I have hopes of pulling this off.

In the meantime, the latest chapter is up, introducing the professor Nero Arianrhod. As far as characters go, he's one of my favorites--absent-minded, intelligent, with his nose stuck in a book 65% of his waking life. If you've been following this story regularly, you'll find that the editing process is already begun, and some of the story towards the beginning has been gradually updated. I hope you continue to read and enjoy this story, and as always, feel free to leave comments or ideas at the bottom!

The Sign of the Suncat

My apologies for not posting sooner. There was a thunderstorm last night, and it wasn't quite worth the risk to turn on the computer, seeing as how we've already fried two in the past few years and actually watched a phone jump off the wall. While it would be interesting to watch the computer leap a few feet after being struck by lightning, I think fireworks are a much easier, cheaper way to celebrate the fourth of July.

On a different note, I now present to you the story of the sign of the suncat.The suncat itself is an ethereal being in a different world (set in our equivalent to the middle ages) that takes on the form of a cat made entirely of sunlight. To the (for the most part) humanoid inhabitants of this world, the cat is regarded as something of a deity, and has evolved its own legend that ties in with the recent history of this world....

The Sign of the Suncat

It is said that the suncat appeared after each great war, when the scale between peace and turmoil needed only a tiny tipping of the scales to go either way. Ever since then, the suncat has been used as a symbol of peace, one that even the most warlike leaders must honor when it is raised on the battlefield.
The kingdoms are dissolving, however. The Queen and her Esk Queen have engaged in a vicious war against the plant men of the south, and all the forests between the Royal Palace and the front line of the battlefield have been burned, chopped down, or trampled by the thousands of feet of the Queen's warriors.
That swath of burned forest is growing, for the Queens are slowly winning. Though powerful, the plant men are not fighters by nature, and are being slowly driven back to their final defense; the castle of the Redwoods. Should the battle reach here, the war will take a far more deadly turn. The great Redwood Giants, the oldest and most powerful of the plant men, would be awakened. Unlike their cousins, they are not peaceable creatures. They were sent into a deep slumber eons ago because of their endless need to destroy, and should they ever awaken again, they would not distinguish friend from foe from the innocent.

The Plant Men

The whole world would fall, and not even the power of the suncat, should it choose to appear again, would be able to save it.

The "Esk Queen" I came up with after watching a Cirque du Soleil performance. She would basically be a head adviser or second in command to the Queen, and she would be capable of silently manipulating the way the country is run if the Queen was not strong-minded. I'm basically trying to put together a political mess, with tyrants attempting to seize control from all angles with a few honest people caught up in the middle. If/when I finish my latest book, this idea is one of several that I'm considering working on.

As always, the latest chapter in the As Yet Unnamed Story is up. In this chapter, I finally introduce Uncle Avon and his servants, Betty and Aver. It's taken me awhile to get a bead on Avon's personality, and I think I've finally figured it out: the man's just nuts.
Enjoy!

The Birds

As many of us would probably agree, birds like to insult people.
Blue Jays, red-winged blackbirds, and grackles especially. When we stray too near their nests, they cackle and squawk at us, and it isn't such a leap to imagine that they're hurling vicious insults at us. This is my idea of what would happen if they could talk (An excerpt from the As Yet Unnamed Story):

            Diddle tottered unsteadily, the rotted beam beneath his feet swaying as a gust of wind howled through the missing wall of the old barn.

            “Curse it, Anajyrosima,” he muttered under his breath, clinging desperately to the wall. “You always choose the worst moments.”

            The wind seemed to laugh in response.

            Diddle waited for the beam to stop rocking as the wind faded, and then cautiously began edging his way forward out into the rafters of the barn. If the beam gave way now, there would be nothing to grab onto. Fortunately, the great weather goddess seemed to be in a good mood.

            Once he got to the end of the beam, Diddle found himself in the supporting triangle structures that held up the barn roof. They were in better condition than the beam and the rotted ladder he’d used to get up there, but he was cautious anyway. Below him, a pile of moldy straw that was almost as old as Diddle himself lay strewn in a towering heap across the floor, peppered with the occasional black pit where the floor had caved in.

            If Diddle’s mother had been able to see him, she would have skinned him alive and hung his hide on a pole in the front yard. She never seemed to understand why her son had to risk life and limb for the sake of satisfying his curiosity. It was worth the risk, though; Diddle had discovered a nest of giben birds.

