Their hands met, reaching for the same book.

"Oh, sorry. Wait, were you just reaching for A Little White Horse?"

"Uh, yes. Were you?"

"Mhmm. I thought I was the only person in this town who read that book, much less even knew it existed."

"Key word 'was'; I just moved here last month."

"Cool!"

She held out her hand. "I'm Kris, and I've lived here my whole life."

He shook her hand, grinning. "I'm Byron, and I look forward to seeing this town as home."

"The library was definitely the best place to start."

When days are dead and skies are grey
When roads with dust are trodden down
When soil is hard as sunbaked clay
And once green grass is stiff and brown

When home is not but ash and dust
When children can no longer cry
When kindly friend has broken trust
And heart is now too tired to try

When mountain mist is turned to smoke
When clouds forever shade the earth
When dust that rises makes us choke
And child born is dead from birth

January:

Snow has fallen. It sparkles in the sunlight, gleaming like diamonds. It hides the yellow-brown grass and the dry ground, creating a clean, white sheet, covering the old, awaiting the new. A perfect greeting to the New Year.

School will start soon; work will return; but everything seems fresh and ready. Last year’s trials and hardships are past. This year lies before us, and we must begin anew.

February:

It was snowing again.

1: Radiance

He looked onto the girl with reverent eyes
And upon his face was slapped surprise.
Her hair bound ‘round her in rolling cadence
And harmony with her smile of radiance.

2: Laughter

He listened unto the girl with pleasure plain
As she giggled like a brook after playful rain.
None could look anywhere but at her
With the song of her soulful laughter.

3: Embrace

In my dreams, I race very fast,
In my dreams, I flee from my past.
In my dreams, towards the future I run
In my dreams, we’ve only just begun.

Of every soul I’ve ever met,
You are my favorite, as of yet.
And even now when you are gone,
My love for you goes on and on.

And after all these years, my friend of old,
You still have that heart, made of gold.
And after all these years that we’ve been bound,
I realize my heart had been lost, then found.

If you've been wondering where I've been with my book, Redeemed on Tucker Street; well, here I am! I have finished the first great movement of the plot, and so I have been editing and polishing. I'm only about a quarter of the way done, but I like to work my longer writings in pieces. I also have added more of a preface and also a dedications page, since this work should definitely not be entirely credited to me!

Deep in the woods,
There’s a little wooden house,
And nobody lives there, but dreams.
And the laughter of childhood,
Floats on the breeze,
And splashes through crystal streams.

Find me beneath the old maple,
Let’s fight a few monsters today,
And return to the hall,
When the quest finally ends,
And we’ll sit with a fire ablaze.
Knowing well that we have
Something fleeting and sad,
That we’ll hold for as long as we can.
As long as we can.

I remember when we watched the sunrise over the river,
And we imagined dragons flying above, making the clouds into oceans.
The sky seemed to split apart, and fire rained down over us,
And we spilled into a new world that we made.

I remember when we walked through green hallways,
The trees making vaulted ceilings to our palace of fantasy.
We were dressed in all the trappings of wild princesses,
And we raced through the hidden tunnels of the new world we made.

It had been hours. A doctor had been summoned, Grandfather was rushed into one of the rooms of the estate, and the party was disbanded. Ettore had waited long enough outside the room in which the doctor was with Grandfather. He sat at the bedside and he observed how sick the man who raised him was. The doctor said his heart had stopped, but somehow, Ettore’s thoughtless reasoning kept him alive a little longer.
The room was silent and dark.