While driving down the expressway leaving for the weekend, my mind wanders as through the window each passing tree reminds me of the season. Leaves, swirling down to gravity's command, wearing the fading glory of their vibrant show. It is that time again. Fall, the season when all things beautiful come to an end in preparation for the depth of winter. My favorite season.
Some people love Spring, the time of awaken and new life; others prefer the hot, sticky steam of a Deep South Summer. Others thrill for the freeze and promise of overlying pure blankets of perfect white brilliance, and the smell of the hearth fire flavoring the painful breath of Winter. While each of the other seasons have their charms and I do enjoy them each in its turn, my heart ever longs for Autumn.
As a child I enjoyed the swish of the fallen leaves as we ran through the neatly raked piles, laughter bubbling up from a wellspring deep inside. The special perfume of Saturday afternoons, a concoction of camp fires, s'mores, popcorn, and crisp cool air sliding across the countryside always brings me back to simpler days: Friday night football games and Saturday night bonfires followed by Sunday afternoon rides leaf peeping from the back of my favorite horse.
I love mornings, when the fog hangs low over the creeks and valleys of the mountains which surround us. The sting of early chill in the air brings a tear to my eyes when walking the horses out for the day. Mid morning the first of the long sleeves are coming off, and by after lunch you can wander in the sunshine in short sleeves; laughing to yourself over the capricious nature of Fall weather.
Autumn also brings the memories of first love. The rush of attraction soon followed by the thrill of those early dates. My first love left in the fall, more than once actually. He was in the Air Force. It seemed we were always saying goodbye. Then came college and the rush of fraternity boys. Homecoming and formals, dances where the music always seemed to fit the mood and alcohol flowed.
Change happens constantly, but in Fall the changes are spread across the spectrum of God's creatures. Not only are the trees wearing and shedding their brilliance, but the animals are in their element, preparing for the depths of hibernation. Squirrels scurry hither and yon, memory failing them in the endless search for their summer hiding places. The skies are filled with vast formations of birds, seeking the earth's compass to guide them to the safety and warmth of winter homes. By Autumn's end, the forests will be poised with an air of patience; waiting for the earth to tilt again and the lengthening of days.
So as the calendar winds down toward harvest's end and before we bar the doors and windows against the long night of winter, enjoy the fleeing beauty of Fall's glorious daylight. Partake of the fruits of the vines and the bounty of the fields. Autumn's Harvest is here. Enjoy the repast!
Now Available From Keith Publishing: Catalyst - Guardian Rising
In a post-apocalyptic future, the fate of the rebuilding
world hangs in the balance. An unknown power seeks the forbidden knowledge
needed to unleash total devastation once more upon a fragile Earth. It falls to
one woman to safeguard the future of the Five Kingdoms.
Princess of the West, Vivienne has been plagued by nightmare visions of past and future since the moment of her birth. Now, to save all she loves from destruction, she must rise above the crippling self-doubts that have assailed her since childhood to become the prophesied Guardian—because the enemy is moving, and the world will soon plunge into a war of sword and sorcery.
But who is the enemy? And who is a friend? Can Vivienne trust anyone apart from her sworn protector, Devon?
The answers lurk in the past—but should the past be destroyed to protect the future?
Princess of the West, Vivienne has been plagued by nightmare visions of past and future since the moment of her birth. Now, to save all she loves from destruction, she must rise above the crippling self-doubts that have assailed her since childhood to become the prophesied Guardian—because the enemy is moving, and the world will soon plunge into a war of sword and sorcery.
But who is the enemy? And who is a friend? Can Vivienne trust anyone apart from her sworn protector, Devon?
The answers lurk in the past—but should the past be destroyed to protect the future?
