Get the Toilet Seat First

Note: I will be writing the book I had planned to write for Nanowrimo here. I’ll add chapters and updates as I write them. While I did not do it in the time frame I was supposed to, it still will be good practice and fun to write. Bear in mind that this is not terribly edited. It is a first draught, so I’m sure there will be booboos here and there.

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PREFACE

Its been in my mind to write this book for several years now and Nanowrimo is giving me just the shove I need to finally do it.  There are many books out there on how to buy your first home, how to navigate the pitfalls of the real estate market and how to find clever financing to make your dream home yours. However, there are things no one will tell you, as I was to find out the hard way.

This book is a light-hearted look at my experience in the adventure of first home buying. I hope you will find it as amusing as I do now, although at the time it was a bit less funny to me. Take it all with a grain of salt. Some things will seem obvious, but to us at the time, they were not. Some of the things in this book may seem unique to me, but I doubt it, since we are all basically the same under the skin.

So enjoy, smile and lets start the journey together.

CHAPTER ONE

For years hubby and I watched all the Bob Vila shows, all the homes for sale shows, and all the home improvement shows. It was at one time a ritual for us. Saturday mornings were spent at yard sales and the later afternoon was given over to snuggling up together in front of the TV and watching all our favorite home shows. We were still fairly newly married and we were still filled with dreams of our first home and all the things we were going to do with it.

As we watched the shows we dreamt of tiled floors, walls with beautiful Venetian plaster, and lush carpets under our feet. We had visions of the vignettes on every other page of the L.L. Bean catalog. Warm crackling fire, dogs curled up around us, soft blankets wrapped around us while we drank hot cocoa and watched the snow fall outside.

I, of course, had the perfect kitchen in mind. Tall, deep natural pine cabinets with crown molding all along the top. I would have ample space for all my pots and pans, bowls and mixers, appliances of every sort would all be tucked neatly away. I would have a farmhouse sink, a huge refrigerator, a 6-burner stove with bun warmer, and of course, a dishwasher. Can you tell yet which of these things I did NOT have in my small apartment or my smaller trailer? Yes, I had it all planned out. Most glorious of all, I would have my own washer and dryer. That was my holy grail. No more Laundromats for me. No sirree, I was going to be able to do my laundry whenever I wanted and it would all smell wonderful instead of burnt or stale.

My little heart would go all pitter patter when I would think of my own bathroom. It would smell like candles, have a deep tub with a sloping back and enough cabinets that you would never have to see my toilet paper rolls.

My husband, on the other hand, was enthralled with other ideas of home ownership. His own garage. It would look like one of those ones in the Sears Catalog at Christmas time. There would be plenty of room for pulling the car in and a clean dry floor to lay on while he worked on it. There would be wraparound work benches with diamond plate steel cabinets hanging on every wall. It would be filled with all his tools; his drill press, the table saw, the radial arm saw, and all the other things that I don’t know the name of, although I have been assured they are all absolutely necessary items for any self-respecting tool guy. Yes, Tim Allen is his idol.

There would also be a room for each of us. Mine would be a crafting room and his would be a train room. I would have room for whatever craft suited my mood that day and he would be able to sit and run his trains for hours.

Week after week we were filled with fresh ideas for this dream house. It would be a ranch. It would be a farmhouse. It would be a victorian. It would be a craftsman style. It would be in a town. It would be in the middle of Montana (or someone similar). It would be in the country. It always had property around it no matter what style, though. There would be ample space for my garden and lots of room to park (preferably near the garage, of course.)

Then reality started to set in. We were living in a travel trailer because we moved a lot those first few years. It gets harder to think about your dream home when you are living in a space that is 8ft. wide and 28 ft. long. We slowly drifted away from those shows and settled for keeping the water unfrozen, the spider webs out of the gas furnace tube and keeping the toilet tank from freezing into one huge block of… well, you get the picture.

We lived in that trailer for nine years and then moved into an apartment. A very tiny apartment. We started to feel those little yearnings again, but there wasn’t much we could actually do to the apartment so again we had to put all those feelings aside.

Then there came the night we looked at each other and said, “Let’s look into it and see if we could buy a house.” As soon as we said the words we just looked at each other. Those words had never actually been said aloud before. Neither of us said another word and it was as if we were waiting for some wind to come a long and pluck them out of the air, as if they had never been uttered.

