Don’t forget to go vote for Harvest of Blood if you haven’t done so yet!
Danica 20 and Epilogue are both in the queue at Lit. With the contest going on, they may be delayed a bit in going live, but they’re in the editor’s hands. A little over a week, and the wait is finally over.
And a little tease for some other fans (unedited, ignore spelling and grammar errors, hot off the press)
The sun shining in her window awakened Arilee, and she rose as soon as she was awake enough to realize it was morning. There were dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, and she changed from her nightshirt into a plain blouse and skirt with obvious weariness. The sun was long set when she had lain down the previous night, but she could ill afford to sleep in and make up for the lack of rest that plagued her.
She walked over to the mirror and pulled a brush through her disheveled blonde locks. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she realized that she needed a bath almost as much as she needed sleep. There were smudges of soot on her cheeks, in addition to the dull lustre of her normally golden hair. Tying up her hair in a thong to keep the shoulder-length tresses from interfering with her work, Ari turned away before the weary image looking back at her from the glass pulled her spirits down even more.
Leaving her room and walking toward the back door, Ari sighed at the lack of the sounds and smells that were so much a part of awakening in this house to her still. Her father’s voice did not sound from the kitchen, speaking to her mother as she prepared breakfast. Neither did the smell of coffee and sizzling pork waft from the kitchen to draw her from her bed like magic.
Although gone for two years now, Arilee still keenly felt the pain of her parent’s passing. Her father had simply collapsed, with absolutely no warning, shortly after going to open his shop one morning. His heart had failed, and with his passing, her mother’s heart had broken.
Arilee was convinced that her mother had died more of a broken heart than the sickness that struck her only four months later. Ari had cared for her failing mother for six months, forced to grow up and not only tend to the house and her mother’s ill health, but the disposition of her father’s business as well. With him gone, there was nobody to acquire the goods or run the shop, and so Arilee had been forced to sell it. She knew that the price paid for the business had been paltry compared to its worth, but she had needed the money and thus had little choice but to accept the offer.
When her mother passed on, Arilee was left alone. Taking on washing, mending, and other small tasks had stretched the money from the sale of her father’s business for a time, but that coin was now gone. Thus, she was now dependant upon those domestic tasks to support her. At first, she had found more than enough work to make ends meet, but recent increases in taxes strained her ability to earn enough coin to pay them, and still have enough money for food.
Ari sighed and opened the back door, squinting against the bright sunlight outside. When her eyes adjusted, she looked around to make sure that nobody was nearby. The skirt she wore — the only remaining one clean — was far too short for her taste, showing off a long expanse of shapely leg, well above the knee. The blouse was likewise almost too small, and barely contained her firm breasts. Her small, dark nipples were also displayed far too prominantly by the thin material for Arilee’s sense of propriety. Determining that she was likely the only person awake in the area, she opened the door and stepped outside.
She reached down and picked up a wooden bucket, dipping it into the water barell next to the door. Sitting it down, she likewise filled a second pail, and then picked them both up with a grunt of exertion.
Arilee lugged the heavy buckets of water into the kitchen, and sat them down with a sigh of relief on the table next to the stove. After stirring up the coals and feeding fuel into the stove, she poured the contents of one bucket into a copper pot sitting atop it. Knowing the water would take some time to heat up, Ari grabbed the remains of her cold supper the night before — a quarter loaf of bread and a little cheese — and walked toward the front room of the house.
Taking a bite of cheese, and then one of the slightly stale bread, Ari sat down in a chair and picked up a pair of trousers split in the backside from the basket next to the chair. Selecting a spool of thread similar in color to the trousers, she threaded a needle and settled in to mend while the water in the kitchen heated.
