Old stuff 1

I have a lot of old writing before the current draft. I’ve got a bunch of short stories and two previous drafts to draw from, and some of it is actually good, if entirely useless. It’s nice to see that I have, actually, improved.

Sprit squatted in the dirt outside his tent. The tent flaps waved in the steady west wind. It brought cold air and the promise of an early winter. Sprit rolled his bones around in his hand, enjoying the way they felt against his palm.
Sprit threw the bones in the dirt and studied how they fell. They were his best bones, his most powerful, his most accurate. They were the finger bones of a child. He threw them with his right hand, because his left had only two digits. He scowled at the bones. They made no pattern at all that he could see. No matter how many times he threw them, he saw nothing. Was the failing with him, or with his bones?
A shadow fell over the bones, and Sprit did not have to look up to know it belonged to his grandson. And why should he? He was old. Old enough to be named the right way, in the old tongue. Bomenisprit, it meant Speaks With Trees.
“Boy,” said Sprit, “Aren’t you going on your name quest soon?”
His grandson nodded. Sprit only saw the boy’s shadow move. He was fifteen, and still called boy. Or Hare, by the boys his age. But all those boys had already gone, when they were thirteen or fourteen, and now they also called him boy. Even the few who had names and were younger.
“And you have come to ask me to bless you?” Sprit asked. “A general spell of safety, perhaps?”
“It would make my mother happy.”
“And your father furious. And you too, I know.” Sprit gathered up the bones and threw them again. “Where will you go?”
Boy squatted down in the dirt. “The forest.” He continued, as if he had to justify the decision. “Father went there. And so did you.”
“The witch’s wood.”
“Yes,” Boy said. “Are you throwing bones for me?”
Sprit snatched up the bones and stuffed them into their gold embroidered bag. “Something troubles the witch.”
“The bones told you that?”
“No, stupid boy. She told me that.” Sprit pushed himself to his feet and moved to his stool where he could stretch his legs. “With the way the wolves have begun to howl the entire night, and with the wind that blows endlessly from the west, pushing winter on us. Let me tell you a story.”
“Is this going to be how you got your name again?” Boy asked.
“No,” Sprit said. “And I did more with that dryad than I ever told you. It’s about the witch.”
“How she steals children and gives them to Mimora?”
“Winan never did that. That’s her name, boy. If you’re going into her wood, that’s what you’ll call her. Don’t call her witch unless you want her to prove it to you.”