Lugh jogged a little to catch up to Oatey and stalked along now as annoyed as she seemed to be angry.  “So what did I do?” He began, “I’m used to being treated as a pariah, but at least I usually know my offense.  Commonly it is the same one. . .”

“I don’t want to talk . . .” said Oatey but Lugh cut her off.

“Well, I DO want to talk.  I always want to talk.  If you want to spend time with me in the future you will have to become accustomed to my talk, because that’s what I do, I talk.”  Lugh took a step or two more before adding, “and though I don’t mind carrying a conversation I do like to hear the occasional word. . .”

“I’ve nothing to say.”

“As if that makes any difference,” Lugh mumbled to himself before trying again, “First, perhaps you can tell me what I did.”

“Nothing at all.  I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Nothing AND I don’t want to talk about it.”  Lugh countered, “So there IS something.”

Oatey stopped dead and Lugh stopped a bit beyond her, turning back as she said quietly, “Why are you following me Lugh?”

Her pain was palpable, overwhelming, and it shocked Lugh into silence.  She stared hopelessly into his eyes a moment, but a couple of Norfolk walked up to them in the corridor, and in making way Oatey pushed past him.  She continued on up the corridor without his answer.  Lugh followed silently.

Oatey went about gathering things without another word to Lugh.  For his part, Lugh sat for a while, waiting for a thaw in the icy silence.  When it did not come, he rapidly gathered his things and was ready to go when she was.

She regarded him stoically as she began to leave and he happened to block her path in the cluttered room, “There is another giant, it is arranged.”  She said as she pushed past him and walked out into the hall.  He followed her and had to hurry not to loose her in the labyrinth of the sidhe.

Briefly he knew where he was as their path led into the large room where Lugh had attended the celebration.  Lugh waved to a few of his fellow drinkers and they returned his greeting.  That brief distraction was almost enough for him to loose his way because Oatey, after exiting the tunnel into the hall, immediately turned into another corridor.  Lugh had to scramble to catch up.

“Ayee, Oatey, I don’t know my way.” called Lugh after he almost lost her again in a tunnel with side passages stuffed with provisions.  She glanced back, but did not seem to slow as Lugh struggled to keep up.

She turned in to an arched passage that was identical to all the others up and down the hall.  Lugh hurried to follow around the corner and almost ran into Oatey from behind where she stood at a desk-like board.

“Well look there Oatey, you’ve grown a tail,” said a particularly rotund Norfolk sitting behind the desk.  Oatey looked back, regarding him with what looked like annoyance.  The man went back to putting items on the desk which Oatey gathered, organized, and stowed in her gear.

“He’ll need a load too, and a sling.”

“What? Does he know how to use it?” asked the man.

“I can show h. . .”

“I know how to use a sling,” Lugh cut them off, “I’m not a child.”

The fellow behind the desk shrugged and hopped off his stool.  Only then did Lugh see that the fellow was missing a leg.  “Here you go then,” he said, grabbing a sling off the wall and turning back.  As he jumped back onto his stool, he layed the sling out and then reached under the counter.  He scooped something into a bag and brought that out too,  “I figure basics,” he said and shoved the things toward Lugh while he looked to Oatey for confirmation.

She nodded curtly and then said, “Can you give us another couple days ration Jonesy?”

“mmm hmm, just a short trip then?”  Jonesy gathered the items and laid them on the desk.

“Yeah. I’ve marked another one.  Gonna go get it and back like the last one.”

“Be careful now.” Jonesy winked at Oatey and she smiled and waved as she turned away.  Lugh was still packing items away when the fellow grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him close, “Oatey’s a good girl.  No harm better come to her from the likes of you. Got that?” Jonesy whispered threateningly and then shoved him away.

Lugh gathered the last of the things and followed Oatey.

“What’s that?” asked Oatey.

“Nothing. . .” Lugh lied, “a gift that I’ve kept and I’m not sure why.”  Because it is my lodestone, my guiding star and I’d not know what to do if I didn’t have them.  Lugh restrung and resettled them around his neck where they rode over his heart.  “Well, what’s for breakfast?”

“Porridge, ’tis my custom.” She explained, smiled shyly, “But I have fruit too, and this scramble of eggs and herbs and meat.  Probably that’s more to your liking . . .”

