Hello dear readers! Welcome to the debut post of a new blog series I’m rolling out today here at Girl Meets Monster. This new series, which I am calling Fiction Fragments, will have new posts each Friday. So…Fiction Fragments Friday is totally a thing now.

I’ve been writing for many years, and at some point along that journey I came to terms with the fact that not every project has a clear path or end. Sometimes, you get an idea in your head and you start drafting a piece and then you just stop. Maybe you start working on something that has a clearer purpose, or maybe you’re juggling too many other projects, or maybe it never really was a fully formed idea to begin with. For whatever reason, you started writing something, maybe you wrote 200 words, maybe more, maybe less, and then you set it aside and just never came back to it.

Hands up if this has ever happened to you.

I should see a lot of hands right now.

At least, I’m hoping to see a lot of hands, because not only will I be sharing my own fiction fragments, but I’m hoping to enlist some of my amazing writer pals to do the same – poetry, short fiction, chapters, etc. I want to see projects that people began and abandoned. And, it might be cool to ask them a few questions about their writing process, why they chose to submit a certain piece, and if they ever plan to finish their fragment.

So, without further ado, here is the first installment of Fiction Fragment Fridays. I hope you’ll come back to read more, and better yet, I hope you send me your fragments.

The Wood, by Michelle R. Lane

When I was a child, I knew all of the flowers, plants, four-legged and winged animals of the Wood by name. I spoke to the Spirits of the Wood, and they answered. I slept in the trees, bathed in the brooks, and ate bramble berries off the bush. I walked through the Wood all day until my legs grew tired and then at dusk I would make my way back to the small house at the edge of the Wood where I lived with my family.

My parents were an unlikely pair. My father was a prince, banished from the Moorish Empire, and forced to live far from his Muslim brothers. He wandered the European countryside for years, making his way from Spain to the heart of the Black Forest. He liked the Wood, the magic was strong there and food was plentiful. For weeks he camped in the open air, then decided to make the Wood his home. He hunted wild game, butchered the animals for meat and cured the pelts to sell in the open air market of the village nearby. He saved enough money to buy the tools he needed to cut lumber and build a house.

As a huntsman, he made a comfortable living, but he was lonely. Sometimes he would venture into the village and drink the honey mead the village was famous for in those parts, and he would listen to the villagers talk and tell stories of the past. But, he rarely engaged in conversation with them, because he was seen as an outsider. His dark skin, his strange way of speaking, and his manner were odd to them. Aside from trading pelts and wild game, and the odd drink in the tavern, he kept to himself.

Then, one day, while selling pelts in the market, he overhead a crowd gathering in the town square. There were warriors from the Northern lands of ice and snow, a tribe of people he had encountered in his younger years as a soldier, selling captured people from other lands as slaves. As he approached the auction, he could see that there were men, women, and children of all ages and hues, bound with rope, and looking underfed. Among the people being sold that day, there was a young woman with a mane of wild red hair trying to chew through the ropes binding her hands. She cursed and kicked and spit at her captors. Bondage had not quieted her spirit. She continued to fight. He liked that about her. When the auction began, he decided he would buy her and give her her freedom that day.

She was a wild creature, but she could sing beautiful songs, tell haunting stories, and she could speak to the Spirits of the Wood. Among her people she was a healer and a caster of bones. A young woman wise beyond her years. He taught her to hunt, skin animals, and butcher the meat, and she taught him the names of all the herbs, mushrooms, and berries that were safe to eat in the Wood. They became good friends and built a partnership in which they shared everything equally. She sold healing balms and tisanes in the market while he continued to make a comfortable living as a huntsman.

My father told me he fell in love with my mother the first time he saw her, but it took her a few years to realize how much she loved him. Once she opened her heart to him, it wasn’t long before they brought me into the world.

I’d like to think that this fragment could become the beginning of a short story, or possibly the first chapter of a novella. Who can say? Maybe this will become my next WIP.

Stay tuned for next week’s installment and, if you have something to submit, I’m happy to see what you’ve got. Comment below or contact me at chellane@gmail.com. Your fragment doesn’t have to be polished, just interesting. And, if you have a reason for why you set it aside, I’d love to hear about that, too.

Write on!