Marton Shelters in the Snow Bushes: A Scene From My Untitled Fantasy Epic

Day 22

Marton awoke with a start, muscles tensed, ears straining, eyes adjusting rapidly to the dark evening light. On the dim edges of his consciousness was the memory of a sound. Was it a cracking twig? A predator in the night?

Though his heart was hammering, he remained still, his back against the firm bark of the tree, arms crossed over his chest to keep his warmth near him under the thick woolen blanket. He realized, with some relief, that Sven was still asleep, his light exhalations punctuating the silence.

The noise must have been a part of his dream, for Sven would have awoken at the fluttering of a leaf.

They were nestled in a thicket of snow bushes and sap trees a stone’s throw from the wood’s edge. The long, delicate stems of the snow bushes arched up over them, providing a natural roof through which Marton could just see a few stars glittering through a break in the clouds. Beyond the forest’s edge, the world stretched out indefinitely, its bare grassy hills rolling into the night, barely discernible by the faint light that filtered through the shadowy clouds, still grumbling with thunder as they slid slowly south to shed their rain on some other patch of earth.

All was quiet, save for the slow dripping of water from the leaves of the tall sap trees. Thankfully, their small patch of dirt was dry; the wide leaves of the snow bush, thickly interlaced above them, caught the rain and held it. In the morning, the dewy droplets would sparkle in the dappled sunlight.

Marton was reminded — with a suddenness that brought a tightness to his throat — of the glass globe his sister had before the Fall. It caught the light just the same. In her room, a ray of morning sun slanted across the stone floor, and there was a place just by the door to her balcony where she would place the globe so it caught the light and threw tiny rainbows across the walls. She was spellbound by the magic, and never tired of it.

This is a writing exercise in which I work on a potential scene from an epic fantasy novel I’ve had in my head for some time. In this exercise, my goal is to set a scene or a mood.

Originally published at www.zerofoxgiven.net on April 6, 2017