“Don’t be too sure.” said Lugh, but in the end he did eat most of the eggs and only a little of the porridge.  They talked lightly of nothing at all, teasing about her room, she telling him that he had a guestroom not far, fruits favored and not, but they both fell silent when family came up.

When the silence grew painful he broke it, “This was a wonderful breakfast, thank you Oatey.” He smiled at her and she blushed prettily.

Oatey fidgeted, Lugh thought she had something she wanted to say so he hesitated.  She looked up, but finding his eyes on her she immediately looked down and then away.  “It isn’t our custom for a man and woman to be alone without . . .”

“Breakfast? Egg scramble? let me guess, books?”

Oatey blushed, “. . . I mean unattended, without chaperon . . .”

“Oh, well I can’t imagine that does anything good for your folk having children . . .”

That made her laugh, “No, I mean unmarried men and women of course.” The bed they shared last night was their table to eat breakfast and it told him about her seriousness that she slipped off and walked toward the door. ”It is thought dishonorable.”

“Ah, is it?” Lugh grabbed a piece of fruit he didn’t want and took a bite, “mmmm, well which of us is dishonored and which dishonorable?”

“I don’t care what they think,” Oatey said defiantely, she looked him in the eye, “They care nothing for me anyhow.  I only mention it so that you know what they may say of you, what they already think of me.”

Lugh couldn’t suppress the laugh that burst out, but he hurried to apologize when he saw Oatey look so hurt, “No no no, It isn’t you sweet.  It is just that my reputation is far worse than yours could possibly be, and I’ve earned mine.”

He thought she might disolve into tears, but when she looked up she surprised him again with her fierceness, “You don’t know what they think of me.  Some think that I might even be the giant wife I pretend to be to lure the giants to be killed.  All think me strange, and I am.  I would never want to be like them.”

Lugh wasn’t sure what to say, “I don’t think you’re a giant wife . . .”

Oatey laughed humorlessly, “. . . But you think me strange.” She turned away from his gaze, “It’s alright, I am strange, that and more.”

WHERE DO I FIND THE REST OF THIS STORY?

I’ve noticed that little stories I intend to wrap up in a post or two often blow up into epics that never seem to end.  This is a character flaw, I know, and it is one that I don’t know how to begin to remedy. 

For now I think I’m going to have to accept my propensity to elaboration in the present and try to offer remediation, or organization outside of my normal tendency.

To that end, I offer these links to guide you through my most current efforts.

Child of Moss began with a character, Lugh of the long journeys (imagined  as a recurring character in many novels) sitting on a hill beneath a tree.  Now many posts later I’ve added characters and ideas so that it is clear that some organization is desperately needed:

1. Why did Lugh need to go North?  The first pre-post
2. Von’s gift helps get Lugh under that tree.  The second pre-post
3. Lugh under the tree.  The original first post of Child of Moss
4. Introducing Oatey Moss.  Introducing Oatey Moss
5. Who is Lugh and what Oatey does.  Lugh Follows Oatey
6. Lugh, Oatey, and a dead goat.  The old 4th post
7. Oatey Moss, giant fighter.  Oatey kills a giant
8. The celebration after the fight.  Lugh in the corner 
9. Lugh meets the man.  Another character crops up
10. Martel Jones of the Norfolk.  The brewhaha continues
11. Lugh lost in the sidhe.  A little more about miss Moss
12. Thinking about Oatey.  Child of Moss (old part 10) part 12
13. Breakfast in bed. More character development
14. Through the Sidhe.  Child of Moss part 12 (14)
15. Oatey’s pain.  What Lugh sees on Oatey’s face.

There is more Child of Moss to come.  I’ve plotted at least two more giant hunts and a visit to a truly ancient place that is the closest thing Oatey has to a real home.

The Deer Riders

The Deer Riders was the first of my stories to really go off the rails.  I had an idea about a people group on Tir na Nua, people I called the Norfolk or Bramblewood Elves, but my point of view character ended up stealing the show.  Okay, confession, I don’t even know what his name is.

