…..so keep it kind. Afterwards, you can have at it. Beta readers anyone? End of February. Fingers uncrossed and intentions pure.
Synopsis
Reliving history for Jack has become a matter of survival for the future of mankind. When all technological means of communication are withheld to thwart the Dawning it becomes imperative on those Awakened to share what they remember and what has been revealed.
With possible extinction in sight, at negligent hands and the hands of those who wield the power, it is Jack’s task after the Awakening to ensure that his granddaughter understands the past and uses her gifts as one of the Evolved to ensure its continuity.
Young as she is, and with so little time allocated to her, he must let her see inside his mind and disclose to her what she needs to know to ensure she may live a little longer. A place of images and imagination melded with fact and mythology, Jack allows her access to his memories and hopes it will be enough.
Set in the heart of the mountains of Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands, Jack reveals the secrets of his life and its history as he has come to understand it. By at last putting his own guilt and betrayal to rest, and facing fears known to all, he summons the strength necessary to reconnect with a world he has shunned for too long.
Yeah? No? Maybe?
OK. Excerpt.
Prologue.
It is difficult to describe a place nearer to heaven than the mountains of the Scottish Highlands. Difficult not to imagine that the hand of an almighty creator visited them and shaped them through the eons of time to ensure that they arrived at their perfect majesty. It is difficult to think that any other means was possible in their creation.
But we know that the land was formed in the evolution of a world become scenic through calamitous periods that graced the landscape with more wonder than is possible to inhale at one time. It is easy to breathe the air there and feel the source of all life pour into lungs glad for its renewal.
And it is not difficult at all to fall in love with the wild mountains and air that speak in a voice only whispered in sighs descending from the summits and up from the earth. A voice sometimes raised in wild wind and frozen breath, chilling into the marrow of our beings.
It is all too easy to think of the people who inhabited those mountains in days gone past and whose lives and livelihoods were dependent on working with the land they were born to, a land they became a part of. Some more closely a part of than others.
In the mountains of that land there lie secrets that only those who lived at that time may ever really have known. And even then, perhaps, the stories told would be one-sided, slanted as all stories are by who recounts them.
In the telling of history it is said the winner has the upper hand. Who else is left to relate the story and publish memoirs if not those who vanquished the other?
Then there is the word passed down, the history that is never written but is etched in the hearts of those who ensured that another account was possible. Another version of events that may just be as true as the ones scribed.
History is strange like that. Hindsight sees clearer but does not see all.
Imagination and some clarity attached to the events, reliving the moments as if one of those present, might better relate the feelings and thoughts of those who lived at that time. At least, I think so.
We pore over notes and search in vaults for clues as detectives of the past when we are the living embodiment of that past. In worlds within worlds, in places everywhere we carry the legacy of that past into our present, living it while rarely learning from it, it seems.
Forever destined to repeat the mistakes made, to follow the path outlined before, to not see and to not hear, to ignore all evidence that says there must be a better way.
Across the manifest histories, horsemen, battalions, warriors, and common folk have succumbed to the power that seeks to wield the control, to wrest from the earth and all upon it the privilege granted to share in the wonder around us. We do not enjoy. We eat it up and spit it out. Glad only that we have, that we can have more.
Then we see. We awaken.
And we see that whatever we have we only have for such a very little time. We pass as all others have passed before us. And leave only the legacy of our ways.
This is mine.
I see light now everywhere. The stars have been turned on and their light shines even in the daytime, seen from afar by all who have Awakened. But before that there was darkness. And illusion.
The purple of the heather has never been so bright; filaments on thistles reveal every nuance of history fed into their roots. The colours and life on these mountains bring me home. Home where I’m happiest, among those I love and those who love me. Among brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, old and young; life passing in its quiet way with grandeur setting the scene and diminished grief in the understood belief that we share one source.
I pick idly at the petals on one stalk of thistle and play a game in my mind as I pluck from its centre, asking ‘Reality? Illusion?’ I know that soon the thistle flower will die and I will watch as the down is cast on the wind. Each indigo filament becoming the seed that will grow afresh in a new flower; a wild flower dismissed as unimportant. A weed in the landscape. A mere nothing. But intrinsic to the landscape and as meaningful, to my mind, as every rose or orchid that ever graced more worthy tables. More worthy only in the eyes of the observer. Never more worthy than the child before me. One of the Evolved born to my daughter the night we Awakened. It is my task, as her grandfather and chosen mentor to ensure that she understands it all.
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Maybe? Well, I’m going with it.
For some the world is small. For others a place too huge to venture alone. But together, we can change the future. ‘The Evolved’ is going to be the second book. Starting in December. Or maybe tonight. Not sure. Wine dependent. 😉
The third I know the story. Just not sure of the ending.
Guest bloggers required for the near future. 😉
And my thanks to all who let me wander in mind while my blog thrived in the hands of guests. I owe you all.
Paul is pending. Have you been pending before, Paul? 😉
If there is anyone who would like to use up the rest of November as guest let me know. I’m open to a few days R&R.
You have been the stars in my firmament while I wandered. Bless you all.
Takers? Anyone? Collaboration? Sexy poetry? Bit of sensual innuendo? Anything within reason! #not a pervert but…;)
Third glass of wine about to go down and I think Ill go and build me a farm on some virtual reality. Or knit a few rows. Or….maybe write just a couple more sentences about what our future may or may not hold.
Decisions…decisions…choices….choices….
Fuck! That would have made a much shorter synopsis.
Ach, well. That’s me.
Still loving you all.x
scottishmomus 