The next day the hubby took the reins and began doing some research. To be brutally honest, I was not much help to him in this. I was too afraid to try and have my heart broken by the bad news that our dream house would never happen. I just couldn’t face the reality of the destruction of a dream. He plodded through internet sites, filled out applications, did paperwork of all sorts, all the time with me holding my breath. Then it happened.

“Hon, we qualify for a home loan.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just sat there looking at him. I was shocked, elated, astonished and frankly, terrified. I thought he must be joking with me. I wasn’t going to be amused when he said, “gotcha!”  But he never did. He smiled hugely and gave me the number.

“We qualify for $250,000. We just have to find a realtor now.”

After I recovered, which took a while, we laughed like children and started talking about all our long put away ideas for our home.

———-

CHAPTER TWO

Your dream come true! Right? Well, yes and no. Yes, you are going to start looking for your beloved little nest, but as they say, you have to kill a lot of frogs before you find your prince charming.

House hunting is a lot like that. Once we found a Realtor we thought we were set. I mean after all, hadn’t we watched a million house hunting shows all those years earlier? Hadn’t we seen how the process works? They show us an array of lovely houses and we get to sit back, talk about it, make our pro and con lists and then, and only then, make our decision which seller to bestow our money upon. Right?

Wrong!

Ok, in all fairness to the Real Estate institution, maybe when you are lugging around your bag of money you can do things that way. From talking to friends, we discovered that our experience with house hunting isn’t very unusual.

“Hi! This is Realtor X. I have a couple of homes to show you. Can you make it today?”

“Um, well no, hubby is working today.” Duh, I thought to myself.

“How about tomorrow?”

“How about Saturday when he is off, ya know, work?”

“Wellllll…” long pause followed by a voice now just ever so slightly less chipper and just a bit more peeved. “I suppose we could do that. If they are gone already though it will be a waste of time for both of us. I mean they could go just like ‘that’.” Sound of finger snap in the earpiece.

“We’ll have to take that chance. After all, its because he HAS a job that is enabling us to buy a home. It would sort of stupid to lose it now, wouldn’t it?”

“Fine, I’ll see you on Saturday. Goodbye.” Click.

Now you may think this a rather ludicrous conversation, but it was one that was repeated many, many times in the next 3 months. Apparently the only people who house hunt are those who have jobs they can just walk away from at a moment’s notice. Silly us.

Eventually we got to actually go look at homes, though. Armed with pages from various real estate web sites, after we found out that our Realtor doesn’t use ALL sites to find homes, but only certain ones, we happily packed ourselves up and headed out to view our array of dream homes.

Let me stop here a moment to clarify something that became VERY important to us right about this time. When you apply for a mortgage its like a check with no signature. The mortgage company checks you out and then tells you how much money they will be ever so glad to loan you. For us it was $250,000. Yes, that is a quarter of a million dollars.

They will tell you that you can have that much because you can afford that much. Uh huh.

With your mind full of images of getting everything on your want list,  your would like but could live without list, and your no way in hell list, you sit down with your Realtor and start running numbers. It is at this point that you find out how much of that money is going into things that are NOT your house. Then there is the list of things that are going to be charged on TOP of that money. When all is said and done, you realize that their being willing to offer you that much money is a far, far cry from how much you will be able to truly afford. Reality is like a bucket of cold water as you start lowering the amount you can spend on a house. Once you figure out what you really can afford, you can start hitting the pavement to look at homes in that price range.

So off we went, to look at homes in our price range. I’m not sure at which point we started to cry. There was no array of beautiful homes lined up for our leisurely perusal. There were houses alright, but the tours consisted of opening the door and letting us find our way around.

There was the house that was half caved in on one side. The wildlife certainly found it a nice place to live, but somehow it felt short of even our ‘no way in hell’ list. It had a little property but it was shaped like an arrow head with a highway on one side and a main road on the other with the house plopped into the middle of them. You could stand in the middle of your land and wave to the occupants of the cars on both roads.

There was the farmhouse on a beautiful piece of property which felt so creepy I wouldn’t even let the hubby go down the basement.

