The girl hammered a stake into the ground with practiced grace and quickly tied her goat to it.  With that task complete she marched directly toward Lugh where he sat beneath the tree. 

Lugh felt certain she hadn’t seen him, but perhaps the shade of the tree was as inviting to her as it had been to him, she marched straight as an arrow toward him.  He began to wonder how he should greet her as it was quite certain that she was heading right toward his resting place.

Suddenly there was a rumbling.  The tree shook and he was so surprised that he let out a yelp of alarm.  Almost as soon as it began the quaking stopped.  When he looked back it was clear that the girl had heard his outburst and was now aware of him in the shadows.

“Who is that sitting on my giant?” yelled the girl.

Lugh got to his feet and reached up to pull down his pack and then down to gather his things.  “So this tree is yours is it?” offered Lugh.

The girl snorted, “Not the tree, its the Giant ‘neath that I’m hunting.  You’re not from around here then are you?”

“Pardon me, my dear little giant hunter, I had no idea.”

“Don’t believe I’m hunting a giant or that a woman can, huh?  That just shows what you know.  You’ve been sitting on one and I bet you didn’t know that either.  So who are you?”

“People call me many things,” began Lugh.

The girl laughed, “I’ll just bet.”

“You know, I think I’d sooner believe that you are hunting giants than that you are a woman.” Lugh answered the girl in her own tone as he stepped out of the shade.

“Blind too, good thing I ran into you or you wouldn’t stand a chance out here, especially with a giant fix’n to wake.”  The girl shrugged a bed roll off her shoulder and tossed it on the ground.  Then with a twitch and grab she took hold of her shift and dragged it off over her head, dumping it in a pile with her bedroll.  “Better get away from that giant if you know what’s good for you.”

She was bare to the waist before Lugh realized what she was doing.  He couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t exagerating her claim to womanhood.  She turned as if he wasn’t even there and untied what he’d taken for a bed roll.  She was sun brown on her torso and her legs and Lugh noticed what the shift had hidden, that she had the generous curves of a lovely woman. With a flip of the wrist she unrolled a small mat that held in it what looked like a threshing tool.  She grabbed it with practice hands and turned back to face Lugh.

“I’ve been called Fionn,” He said.

“Uh, huh”  said the young woman nonchalantly despite standing naked except for a beaded loincloth and her split staff. “Well, I’ve been called Oatey because of my hair.  Only difference is that it’s my name.  What’s your real name?” 

Lugh’s jaw probably dropped at her impertinence but with her dark brown eyes staring straight into his he answered though it wasn’t his intent, “It’s Lugh.”

“Lugh.” She seemed to roll the name around on her tongue to get the taste of it.”  Well, stand back, Lugh.  I’ve got work to do.”  And with out another word she began to dance, whirling the staff around her and smashing it rhythmically against the ground.  Lugh was forced to step back as the wooden links whirled very near his head hissing through the air as it passed him.

He stepped away to watch her dance.  The sun and her effort had put the sheen of sweat on her lithe form, she glowed, Lugh thought to himself.  He could not tear his eyes away from her and was totally unprepared for the earthquake that rocked him off his feet. Stunned, he looked over at the little hill and saw the old oak tree bending at an odd angle.  He looked back over at the girl, she was crouching and looking at the hill.  The quaking stopped and the girl stood up and gazed at the hill appraising. 

She began her dance again.  Faster and faster she stepped, her threshing staff raised a thin curtain of dust around her as she spun and leaped and thrashed the ground.  At the first sound of rumbling the girl smashed the staff once more against the ground and crouched, looking at the hill.

Lugh turned and looked at the hill,  the ground shaking was coming from the hill itself.  The tree bent even further, tipping toward them so that the lower branches nearest them already rested on the ground.  Lugh saw that parts of the hill were actually rising.

“Lugh!”  The girl shouted, “It’s time to go, now”

Lugh turned back and saw that the girl had grabbed up her things and, with only a glance to make sure he had heard, she ran back toward the goat that she’d staked out at the edge of the meadow.

Lugh sat comfortably beneath the spreading oak.  He’d found the perfect spot, between two roots and the moss, soft, but not at all wet.  His oak sat a little rise that overlooked a lovely meadow.  There were wildflowers in profusion, butterflies, and swallows were busy swooping over the tangle.

