Excerpt from Stackpole's latest book, When Dragons Rage (aka, the book I was drooling over last rehearsal). "Kerrigan" is about 20 years old:
"It didn't occur to Kerrigan that trying to catch a snowflake on his tongue might not be dignified until he heard someone behind him clearing his throat, and a hissed whisper accompanying it.
"Until that point, Kerrigan had been out, knee deep in snow, not far from the inn in which he was being housed, marveling at how the snow softened the city of Meredo. It muted the gay colors splashed on houses and hid the red of the tiled roofs. Thick garlands of it covered the skeletal branches of the trees and little drifts had collected in corners. The thick flakes fell slowly, then swirled and eddied, sometimes dancing down the street, other times falling from branches and eaves in a puff of snow.
"Kerrigan had seen snow before on Vilwan... certainly never the quantity that had fallen in Meredo, nor had he been allowed to go out in it.
"Just raising his face to ths wky and feeling flakes melt against his cheeks had made him laugh. His delight mirrored that of children playing in the snow, launchign snowballs at each other, building forts, shrieking as they closed and threw, then ran as a volley from playmates chased them back. Other children lay on their backs, flapping their arms, making snow-Gyrkyme, while yet others crawled into barrels and careeneed wildly down hills, screaming all the way.
"Yet Kerrigan's smile had not been for the snow alone... was the attitude displayed. As he wandered into the snow-choked street, he had impulsively hand-packed a snowball and thrown it at a hitching poas---missing horribly---and a man gathering wood had smiled at his effort. Some kids threw at the same post from further away, and they cheered and laughed as one hit it. A woman brushing snow from the steps looked at him and nodded, smiling as frosty breath wreathed her face."
That kid cheering in the back of your head is in all of us, I think....
*smile*
"It didn't occur to Kerrigan that trying to catch a snowflake on his tongue might not be dignified until he heard someone behind him clearing his throat, and a hissed whisper accompanying it.
"Until that point, Kerrigan had been out, knee deep in snow, not far from the inn in which he was being housed, marveling at how the snow softened the city of Meredo. It muted the gay colors splashed on houses and hid the red of the tiled roofs. Thick garlands of it covered the skeletal branches of the trees and little drifts had collected in corners. The thick flakes fell slowly, then swirled and eddied, sometimes dancing down the street, other times falling from branches and eaves in a puff of snow.
"Kerrigan had seen snow before on Vilwan... certainly never the quantity that had fallen in Meredo, nor had he been allowed to go out in it.
"Just raising his face to ths wky and feeling flakes melt against his cheeks had made him laugh. His delight mirrored that of children playing in the snow, launchign snowballs at each other, building forts, shrieking as they closed and threw, then ran as a volley from playmates chased them back. Other children lay on their backs, flapping their arms, making snow-Gyrkyme, while yet others crawled into barrels and careeneed wildly down hills, screaming all the way.
"Yet Kerrigan's smile had not been for the snow alone... was the attitude displayed. As he wandered into the snow-choked street, he had impulsively hand-packed a snowball and thrown it at a hitching poas---missing horribly---and a man gathering wood had smiled at his effort. Some kids threw at the same post from further away, and they cheered and laughed as one hit it. A woman brushing snow from the steps looked at him and nodded, smiling as frosty breath wreathed her face."
That kid cheering in the back of your head is in all of us, I think....
Re: *smile*
*nod* That was what I thought; it's just that "grownups" are 'supposed' to pretend otherwise, it seems.
I like the quoted passage almost as much as your concise commentary on it. Thank you.