At this juncture let me give you another small tidbit. Don’t negate the little “feelings” you get when you are walking around a place. Call it what you will…intuition, discernment, willies, whatever, but don’t just rule it out. Remember you are spending a lot of money and are going to be here day in and day out… and NIGHT in and night out. If you are not comfortable in there when you tour it, pass it by. It won’t get better later.

Anyway, we passed on that farmhouse needless to say. There was the small victorian gingerbread house. It was very pretty inside until you reached the kitchen. Apparently this was a room they never used because while the rest of the house looked adorable, the kitchen looked as though a pack of dogs had been living in there. It was so tiny you could barely move. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the refrigerator was some sort of mutant monster-sized ancient affair. Just change it out, say you, right? Wrong. It didn’t fit through the door. It had been there when they moved in and someone had built the small kitchen around it. Even if you took off the door it wouldn’t come out. We would have had to take a saw of some kind to it and render it into pieces to get it out. And the back yard, which wasn’t big enough to plant more than a few tomatoes, backed up to a wall which, if you looked up 6ft, was the storage part of a car repair place. It was a lovely view.

And not to be forgotten was the house which was about the size of our trailer I think. It sat on a truly spectacular piece of land with a bubbling creek behind it. And, the Realtor told us before we got there, it is filled with homemade charm and hand crafted furnishings. This is Realtor speak for the old man who lives there did all the repairs himself but really hadn’t a clue what he was doing. It was truly a sight to behold, let me tell you. There were materials used in places that no manufacturer had even intended. Four steps took you from one room to the next. Two rooms took you across that room.

If you were planning on bulldozing it and building something that was bigger than a Barbie and Ken size it would have been ideal, but otherwise, forget it.

And there was the mobile home. Again nice piece of property, but not much room to actually live in, It was not a double wide, by the way. It was single wide, fairly old, and although nicely kept up with a nice little outbuilding off to the side, it wasn’t going to work.

Right about now the sunny little smiles on our faces as we go out for another round of houses to look at, are pretty much gone. They are replaced with a quivering lip and frown lines that go practically through to the back of our heads. The Realtor wasn’t looking much happier.

You are probably wondering if we actually put in any bids on these prizes? Yes, we did. Desperation, compounded with our Realtor’s pessimism at finding anything better, actually led us to make bids on two of these places in hopes of being able to salvage them into our dream home in some way. By now the little pieces of papers with our lists carefully written on them, are laying on the floor of the car with all the other detritus of our trips; tissues, maps, soda cans, printed house specs, etc. Now we had a new list. It was the “can live with it” list. It was a sad, pitiful thing, wrinkled badly, tear stained and altogether just pathetic.

Finally, one Saturday, just before we were getting ready to go look at more houses, the hubby did one final look on the website and a small house had just been put up about 15 minutes before. He printed it off and brought it with us, telling the Realtor that we wanted to see this one, too. To be very honest, it was not a good picture and the house looked bare and not particularly attractive.  We did our round of Realtor-picked houses then went on to the one hubby had brought with him.

It was a small cape-style house that sat on a corner lot. There was lawn in front and a little on the one side. But it went back to a very nice back yard with a large fenced-in kennel/run. Did I mention we had a dog and wanted another one? There wasn’t much landscaping or exterior love given to it, but it had potential to be cute. When we went in we found out what it means when the ad says “as is”. Most of the work had been done, but it was the finishing that had not been. New drywall was up, but not finished off or painted. A new staircase was put in but had no treads yet. It was two story and the upstairs was a large open room with a small bedroom at one end. The ad said it was a 200 year old post and beam. Turned out that someone had put up vinyl siding so that it looked a lot newer.

A New Weapon

Originally this scene was in my book, “Ogre Clan Chronicles: The Prophecy”, as is. I needed to make a few small changes, however, so that it would fit better and the keep the flow of events moving. Still, I always did like it and wanted to save it. A little background as you read it. Dualta is a kind of spiritual leader for his people. He is a Spirittalker. Khellian is the leader of those people and they are very close. Chakai is an ogre War Chief thrown into the discovery of who else she is, and not happy about it. Here she is “learning” how to use, what to her, is just another weapon to master, though it is far more than that. Chakirra, briefly mentioned, is a really bad guy.   The conversations that are in ::  ::  are not spoken aloud, but in their minds. Think telepathy of a sort. Enjoy!))

“Show me how to ‘find’ you.”

“Find me?”