            He’d caught sight of the male a few days ago; a huge, crow-like creature with a feathery crest on the back of its head and bright golden eyes. It had pitch-black feathers, peppered with flecks of gold that were densest around the hackles. They hunted in pairs—the female distracting the prey while the male swooped down to catch it—and they nested in the early summertime.

Diddle had traced these two back to their nest over the past couple days, and had lain in wait until the parents left. As soon as they were gone, he set about climbing the old, rotted walls of the barn, his goal a messy lump of willow twigs perched precariously on the beam in the middle of the ceiling. He was very close.

            The boards creaked in protest with every cautiously-placed step Diddle took, his back hunched so he could grip the beams with his hands. He must have looked strange from below; a small, wiry, scruffy-looking boy crawling around in the rafters of a barn like a monkey. He was glad there wasn’t anyone to see, since, strictly speaking, he wasn’t allowed on this property. It didn’t help that his neighbor didn’t really like him anyway.

            A sudden squeal of shifting wood warned Diddle just in time to jump away from the board he’d been about to set his weight on as it wrenched free of its notch and plummeted to the floor. It missed the hay pile, and instead snapped in two against an old milking stall. Diddle took a shaky breath.

            “That was me,” he warned himself as he proceeded, taking extra care to test each board before setting his weight on it. Finally, he reached the nest, which was built alongside an old pulley rope that dangled from the rafters, an old tire swing trapped against the ceiling to prevent the rope from pulling through. Diddle used it as an anchor as he kneeled down next to the nest and cautiously peered over the edge.

            “Beeeek!” cheeped an angry voice, followed by a chorus of tiny, indignant protest as all four inhabitants of the little nest caught sight of Diddle. The boldest hatchling rose up onto its tiny legs, flapping its stubby little wings and clicking its oversized beak. The half-formed crest on the back of its head rose threateningly, reminding Diddle of a pincushion. He laughed as the other three hatchlings followed suit and waddled at him with their wings raised.

            “You’re fierce, aren’t you?” he said, wiggling a finger at them. The lead chick snapped at his finger and tried to swallow it, but he pulled away in time.

            “You’ll have quite the glib tongue when you grow up, won’t you?” Diddle said fondly, resting his chin on the side of the nest. The hatchlings folded their wings, and a couple of them cocked their heads towards him as if they were listening. Diddle grinned.

            “I’d wager you can understand every word I say,” he said. The lead chick ruffled its wings, and then squawked a single word:

            “Mam!”

            Diddle’s grin dropped; they weren’t looking at him at all.

            “Idiot! Jerk!” shrieked a voice, right into Diddle’s ear. He yelped in surprise and tried to duck out of the way, but the owner of the voice was relentless and angry, and she attacked Diddle with her claws flashing and insults rolling from her tongue in a cacophonous barrage of gibe.

            “You fat-faced, slimy thief! May you rot in the demonlands and lose your eyeballs to the genies! May your ugly face be pounded flat by the demons! I’ve never seen anything more disgusting! You filthy, evil pilferer! Why, I’ll—”

            Diddle tried to kick the female giben bird with his free foot, but all she did was latch herself onto his ankle and claw at his pant leg while cussing and hurling insults at him with unbridled fury. The chicks were at it, too, cheeping out half-formed insults as they waved their stubby wings and hopped around excitedly.

            “Jeeeeerk!” one squeaked. “Eeeeevl jeeeerk! Maaaae oo rot en the deeeeemnlaaa!”

            Another squawk from the entrance to the barn threw Diddle into a panic; the male! Between the mother and the father giben birds, they’d likely rip him to shreds. He needed to get out of there!

            His eyes searching frantically for an escape route, Diddle lit upon the old pulley rope. It was old and frayed and didn’t look like it would hold much. He briefly glanced at the approaching male giben bird, and without second thought, he leaped for the rope.

            He managed to seize the rope in midair, his arms very nearly popping from their sockets as his body’s falling weight suddenly yanked on his shoulders. He fell for a few meters—his legs windmilling frantically and the rope burning his hands—before he finally managed to bring himself to a stop.     

