At the moment I am writing my first novel.  It is, as you may imagine, a totally different experience to writing these short blog posts or the short stories which make up some of my other books.  There is a satisfaction when sitting at my laptop and finding that the story has circled to a completion in under 1,000 words.

I’m really enjoying the challenge of writing this novel – and it IS a challenge.  There is so much to remember – and I have a dodgy memory, so there are spreadsheets involved so that I can keep track of who is doing what to whom!!!

BUT

However exciting writing a novel is, sometimes a short story screams to be released….   Enjoy….

More than a thousand years ago a seed fell and took root.  The sapling grew, stretching tall through the shadows of the older forest to reach the sunlight.  Small creatures sought safety in her branches, and her leaves cast a protective canopy on the forest floor.  The mycorrhizal network beneath the earth connected her to her sisters and parent trees, enabling a sharing of knowledge and nutrients.  The forest thrived and within in that community the circle of life blossomed and grew.

Then Man came to the island, and with him came his religion and his need for a place to worship.  In the way that Man does, he slaughtered the forest, the birds, the animals – all in order to build that place, formed from dead and silent stone.  All that lived was slaughtered to Man’s greed, except a single tree. These men did not see that the very place they truly needed was right there under the trees where the songs of ages thrived. 

That single tree, grown strong in its reaching for the light, once friend and protector of all living things, was now bound by barren land and stone walls.  Over time, the tree twisted, seeking company.  The trunk and branches rotated around as the tree once again strived to reach the sunlight.

A thousand years later, when the tree trunk was old and gnarled; when leaves had fallen and regrown a thousand times, the walls of the Abbey started to crumble and fall.  The light, and the magical creatures, began to return and, eventually, the Songs of Ages could once again be heard in the whisper of wind in the leaves and in the laughter of children.

A single tree, old and gnarled with a twisted trunk stands of rocky ground surrounded by the crumbling walls of an ancient abbey.

Thank you for reading

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Auri’An Lay

Life through a neuro-divergent mind