Dualta’s brow furrowed as he tried to figure out what she wanted to be taught exactly. She closed the distance between them again and reached down and took his hand in hers, the grip tight and unrelenting, but not painful.

“I followed what Taishan did when he was healing a wound on me. Show me how to do that when I want.”

“War Chief, what you ask isn’t that easy and in your current state of mind it could be dange..”

“Ye be a teacher. Now teach. If what ye say is true about me then show me.”

:: This would be a good time for you to be paying attention to me, Spirits. :: he prayed hopefully.

“I’ll try, but not many get it right away and I won’t make you a promise I may not be able to keep. If you don’t get the hang of it don’t say I didn’t tell you that was a possibility.”

“Agreed. Sit and we start.”

:: Khellian? ::

:: Yes, I’m here. ::

:: Monitor me, dear friend. If I go silent send Lyrith to Chakai’s tent. ::

:: What?? What’s happening? Do you need me to come? ::

:: No. I want no one else here but us, but please do as I ask. ::

:: Yes, yes, of course. Please be careful! ::

Dualta sat down on the longer couch. “Sit beside me please. I know you’re used to giving orders, but in this, you must do as I tell you. I don’t want either of us to get hurt. Will you do this?”

“Aye. A good leader knows when it be time to lead, and when it be time to follow. I will follow.”

He smiled at her and took both her hands in his. “Try to relax. It will be easier for you to concentrate if you aren’t a raging storm inside.” For the first time a ghost of a smile touched her lips and he smiled more broadly at her. “Now I want you to listen to me carefully. It’s your will that guides and directs the power to the use you wish to put it. In your case there is no problem with strength of will, so it’s more a matter of teaching you how to direct it.”

She nodded, listening, and Dualta could feel a lessening of the chaos inside her. She was doing something proactively instead of just being acted upon and she preferred that. It was calming her somewhat.

“I use a mental picture of something like ivy. It sends out tendrils that weave in and out of other things and holds on tightly. Later you won’t need the visualization, but in the beginning it helps. I’m going to reach out with my mind, with my will guiding it, and touch your mind. I don’t want you to be surprised by it so expect it, alright?” He smiled and squeezed her hands, falling into the mode of teacher to a nervous student as he had thousands of times before. Gently he reached out and encountered the walls he knew were there. They were less prickly than they had been earlier.

“You have strong defenses up around your mind, which isn’t a bad thing, but in your case, you need to learn how, and when, to control their reaction to someone else’s touch. There are times you will need to let others in so you can work with them. It doesn’t mean you are helpless though. You can slam them shut anytime, and you only have to let them in as far as you’re comfortable with, but you cannot mentally attack everyone who tries to work with you or teach you. Picture your mind as a fortress with high strong walls, for that’s what you have. Now form a door, a small one, and with your mind’s eye, open it when you feel me.” He gently touched the walls of her mind and exerted a small amount of pressure against them. At first they resisted and he felt them grow spiky again in defense, but then he felt the spikes withdraw and saw a “door” open just a crack. He gently slipped inside and remained still, letting her get used to the feeling.

:: You can hear me? :: He kept his ‘voice’ pitched low and gentle so that it wouldn’t sound threatening. He knew Taishan said she was able to speak to him, but he wasn’t prepared for the great booming sound of it.

:: I hear. This be Spirit gift? This way of talking? ::

:: Yes, although not all can do it. The stronger you are, the more likely it is that you will hear easily and be able to speak to othersmore easily. Do you understand how you are able to respond to me? :: :: Nay. ::

:: It is your will to answer me. Your will chooses to answer me this way and the power that is within you, and around us, gives you the “voice” to do it with. The closer you are to someone, both in distance, and personally, the easier it is to speak to them like this and to hear their responses.  Now let yourself feel me, feel my touch in your mind. Try to respond to that touch with one of your own, like a handshake. ::

Whatever he’d been expecting it wasn’t the image of the heavily armed and massively muscled woman that appeared in his mind. She stood, sword drawn, before him as if challenging him. They were standing in a black space with flashes of images that came and went. The events and memories those images represented played out like bits and pieces of vignettes then were gone as quickly as they came. More surprising was that she had projected an image of himself so that she had someone to actually look at. He was fascinated. Perhaps it was the very literal nature of ogres that caused her to automatically seek a non-nebulous representation for both herself and him. Whatever the reason  it seemed to work well for her. He moved forward, doing it as he always had, but now he saw an image of himself walking towards her.