            He quickly twisted the rope around his legs and tightened his grip with his hands, his breath coming in ragged gasps and his limbs shaking. Thoughts of splattering against the floorboards were whirling through his brain, fueled by fear and adrenaline. When he’d collected himself enough to think coherently, he risked glancing upwards at the giben birds. He was surprised to find that the entire family was staring down at him, even the babies. They looked like they were waiting for something to happen.

            Diddle heard a loud snap, and then the rope suddenly gave way beneath him as something up above broke.

            Ironically, it wasn’t the rope.

            The board that fastened the rope to the ceiling was one of the most unrotted, stable beams in the building. Yet for some reason, it chose that moment to give way and send Diddle plummeting to the ground below.

            Diddle shouted frantically as he fell, but he had sense enough to curl himself into a ball and angle his feet downward, his muscled tensed for impact. He hit the mound of rotted hay, and then, with a splintering crash, kept going.

            The floorboards underneath the hay were even worse than the rafters, and they crumbled beneath Diddle’s weight like toothpicks. He, the rope, and a flurry of hay tumbled into the basement floor of the barn, crashing through the ceiling and into another mound of moldy hay at the bottom of an old calf stall. Diddle landed on his feet, but the force of the landing sent him sprawling flat with his face on the ground, his ribs aching and his butt sore from punching through the ceiling with it. He moaned miserably into the ground as the dust and hay settled around him.

            Nothing was broken, but Diddle probably would have laid there all day if it weren’t for the distant sounds of shouting that drifted down through the hole in the ceiling. It wasn’t the giben birds this time.

            “Crap!” Diddle cursed as he shot up to his feet, his bruises forgotten as he recognized the voice of his neighbor, Ian McClillan. The old, retired farmer sounded angry, and quite willing to take off Diddle’s head if he discovered him in the barn.

            Diddle ran for the downstairs exit, brushing off hay and splinters and praying all the while that Mr. McClillan would check the upstairs first.

            Not for the first time that day, luck was in Diddle’s favor.

            He ducked out of the basement and dodged behind a nearby bush as Mr. McClillan stormed by, on his way towards the upstairs loft.

            “Curse that rotten kid! If I find him in there, I swear by Anajyrosima’s tail I’ll wring his skinny little neck!” the old farmer muttered as he passed. Fortunately, the thick hair growing out of his ears prevented him from hearing Diddle chocking back a laugh.

            Once the coast was clear, Diddle shot away from his hiding place as quickly as his feet would carry him, heading for the small grove of woods that marked his home. He picked hay and wood out of his hair as he ran, hoping all the while that his mother wouldn’t notice the moldy barn smell that was clinging to him. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d grounded him for something he’d only sort of done on purpose. 

I rewrote the beginning of this story about a week ago. What I had before didn't seem like quite enough to introduce such an energetically curious character like Diddle. He needed to start out doing something...something he wasn't supposed to. The next chapter is up as well, so be sure to check it out!

The Creature Project

Tyrranigan Falcon--the very first

I have no idea how this project started.
All I know is that I was told one day by a friend of mine that everyone at our lunch table was going to come up with a mythical creature. The idea was to combine the front and back halves of an animal, much like the griffins, centaurs, and satyrs in classical mythology.

Oh, and by the way, I'd been volunteered to draw these creatures.

It was a great project to work on, though some of the animal combinations were a pain to work with. I started with the Tyrranigan Falcon, only to discover that cramming the head of a tyrannosaurus rex on the shoulders of a peregrine falcon was not easy, nor was merging the leathery, wrinkled torso of a rhinoceros to the sleek, neatly striped back end of a tiger. They turned out fine nevertheless, and I learned how to draw several new animals (I never realized how weirdly-shaped the head of a rhinoceros is).

Now all that's left to see is if these drawings ever actually worm their way into modern mythology. Be sure to check out the other creatures on the Doodles and Art page.

The Curse of Ideas

"My brother is a troll."

The best ideas come when you're bone-tired and want nothing more than to sleep. This one came in the middle of the night a few days ago, and I had to drag myself out of bed, scramble around in the dark until I found my notebook and a pen, and finally figure out how to work the light switch so I could scribble down the full story.
Note-taking doesn't work, either. I'll start writing down bullets, and then suddenly, I'll get an idea for the first sentence. That first sentence will then become the second sentence, and then spiral out of control until I have a complete story before me and a couple hours of sleep wasted. I suppose that's the curse of getting an idea, but I really wouldn't mind if my inspiration came in the middle of the day when I'm bored and not trying to catch up on sleep.

