Another Teaser from the fantasy book I’m currently writing – The Time Before

At the moment I’m working on Chapter Two, in which we find out more about the early years of my heroine pictured above – Persephone Witchclaw.

” From her sixth summer until her fifteenth, she led an idyllic life. For many summers she could never bring herself to speak about Crellan. She returned the love showered upon her by her adoptive Humin parents Alene and Caerwyn Witchclaw tenfold. She had never been as happy as she was here in the village. The greatest delight for her was when she and her mother spent time together each summer, gathering berries on the edge of the woods that surrounded the village, spending endless hours gossiping. Equally she loved to help her father make hunting bows and arrows. Caerwyn quickly appreciated that his daughter was naturally gifted. So he taught her the arts of fletching and flint knapping. She soon gained a reputation for producing the finest arrows.

First she selected the best willow wands for the shafts. Next she made the nock out of a mixture of beeswax and pine resin which quickly hardened once she had fixed it to one end of the shaft. She then fletched the arrow with a mix of carefully selected Swan, Goose and Duck feathers held on by twine made from the tough hair from along the spine of a Boar’s back. She soaked the twine in hot beeswax before carefully winding it through the feathers and around the shaft below the nock. Finally she split the other end of the shaft before inserting a flint arrowhead into it, and once again, she secured it into place using more of the beeswax soaked Boar twine. Young Persephone’s arrows soon became much sought after by every hunter and warrior throughout Goblindom, no matter whether they were Goblin, Humin, or Elf.”

 

More later, if you’re good…