:: Now what? ::

His mind self smiled and chuckled. He let more power flow along the tendril that was holding the door open, though nothing of that increase showed in the image they were viewing.

:: I am here by your invitation and I’ll leave when you ask me to. The images you see flashing around us, are memories of events, people, place that have shaped your life. The deeper the contact with the person, the more private and personal the images would be. Also, things that have happened most recently, if they affected you strongly, would be more vivid than old memories. ::

As if his words had triggered the memory of earlier he saw a picture of a robed male ogre with dark hair and dark eyes. He smiled but it was a calculating, cold smile. He felt “wrong” and Dualta knew he was looking at Chakirra. Chakai looked at the image of the male and then looked back at Dualta, knowing the Spirittalker had seen the image.

:: There is less ability to hide your true nature when you are with someone this way. Look at me. What do you feel from me?

:: The Chakai image walked around him, her eyes thoughtful. :: Ye feel warm, steady. I can feel power in ye, around ye. :: Then her images eyebrows rose. :: Ye be worried, too. No, more then that. Ye be afraid but I can nay tell what ye are afraid of. Ye be afraid of me? ::

Dualta smiled, but he felt his own body tense. She was far too intuitive and was feeling more from him than he’d thought she would.

:: Who is that robed man, War Chief? :: She looked at the image which had yet again appeared.

:: I met him this afternoon. He had a lot of interesting things to say. ::

:: Like what? :: Instead of answering though, she held out her hand and stared at it and a long dagger formed in her palm. Dualta could feel the power around the two of them, in the physical realm, gathering and building. He also felt a curiosity and joy start to rise in her.

:: I can create things here? ::

:: Yes. Not many can do that. You must be careful though. ::

:: Why? ::

He felt the power swirl around him and he looked down to find a sword in his hand. By the Gods…

:: This is serious, Chakai, you should not take this lightly. What happens here can have repercussions outside of our minds as well. ::

But Chakai was enjoying herself now. He knew that for all the discipline and rules she lived her life by, this touched the wild heart of the ogress and she reveled in it. He could feel her gathering the earth powers to herself and knew she could feel it now as well.

:: Come. We play. I want to learn. ::

Dualta moved back a step and felt himself starting to grow angry.

:: This is no game! ::

The image of the male ogre appeared, closer to her this time, and she frowned at the Dualta-image. She tilted her head as if considering how do do something. Moments later, Dualta felt the gathering power swirl around his feet and looking down, he felt cords of power vining around his feet, holding him in place.

:: What are you doing? :: the Dualta-image demanded. Why are you restraining me? ::

:: Do nay be afraid. :: the cords let him go and it was as if they had never been.

:: I did nay hurt ye. Ye know how to do that when we nay be in here? ::

:: Why do you want to know this, Chakai? ::

:: Someone told me these.. gifts.. be no different than learning to wield a new weapon. ::

:: I wish to leave now. We will discuss this outside of here. :: He started to withdraw, cutting off the flow of his own gift gradually so that the withdrawal would not hurt her and suddenly he found himself stopped. The Chakai-image held her fist in front of her and the image of the door that she’d formed to let him in, was gone. On his end it felt as if the flow of power had been cut off entirely and he was trapped in her mind. He tried not to panic.

:: Khellian! :: he shouted as loudly as he could but had no idea if it had reached his friend or not. He struggled and he felt himself grow furious.

:: Chakai let me go, Now! I do not find this honorable or amusing. ::

He felt honest surprise from her and she raised her eyebrows.

:: I be nay hurting you. Why ye be so angry? I just wanted to see what would happen. I would nay harm ye. Why ye be afraid? ::

Immediately he felt himself filled with the power that he himself had been trying to call on and he left quickly, not worrying about if he hurt her or not. The wince on her face gave him a shameful second of pleasure which he quickly scolded himself for. He pulled his hands out of hers and stood, walking across the room from her.

:: DUALTA! :: He winced at Khellian’s scream in his mind. :: I’m fine.. I think. I’m here at least. I cannot talk now though. Please.. Gods Khellian… we underestimated her… ::

Chakai stood also, watching him closely.