Excerpt from "Catalyst - Guardian Rising" :
My Nightmares
"...The
Council of Elders thinks I am insane, unlucky to be born a woman and too young
at the age of nineteen for the responsibility as my father’s only heir. Perhaps
I am crazy. I did not ask for these dreams, these voices directing my actions. I
have been cursed to spend my life reliving the nightmare of my birth. It has
haunted my dreams since early childhood. The dreams created within me a deeply
ingrained sense of doubt, questions of worth and abilities. Perhaps if the
birth had been normal, all the torment and guilt which burned itself into my
psyche would have ceased to be the essence of who I am. Instead, I was fated to
have this repetitive horror as much a part of my nature as the blood streaming
through my veins. My birth was a circus of violence, bloodshed, war and death.
Hallmarks that created the basic characteristics of my personality were defined
at the time of my voyage into this life.
For most of my life, from childhood
through present, my dreams have encompassed a vast array of subjects, some
familiar, others not. Sometimes I’ve dreamed of a strange world, where the sky
pulsed a sickening shade of reddish-orange and the ground ran slick with blood.
Other dreams contained mere shadows of people I did not know, doing things I
could not see. Those dreams did not impress my brain enough to record their
intimate details into my memories. But the complex details of my most horrific
nightmares … those I have remembered with excruciating exactness. Those
nightmares have at times driven me to the farthest reaches of my sanity where
madness beckoned with welcoming arms, laughing when I gasped for air and tried
to recoil from the horror.
In these repetitive, abominable shows,
there is no past, no future — only an uneasy sense of existing simply in the
“now.”
My worst and
therefore most prevalent nightmare always starts at the same place: the
laboring of my mother just prior to my birth. In this horror show, I can see
the room and the people involved through several different sets of eyes, some at
the same time. This gives me some interesting perspectives on everyone and
their motivations. Despite the impossibilities involved in the complex process
of dreaming, when I am locked within these nightmares, events never seem to be
a part of my past. Everything and everyone seems to be moving in the “now,” not
the “then.” But the pain and terror and the horror are always mine. I need bear
no other person’s baggage — I have enough of my own.
Everyone is a
product of their past. Since well before my birth my father, the Western
Kingdom and the Northern Warrior tribes had been defending their borders
against repeated incursions by followers of Minnlin, a renegade Druid, with
exceptional talent for Mysticism and War Craft. Fifty years before my birth the Druid Master of that time, a grim fellow
named Reave, gave his permission for the young Minnlin to be given instruction
in both areas.
The Druids gave him free rein over the knowledge contained in their
massive libraries. In their folly they allowed the young man to study
unobserved and unsupervised within the forbidden Books they were sworn by oath to
protect from abuse. With this lack of
oversight from his teachers, Minnlin grew in talent but with apparently no
sense of right and wrong. The Masters tried to keep the
monster they created confined in the safety of the community. Too late they realized the potential for
destruction he possessed. But Minnlin
had seen his future, and he knew it did not lie within the thick stone walls of
the Druid's Mountain Fortress. For half a century, the threat of a druid
unbound to the Oath hung over the Five Kingdoms.
In
fall, early November to be precise, the first winter snows began storming in
from the oceans. Our lands, the Five Kingdoms, were thrust into sudden and
horrific warfare. As the heavy, black thunderclouds began rolling over the
craggy mountains that marched across the Western horizon, enemy forces in the
East streamed up from the Plains through the rapidly closing passes and into
the Forbidden Mountains, leaving behind the more hospitable lower climate. They
continued fighting skirmishes and ambushes over the next six weeks. Both sides
gained and lost territory during these encounters.
Even though my birth was imminent my
mother, Katarina, decided to make a visit to see my father, the Western king,
in the field because
she
was determined not to give birth alone. She traveled to his headquarters, close
to the actual front line, the manor home of friends King Der, ruler of the
Northern Tribes, and his wife, Mari. With Der’s youngest brother Devon and
Hana, a Tracker who was retraining as a Healer, also in residence, the king’s
house was a safe harbor in the midst of war. My father, Philippe, was a nervous
wreck having his very pregnant wife anywhere close to the fighting. But he was
so happy to see Katarina after an absence of more than two months, for the first
and only time in his life, Philippe threw caution to the winds and left his
field tent for the traditional Winter Solstice Celebration truce and returned
to the manor house to stay with Katarina. Before he could arrive, my mother
went into labor."
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