1. Why do I need to start a story by introducing four characters who really have nothing to do with the actual Deer Riders? Concerning the Deer Riders
2. Dream-Walker and how he found a way past the brambles. Deer Riders Continued
3. Dream-Walker in the sidhe.  Deer Riders Conclusion (when I began the post I thought it might be. Boy, was I wrong.)
4. How Dream-Walker’s gift and a Deer Rider shows a way out.  Deer Riders Ending part 1
5. And he can travel through time.  Deer Riders Ending part 2
6. Dream-walker learns that there are worse things than being stuck in the sidhe.  Deer Riders Ending part 3
7. As this little stories ending lurches on into the absurd, I, LSO, end it. Deer Riders Ending part 4

Having created an interesting character, the Dream-Walker (I still don’t have a name for him yet) I made another little story that started to get out of control again so I cut it off.  I may follow some of the rabbit trails I imagined at a later date.

1. Dream-Walker takes his youngest grand-son fishing and a story breaks out. Dream-Walker and the Giant
2. The conversation turns to Giants. Dream-Walker Tells Bres The Story of the Dagda

1. The Red Son of Concubar 
2. the Coming of CuRuada the Red Son of Concubar
3. The Red Son of Concubar Meets His Father
4. Cathbad discusses the Red Son of Concubar
5. The Naming of the Red Son of Concubar
6. Fergus and Concubar Discuss the King’s Red Son
7. Cathbad’s Caution
8. CuRuada meets Emer (oops, I forgot they hadn’t met before)
9. The Games of Macha
10. Cathbad’s Oracle at the Games of Macha (this introduces the practice and sets up the Consumption Vision Quest).

What she was, Lugh thought, was socially awkward.  She was precocious in her understanding of giants and in mobilizing her folk to fight them.  She was sweet and, it seemed at times, flirtatious by turns with him.  She knew him, knew of his extremely long life, understood to some extent what that meant, could hold her own despite his experience, and yet Oatey seemed totally awkward in the rest of her life.

He found her fascinating.  He found her frightening.

Lugh rubbed the tethered divination bones around his neck.  Again he wondered about those bones.  Did the Norfolk woman, Von, protect her kin with their guidance and not him primarily?  Could bits of bone be more than their substance?  Of course, he used them for guidance. 

With a jolt Lugh realised that in truth he did depend on them.  What madness?  He trusted their directed randomness when he was unsure, likely when decisions were the most critical.  What could he do but shake his head, was his life no more than a string of accidents and this of Oatey Moss just the latest of centuries worth.

Lugh sighed, she had been inconsolable, weeping from embarrassment for leaving him, at least she had represented that as her reason for her tears.  He had held her while her tears drenched him, stroked her hair through wracking sobs, and layed beside her in confusion when she drifted off to sleep.

Finally, he too had slept.  He hadn’t sensed her leaving, so it was alone again that he woke in her room full of books, abandoned, still not knowing her or even the way out of this infernal warren.  Oatey Moss was frustrating like Von had never been.

He drew off his bones and unstrung them from their cord.  They were old, yellowed, and polished by his chest where they rode, and the by the years.  He knew the marks well, but their original intent he could not guess, had never even thought to imagine.  Perhaps Von had her revenge after all. 

Perhaps by these she knew him, after he had fled, reading his heart where they lay, and then she must have hated what she saw there.  “Oh bones of Von. . .”  He caressed them with familiarity, like a talisman of self, though they were no such thing.  These had been given him and they had shaped him by accident or by intent, for twice a hundred years and more.  The urge came to throw them away, but it was the feeling of a moment only and he pressed them between his palms and whispered them,  “Tell me true, do you serve me?” 

Lugh breathed his life on them like an incantation and released them upon the bed.  They fell, he read, one mark first, and three marks. . .” His stomach lurched, he felt a moment of sickness, but then he saw, and with a rush was relieved, “. . . gods be good, two marked, so yes.”

How important was it to know if he could trust his most trusted councilors, these bones?  He was alarmed when a mad titter slipped out unbidden.  Was he mad?  No, he meant to wonder if he was mad to trust the bones, surely, “Oh bones. . .”  He cursed himself for weak foolishness.  “One and Two and Three can’t tell me what I don’t know to ask.” 

Lugh pressed bones and cupped hands against his forehead, though his mind was empty, but fearful.  Tension built in him.  He should throw, how else to know?  But what to know? He felt himself casting without a question, his body doing without thought.  Can I trust her? It came to his mind as the bones spilled.  There was rustling he heard, someone coming. 

“I thought we might need some breakfast.  I hope I found things you like.” Oatey said in a bright happy voice as she swept back into his world.

Lugh glanced and thought he saw a three and maybe another before he scooped up his divination bones.  “I wondered where you’d got to.”  He said with casualness that he knew for a lie.