The Freak

((This very short story came to my mind while I was writing my book. There was no place for it in the book, but I liked the story so much that I kept it as a short.))

 

“Freak! Beast! Brute!”

The words followed him as he walked down the street, but she ignored them, same as always. Ignoring them was getting harder and harder of late. Loudest of all was Kerg’s voice. Of course. He would be leading the chorus, as usual.

“Tessa, can ye come help me for a second?” Calger’s voice called out from their house just down the road.

“Coming mother,” she called back and broke into a jog, reaching the house quickly. “What do you need, mother?”

“Will ye please play with Sarth for a few minutes? He’s driving me out of my mind and I be trying to get dinner finished. He adores ye and yer so good with him.”

“Sure,” she said as she looked down at the large, chunky toddler who was even now reaching towards her.

“Tessss!” he said and she giggled, flopping down in front of him and starting to play with the small sword and shield their father had given him.

Tessa knew she was loved, but sometimes she wished she wasn’t so different from everyone else. Her mother had been Calger’s friend even though Calger was of the ogre clans and Tessa’s mother, Theria, had been human. Theria was the daughter of a traveling merchant and they passed close enough to Calger’s clan lands on their trade route to trade with the ogre clan. They often stayed several days and Theria and Calger had hit it off as children and become fast friends, all differences aside. That friendship had only grown deeper as they grew. The road could be a rough place to live and raise a family, however. One afternoon while Theria was off with her daughter gathering herbs and roots for dinner a group of bandits had attacked the wagon and killed Tessa’s father, taking with them the horses and wagon and everything the family owned. Theria was alone with a baby and only the clothes on their back. They walked to the closest town and Theria had “borrowed” a horse from the inn and they made their way to Calger’s clan.

Theria had gone to live with Calger and Starak, but she never truly recovered from the shock of finding her beloved husband in the shape he’d been in after the bandits were finished with him. It had been a gruesome sight and Tessa was glad she had been too young to remember the scene in any detail. When her mother died, Calger said of a broken heart, they had taken Tessa in as another daughter. They loved her as much as any parents could love a daughter and Tessa adored both of them. She was raised with love, tenderness, and enough rules to keep her safe. Most of the clan accepted her as readily as had Calger and Starak, but their children, as children tended to be, were often mean to her because she so different.

Looking at Sarth more closely Theria compared the boy to her own remembered features. Most of the ogre children were large, chunky and big-boned. Even as children they had big hands and feet and had heavy, though not overhanging, brows. Tessa was small boned with a piquant face. She would have been considered petit even among her own race. Sarth innately had the hard, aggressive nature that was so rewarded in an ogre clan, whereas Tessa had been a gentle and pliable child.

Growing up, Tessa had never been able to keep up with the others in the rough physical play of the ogre children and she didn’t have the strength to win in the “mock” battles they waged endlessly with each other. While she trained in weapons and fighting along with every other child, she couldn’t master the heavier weapons they favored and special practice armor had had to be made to fit her since nothing they had was made for someone of her size.

Their eyes were generally brown and black with a different color showing up but rarely, but Tessa had bright green eyes like fresh spring dandelion leaves. The clan’s hair mostly ran to shades of brown, black and dark blond, but Tessa had bright red locks that were always unruly.

In every way, she stuck out like a sore thumb in the clan and she wondered often what she would do to make a place for herself here. The children aside, this was still her home and the only one she really remembered. She just wished that Kerg and his group didn’t make her life such hell.

A gong rang out loudly and everything came to a standstill in the house. It was the alarm gong. Something was very wrong.

“Stay with Sarth,” her mother said, “I’ll go see what’s happened.”

Tessa waited impatiently for her mother to return and when she did, her face was grim.

“I need ye to go to the Chieftain, Tessa. Kerg has fallen into a crevice and canna get out. No one be small enough to reach him but ye. I know how much ye hate him, and for good reason, but . . . “

“I may hate him but he is strong and my clan brother. I will not let down the clan who took me in and has made me their daughter, no matter how I feel about Kerg personally.”

Calger smiled and hugged Tessa tightly. “No mother could be more proud of a daughter than I am of you, Tessa. Go now, and please, be careful. I’ll be out there soon as I find someone to tend to Sarth for me.”

