Been busy... Here's a taste from "Maker". In Joy
…He heard a gull calling and waves. They seemed to be crashing against rocks far below as he opened his eyes. He was under a windswept oak, dwarfed from living in rocky soil, and tall, lush grass stretched away, ending where the teal sea met the topaz sky. Emerald mounds of distant islands dotted the horizon, like dragon’s humps emerging from the sea. Birds sang and sunlight shattered through fluffy clouds racing away to the east. He rose and cast about. Piles of taupe stones, overgrown with moss and ferns, marked the locations of what looked to be old and famil-iar cairns. He heard children laughing. The sounds of their joy rose on the wind ascending the cliff face and he moved to the drop off.The sandstone cliff was weathered in ledges, festooned with tropical shrubs and trees, freckled with blossoms of vibrant purple and fiery orange. The rocky base of the cliff gave way to taupe sand, punctuated with boulders. A woman was on the beach with two children. She held her auburn forelock back with one hand and shaded her eyes with the other, and then she smiled up at Michael, waving. The children were tussling – a lank boy and a wiry girl half his size and age. He scooped her up and onto his shoulders. Her coppery hair fell in curls down over her bare shoulders. Naked from the waist up, they too grinned and waved at Michael. They seemed familiar and he scoured his memory as he descended the narrow path, through the terraces of vine draped trees, to the soft beige sand of the beach two hundred meters below.
The woman smiled broadly, bright blue eyes flashing from beneath auburn brows, as she approached, picking her way between the boulders. His heart seemed to splash in his chest at the sight of her. She laughed aloud, the sound of it like crystal bells dancing in a warm breeze. His eyes grew wide as his skin rose in gooseflesh, fire spangling up and down his spine. He opened his arms and she ran to him, falling into his embrace. She was warm and brown and sun-kissed, and he dropped his nose into her hair. Her scent was of honeysuckle mixed with jasmine and sandalwood.
“You’re so warm,” he breathed.
“It’s just the love,” she whispered.
He pulled away and looked into her eyes as a rush of uncaused joy welled and swallowed his cares. Her irises scintillated with shards of violet, swimming in blue. He grinned, stunned and enchanted. She laughed and he saw her fangs gleaming. He ran his tongue across the surface of his teeth and found his blood teeth. Memories of another life tumbled and tangled.
“Where am I?”
“That’s the wrong question,” she breathed, “but you are in Our world, Michael. This will one day soon be your only home.” She gestured to the children drawing night. “Our home,” she breathed. “It’s Tír inna n-Óc, the world of eternal youth. We are building it together, you and I, even now, for us and our children and our family and friends... You don’t remember because you think time runs in but one direction, but time is loops within loops, and the world you think you know is but a dream within a dream.”
“Hi,” the little girl squinted up at him, soft taupe freckles flecked her fair cheeks under pale gray eyes. Sunlight spangled in her coppery curls. It made Michael want to laugh. The boy’s dazzling azure eyes danced with recognition as he held the girl’s legs by the knees, steadying her on his shoulders while she gripped his thick auburn hair. “Where hae ye been?” The wee girl’s accent swept through Michael’s mind, dragging him back to a time he could not quite recall, as if it were another world. He smiled and swallowed a lump of emotion, eyebrows knitted, and looked to the woman. She suppressed her laughter.
(Continued in first comment.)
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“What?” Michael grunted. She nodded.
“Look again at the wee girl.” Michael scanned the child’s shining face. She narrowed her eyes in determination and glared as if she were trying to beam a thought into Michael’s mind.
“It’s Patrice, Michael,” the woman explained, “your wee Patrice. Your first love. Your first loss and the place in your mind where you turned away from joy lest you ever be so wounded again.”
Michael’s eyes welled and his arms found the girl. He gathered her to his chest, kissing the top of her head.
“Ma wee bonnie eedjit,” he breathed. She giggled in his arms and he remembered the day she’d died, the old cairns above, atop the cliff from which she’d fallen, and the life he had lived without her. “Have I died?” he whispered and rolled his eyes open to glare at the woman from beneath his brow. She shook her head, and he recognized her. “My Cailín?” She nodded. He dropped to his knees and reached out to gather all of them, but his arms found nothing. He opened his eyes. The woman was several yards away on the beach and she gestured to him to follow. He rose, striding large. “Where did the children go?” he called. She turned, walking backwards as he approached and then she whirled and sprinted away, laughing. She ran into the waves and he dashed in after her, catching her up in his embrace.
“We are those children, my Love,” she laughed. He rolled her down onto the sand and watched the foam catching in the waves of her auburn mane.
“Patrice?” he breathed.
“Patrice, and Mary Elizabeth and Erinn and your Cailín,” she sighed. “I have been whomever you have needed, drawing you back down the path that returned you home to joy. I have never left you, nor have you gone anywhere except in dreams. In but dreams you have wandered, friendless and alone, but always you have been here, at home, safe and loved in Paradise and only dreaming of your exile… Waken, my Love. Come home to me,” she breathed and smiled.
He kissed her in the way a man kisses the woman he has loved forever.
I see your supernatural friends are still with you and making for interesting reading