I roll the new quill between my fingers. It catches the morning’s light with iridescent flashes of promise. One breath. Then two. I open my heart to listen, shut my eyes to see. With quill and ink, parchment and prayer, I chase whatever the hound of my imagination hunts. Through primordial forests, across sweeping steppes and star kissed crags she courses, fiction’s keen scent, fantasy’s hidden promise calling her on. And I follow, burning with febrile and mad urgency, a storm of wonder throwing words like lightning and wind across my path.
Our hunt may last a day, a month (I can only dream!), an hour, a night, the merest moment… and still the mystery of it leaves me god-touched.
Some days I catch only a glimpse of our quarry — an elusive shadow, a palpable tension crying for release as much as a thing of substance captured to physical script.
And then there are the days I push my way through a winter’s tempest; emerge wet and shivering from a river’s rage; stumble clear of death’s sure grip only to find my chase done, the quest realized.
I ruffle the beast’s rough fur, amazed at the promise of strength and speed in the fluid muscles beneath. Our eyes meet. My breath catches. Never have I imagined an sea of such emerald beauty and knowing depths.
A shiver beneath my touch, a flicker of its feathered tail, and the beast is away while new visions dance hot in my heart. Never in my wildest dreams did I envision an eagle’s tail of iridescent beauty. And those delicate hooves — like diamonds. Was that a scar running along its flank? I’ll have to look closely when next I catch it. Sweet gods of wind and wave, this is why I write.