The stories of changelings have always been interesting to me. What would it be like to meet the person you were changed with? Even stranger, what would it be like to meet a sibling that had been swapped? This is what I think it would be like...

Changelings

            My brother is a troll.

            No, I’m not being mean. He is literally a troll. It’s actually a lot more common than one would think. A recent survey taken in 2006 revealed that an average of 0.02 children per household are in fact trolls—changelings swapped with human children at birth. It’s hard to tell at first sometimes, because the changelings usually don’t look that much different from humans.

            Seth has actually always been a good-looking boy; dark hair, tanned skin, etc., but if you look closely, you’ll notice that his eyes aren’t really light hazel—they’re gold. His pupils narrow into slits in dim light as well, and he can see extremely well in the dark. Even so, it wasn’t until he started talking that we realized what he was.

            When he was three, he asked my mother where her tail was.

            We all thought this was strange, but we assumed he’d been watching the cat, Sigurd, and had figured that all creatures have to have tails. We thought this, that is, until he turned six and asked my dad why mom hadn’t tried to eat me yet. We finally began to piece things together when he was eight, and he walked into the house with a huge black timber wolf following meekly at his heels like a trained dog.

            Despite all of this, we’ve treated him and loved him as part of the family. He and I fought together, committed small crimes together, and got in trouble together like regular siblings, though the thought occasionally crossed my mind, Who was my real brother? I always pushed that thought aside, because I love Seth as my brother, and I knew I never would meet my blood brother. At least so I thought.

            I finished high school four years ahead of Seth, and then we parted ways for a time while I went to college and he finished up high school. He was always very intelligent, especially in science classes. He once took an ecology class in which he had to go outside and identify birds. He swept through that unit without missing a question, but later confessed to me that he’d cheated; He’d asked the birds what people call them and they’d told him the answers.

            The summer after my first year of college, I returned home to visit. Seth and I talked a lot and walked out back in the hilly woods that surrounded our house, listening to birdsongs and turning over rocks in the creeks bed like when we were kids. Seth had Fenris, the timber wolf he’d befriended, following at his heels like he always had since he was eight. A couple of rabbits tried to follow him, too, but Fenris scared them off.

            I remember walking farther than we ever had before that day. The trees grew taller and taller as we walked, and the path that we were following became rougher and rougher until we had to hack aside tree branches and reaching tendrils of prickly thorns. We didn’t even think about turning back; we both felt a sort of urgency, as if we needed to be somewhere on time.

            We came to a part of the forest that was the beginning.

            There was no other word for it; the forest had begun there, and the trees that grew there were so old, so tall, and so incredibly wise that they knew every detail that had happened in the forest, from the mightiest forest fire to the tiniest fluttering of a bee’s wing. The air was very still.

            We weren’t alone. There was another family of people at the other end of the grove. There were four of them, two of which looked older than the others, with wilder hair and longer tails. They all had very tanned, leathery skin and shaggy, coarse black hair tangled with twigs. They had long tails—like those of a donkey—which they kept curled around their bare feet.

            We moved towards them, and them towards us—silently, so as not to disturb the ancient quiet of the grove. We met in the middle and stared at one another for a spell, neither group speaking or moving.

            I recognized the two parent trolls; they had the same high cheekbones, hawk-like noses and serious eyes as Seth, as well as the shimmering gold irises and slitted pupils. The young girl troll looked like him as well, though younger. I recognized the fourth troll as well, though he was not quite like the other three.

            He was a little paler of skin, and his face a little less heavily lined by wind and rain. His nose matched my mother’s and his heavy eyebrows my father’s, and the way his hair curled looked like mine. Most important were his eyes—light blue in color, with rounded pupils and a tendency to squint in the dark. He and I stared at one another for a spell, while Seth and his blood sister stared at one another as well. The parent trolls watched us all, and I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d ever regretted switching their son for that of another.

            Finally, we turned and left—not a word spoken nor a sign exchanged—Seth and I towards our home and the trolls towards theirs. We left that grove of old, wise trees for the young, new trees of the woods we knew well, and eventually made our way back home to finish my visit with my parents. I eventually went back to college, and Seth moved on to become a naturalist. The two of us settled down to our respective lives and families, and between us, we kept mum on that which we saw in the old forest. That day stayed with me, though, all through my life; the day I saw my real brother.