Posted November 13, 2021 by Sheri Edwards art

NovDoodle Seeing What’s Not True

November Doodle

My CLmooc friends doodle every day. During November, my doodles will usually be from the writing for National Novel Writing Month: NaNoWriMo.

This year, my story So Says the River continues as the characters search for the dragons that help keep the balance among the many worlds. A new sighting and event had occurred, but what does it mean?

Excerpt: unedited first drafts—

The sun cast long shadows on the maple, sycamore, and red maple trees dotting the hillside and growing closer together further ahead. A warmer breeze brushed her face and drops of rain held onto the leaves after what must have been a short rain shower; and the trees, like a summer’s day, had not yet painted themselves a lovely red and yellow. She laughed as the pixies taught her a song, just about this little bit of rain:
Though the winter sends
autumn its first chill
so leaves let go
and fall at will,
green returns in brilliant moss
when it rains, just a little.
Across open areas, lovely blue flowers of midnight blue, bright teal, and sky blue dotted the hillside and caught her eye. She paused for the sweet silence after a rain and noticed the chipmunks had scattered away on the path back to the stone circle. Looking back, she searched and found her exit path home, so now she waited for the signs— the double spirals that named a place to look. She recited the first part of the map’s directions:
Find the sign and note its space,
See what’s here around…
Climbing up the path to the top of the rise, she found a lower meadow crossed by a little river with another footbridge. Directly ahead, on her side of the footbridge, the two spirals indicated her path was true.
But she hesitated as a darkness ebbed in the river and onto an area with no flowers at all. She shivered and looked at the bridge, seeing a row of willows lining the other side of the gently flowing creek. She remembered the story of Willow’s first encounter with a dragon — a blue dragon similar to hers.
Above, in the sky, she noticed a flow of teal, the bright teal of her dragon’s wings as he flew through the sky. She thought and recited the first part of her mantra, “Let the light flow like a river and follow its glow.”
“Oh,” she called aloud pointing upwards, “Look! A shadow in the sky like the darkness down below.” The two shadows, one above and one below, ebbed and flowed in unison, but the teal stream in the sky flowed onward with no reflection in the little river and no pausing at this spot.
Angie remained still, looking ahead past the footbridge, past the willows and followed the path to two spirals halfway up the next hill. Two of her five fairies waited for her there.
Retracing the path slowly from one pair of spirals back to the pair close to her, she found no other signs of blue pixies or spirals. She paused her view at the other end of the footbridge and noticed something buried in the ground. Her memory recalled, and she sang aloud its song:
Find the sign and note its space,
See what’s here around,
If it’s dust to you is true,
Take it from the ground.
Slowly, she found the path back to herself. “This space, this place is not true to me. I must follow the glow, but let this place go.” She adjusted the vest and felt her pocket— looking inside, seeing only the opaque black teardrop. Looking back behind, she could still see her pathway home. With her left hand, she retrieved the teardrop, holding it tightly in her hand. With her right hand, she touched the two-petaled button crest of her tunic. With her eyes straight ahead on the path, watching the spirals up the other side of the hill, she stepped with certainty as she sang,
Let the light flow like a river and follow its glow,
and when a dragon speaks, listen, to where it wants you to go;
Follow the light and wait for the signs
That show the truth for you in this particular time.
Far ahead she thought she heard the swoosh of her dragon’s wings. Step by step, stepping loudly and firmly, she did not pause at the bridge, but did hold the teardrop out in front of her, holding the narrow end in case she needed to throw it as she’d seen the dragon do at the time of the finding of the opaque gem.
Now she heard the song of dragon words,
Hold it close when trouble comes
And that trouble it succumbs;
Remember this I give to you…
She pulled the teardrop closer to her heart and felt it warming, pulsing as she finished passing over the bridge and the shadow receding away as she passed.
With a deep breath, she did not run; she held her calm as she’d been taught, and kept her firm and definite pace to the place of the two spirals.
Once within their space, the teardrop cooled, smooth and quiet in her hand. Turning back, her path home was still true, but she felt the gentle push of the five little pixies on her back and she finished the trek to the top of the hill where she dropped the black teardrop back into her vest pocket and continued on…
Excerpt From
So Says the River E2 /So Says the Dragon
Sheri Edwards
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11.13.21