This was a fine place he had to admit, and he congratulated himself for not believing what he had heard about the North.  “Oh, its all snow and ice, you don’t want to go there. No, no, its full of Giants and pixies with poison darts, you’d be mad to go there, all you will find is dry grass and the herd deer that eat it, both of them brown.”

There had been a time when that was so.  Lugh had seen the great ice wall, he’d known the Norfolk, lived with them when it wasn’t safe for him in the South.  As to giants, it seemed to him that they were fanciful.  No, the plains were beautiful in the Long Summer, and he was happy to be here enjoying it.

A family of herd deer walked into sight.  There was a breeze in his face so Lugh guessed that they wouldn’t catch his scent, he sat quietly in the deep shadow of the tree so he knew they’d not be spooked by the sight of him either.  All the deer, but the young ones had antlers, but the obvious king of the family was a big buck with an amazing spread of a rack that looked about to tip him.  For a moment Lugh thought about trying to take the big animal, but he was far too comfortable and didn’t want to spoil the day with a lot of work.

Suddenly the king put his nose in the air and his ears back.  He bellowed a challenge or a warning and his harem gathered, their noses snuffling for the same scent.  The does and the calves all jogged in Lugh’s direction, but the buck bellowed again and stood stiff legged facing away from Lugh and toward whatever had given him alarm.  The king pawed the earth, tearing up large divots before snorting his displeasure and jogging away after his herd.

Well, if the king was worried, perhaps Lugh ought to be too.  He took the precaution of stringing his bow and loosening the arrows in his quiver.  He stood and tossed his pack up into the lower branches of the tree and planned a good route of climb if that should become necessary.  Precautions taken, Lugh waited to see what might come that had so unsettled the herd deer.

He had to laugh when a small girl with a goat wandered out of the young saplings at the edge of the clearing and strolled nonchalantly into the meadow.  She had bright blond hair and lovely summer browned skin. 

Much like the Deer Riders, the thought that I might do a little vignette has burgeoned into a whole story in my mind.  I thought to do it all in one post, but that isn’t going to happen at all.  Again, this involves the deer riders, the Norfolk, as I’ve named them, but I also introduce another of the long lived humans, this one of the true original “Children of Dana” intended by Dana to be the gods of Tir na Nua.  Oatey Moss, the little Norfolk woman (she looks young for her age) is involved with giants and so there are three major revelations about Tir na Nua in this one story.

LSO

I’m not as young as I used to be.  As obvious as that is, I feel it today.  I think there are several things that have conspired to put me in this mood. 

Football: Look, as an American male I am duty bound to love this game and I do.  I used to play in the halcyon days of high-school.  It is obvious now that I don’t anymore.  Also I went “oh-for” in my fantasy leagues.  I got to watch my beloved Cowboys, who I have suffered with since Stabauch and Golden Richards, loose to the Giants.  The pain of it.  And I went OH-FOR in fantasy football.

It seemed I had a good plan for this week.  I was favored in every game.  But the fates were cruel and I suffered from under-performance by far too many of my key players.  Under-performance, oh-for, pain, loss. . .

Literature: I am reading an interesting book, The Broken Kings.  It is the pre-story of Merlin mixed in with Jason and the Argo.  I’m about halfway through and Holdstock makes a point in character about Jason.  Jason is a greedy jealous rash horrible man who is trying to make his mark.  Merlin on the other-hand is more like me, he is cautious, careful, over-thinks.  My point is (and what I got from Holdstock) is that Jason makes his mark because he is obsessed with doing so.  I think later on in the book we will see how or when or why Merlin is finally driven to the sort of obsession that makes a mark.

Life: I’ve made no marks.  I think this (doing this blog thing) is very much a desperate attempt to make a mark.  And since I desire, and am selfish, and have had a bad week of fantasy football, and realize that I can not make a mark on the field if I ever could, didn’t.  I am feeling pressure to make a mark, to do.  I have a deep desire bordering on the obsessive to HAVE DONE.  It is not the writing it is the have written.  Horrible grammar but perhaps you take my meaning.

Therefore, needing to, I will begin the desperate attempt to complete a novel here on these pages.  I fully realize that this will make me no money as I’ve heard publication on the web is death, but frankly I’m not sure I’m that good.  I need to make a mark and improve.  Why hold back?

No reason I can think of now.  Tonight then, I will think about what to do about running backs in all my leagues, I will think about who to start at receiver and in one case quarterback, and I will decide what story will give voice to my obsession to have written.

LSO