Reaching the Chieftain’s tent, Tessa was quickly apprised of the situation. She and several of the men, Kerg’s father included, ran to where Kerg was stuck. They could hear him shouting to the others already gathered around the crevice as they arrived.

“Kerg, ye will be quiet and listen now. We can nay reach ye. Ye ye be down too far for any of us to come in without also getting stuck. We have one chance. We be sending down Tessa. She be smallest. She will slather ye with lard and hopefully we’ll be able to pull ye free. Ye ken?”

“Aye, Chieftain, I ken,” came the muffled reply.

“Tessa,” the Chieftain said, bending down so that only she could hear his next words. “Thank ye for yer willingness to do this. All know how ye feel about each other. Kerg will be needing to learn a lot of lessons the hard way in his life because he be selfish and nay secure in himself. He WILL learn, but he has nay yet. Ye may think we do nay notice his cruelties but we do and it be partially because he gets angry about being caught and punished for it that he takes it out on ye. He is nay very bright.”

The Chieftain grinned and winked at her and she stifled a giggle.

“Still, he be a member of the clan and a strong lad. Ye are also a clan member and I want ye to always remember that yer home be here with us. Thank ye for putting yer feelings behind to do what be best for the clan and for that foolish cub.”

Tessa beamed at the ogre Chieftain. He epitomized in looks all that outsiders feared most about ogres, but his heart was kind and gentle where his own were concerned.

“I’ll do my best, Chieftain. I promise.”

“I know ye will, cub. Of ye I never doubted anything less.”

He coughed and stood, gruffly shouting for someone to wrap a rope around her waist and give her the lard.

The trip into the crevice was slow but without incident and when she reached where Kerg was stuck she hailed him.

“I’m here Kerg. I’ll have you covered with lard in a few minutes and they will haul you out of here as slick as a dart through a blowpipe.”

“Tessa, I . . . why are ye here?”

“Because you are my clan brother no matter what else you do or say, Kerg. You will be a good, strong hunter for the clan and I would not deprive them of that no matter how I feel about you.”

“Oh . . . well, thank ye. I be sorry that I’ve . . . “

“Don’t go saying anything you’ll regret later,” she said wryly.

“Just don’t fall in any more crevices. There . . . you are about as greased as I can manage to get you. Pull him up!” Tessa shouted the last part upwards and immediately she saw the rope around Kerg’s arms tighten.

She pushed and pulled him as best she could from her own dangling position and after a lot of grunting, groaning and abrasions she felt him break free and start to rise. She could hear the cheering above and felt her own rope start to rise, lifting her out of the rocky space. When they were both up on solid ground and untied, Tessa started to walk towards her mother, who was waiting for her in the crowd that had been watching.

“Tessa, wait . . . “ Kerg said gruffly.

She turned and faced him knowing he wouldn’t say anything mean in front of so many witnesses.

“I was wrong. Ye look different, but ye be nay beast, nor ugly. I have been the beast. Ye be clan and ye belong here. I will nay say otherwise ever again. I owe ye my life and I will nay ever forget that debt.”

Tessa couldn’t have felt more shocked. She looked around at the brutish, rough, heavy features of the ogres, who she knew outsiders called beasts and savages and smiled. She was home. She could take whatever names she got called, just as they did, for she knew her place and she knew her home and family. She would never ignore the taunts again, but stand up for herself because she had the right to do so. She was as beautiful as they were and belonged here just as they did.

A Little Froggy’s Song

((A number of the things I write have to do with my personal beliefs. I love allegories and most of them are a type of allegory or story. None of these are posted to offend anyone else’s belief structure, but they do represent a side of me and, as such, I post them.))

A Little Froggy’s Song

A froggy sitting out on her lily pond,
smugly happy with her surrounds.
It was fine and sunny day,
one where the warmth of the sun abounds.
Tho the waters swirled around it, rushing past her little perch
She just sat on her sturdy rock, praising God, a little froggy’s church.

Most wouldn’t have even noticed
the little frog as they passed along
Croaking happily to the sky, her voice raised in prayer and song
But there is One who notices
and hears every croaking sound
And knows she gives it all she has
unfettered and unbound

So next time you pass a lily pond
and see a frog just sitting
Don’t assume its doing nothing,
You may find that all unwitting
You are witnessing the love of God
for even the tiniest little thing
And find yourself beside the Lord of Hosts
listening to a little froggy sing.