WIP

It’s Friday!

I’ve been writing this morning in anticipation of the last day of school (goodbye, quiet time, see you in August). I thought I’d post a little snippet. This is from my tarot story in the making, formerly titled Thirteenth Path but now possibly titled, er, something else.

All great stories start with once upon a time. This one is no different. Once upon a time, long ago, there was a kingdom by the sea. The castle loomed on a cliff, at the very peak of the land which spread out below it in all directions. The kingdom, once led by mighty kings for generations, had long become more of a series of small farms back to back. Folks kept to themselves, and the great festivals of old were often reminisced upon but no one could actually remember attending one. Queen Violet had sat upon her dead husband’s throne–dead from too many women and not enough sense, said the villagers–for two decades now and showed no signs of impeding demise. Her single son, Peter, hunted far and wide for game and a wife, but thus far no woman wanted to marry into the ineffectual royal family. The people’s favorite joke of the day involved Prince Peter, a goat and the village idiot. The goat was usually deemed the wisest.
On this particular day, Prince Peter was astride his horse. He rode fast and hard, the horse bending to only the harshest of whips though each time the prince struck the horse, he himself winced in pain. Whipping and wincing, he galloped through the forest after a juicy boar that was speeding as fast as it could through the underbrush. The prince chased, his mind racing. If he quit whipping the horse to draw his bow, the horse would slow and eventually find a patch of forest moss to munch on. But if he didn’t draw his bow, his bacon would escape for the third time this week. Grumbling, he shouted to the horse.
“Listen, Mosten. I know you don’t like to run and I know you hate it when I whip you like this. If you help me catch this boar, just this once, I’ll give you the choice oats out of the bag and I’ll let you wander all over the kingdom on the way home. Deal?” The horse, as usual, said nothing. Squinting his eyes and sending a prayer to the god of hunting, he dropped the whip and drew his bow, reaching back to pull an arrow from the quiver slung on his back. As he reached, Mosten skidded to a halt. In mid-load, the prince had neglected to attend to his balance, and when the horse stopped running he flew forward off the saddle, over the cursed creature’s head and landed on his arse in the middle of a clover field. His bow, still in his grip, twanged once and broke, the arrow snapping in half. Mosten nosed Peter’s hair for a moment, then, deeming it inedible, turned to the tasty clover treat he had so handily discovered.
Peter shook his head to clear it, then looked up in time to see the boar slow to a trot, glance over his shoulder at the fallen prince, snort, and wander away into the forest on the far side of the field.

Mosten is not a made up name, but you’d laugh if I told you where I got it. Teehee. I’m not much of a historical writer, so I’m aiming here for fantastical fairy tale type language/feel rather than any particular time period.