A mood board for THE PASSING OF EIR LAHREN showing a grid of nine pictures. From top to bottom, L - R: A brooding man with longer dark hair smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, dark clouds with pink light coming through; a spiral of skulls and longbones; a landscape with ponds and rolling, grassy hills; a dark, stone chamber with rough hewn columns; a close-up of white flowers; a dark European longhouse; a mixed race woman with dark blonde curls; two old 19th cen. syringes of glass and metal on a wooden background.
The opening paragraphs of THE PASSING OF EIR LAHREN with a grassy landscape in the background.
Excerpt reads: Lately, I go by Ivigh.
Howling wind pummels my aching bones, but it’s a welcome change from Ossgen’s stagnation. I crouch at the base of the terp, chapped fingers hovering over colorless soil. Cracked clay and storm-blasted grasses are cast in colorless greys under the perpetual dusk. I don’t blame the townsfolk for their fear of the Waste, but it won’t kill them. Not right away.
I shuffle another dozen steps to the crest of the hill and lean on my cane. Drag marks, down into the gully. Sure enough, in the basin below lies my quarry. It’s Miss Lange, judging by the periwinkle tipdoek. She left the town two days ago searching for the few quickthorn still clinging to life. Most make it back, those who leave to gather or hunt. She wasn’t so lucky. I limp my way down the slope toward her. She doesn’t hear me, doesn’t turn, but remains swaying in the swale. Her smooth hands grasp at something in reflex, maybe remembering her child’s sticky hand.
This is the only time I hesitate, in the stillness when the body recalls its last echoes of humanity. I stop just behind her to pray.
(italics) May her spirit find solace and not find its way back. May Wodan spare us each this fate. (End Italics)
Then I slit her throat.
The dead deserve an afterlife, with a real necromancer for a grave warden, but they're stuck with Ivigh and eternal unrest. Then cheerful Mudlark blackmails Ivigh into hunting the witch who damned the dead, or risk exposing the truth behind the hole in his beatless heart.
#BluePit 📖 #Q #A #TR #OV
