Good day and/or evening, folks! It’s time again for WIPpet Wednesday, where the jokes are made up and the points don’t matter… wait, that’s not right. No, WIPpet Wednesday is that wonderful day of the week where we (and you, if you’d like to join in, see links at the bottom) post a little bit of a work-in-progress that somehow relates to the date- say, 15 lines on the 15th, or a bit of chapter 6 on the 6th… it’s becoming my favourite blog day because I love reading everyone’s snippets.

Something simple this week, I think; everyone here’s sick, we don’t need the excitement. A quiet moment with Rowan looking out the window over a moonlit garden, accompanied by an odd but seemingly harmless eagle… I said is was simple, I didn’t say it wasn’t weird.

Three paragraphs from chapter three of Bound, and I’m cutting it off before we get to the teaser-y part so you guys don’t call me mean again 😛 :

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The moon was full and hazy behind the thin clouds that stretched across the sky, bathing the flower garden beneath my window in cool, shadowless light. Most of the flowers had died off or gone to sleep for the winter, but the cherry tree still held its odd mix of flowers and fruits, and the rose and lilac bushes were covered in blooms.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” I asked Aquila, and he glanced back at me from his perch in the tree. “The flowers. I remember how surprised I was my first autumn here, when they didn’t wilt or fade until well into the winter. Everything in the garden bloomed long back then, the ground flowers as much as the trees. When I was little, I used to think it was because the garden was in love with my aunt. She cared so much for it, like it was a child or a friend, and I thought that the flowers were the garden’s way of loving her back. Now that she doesn’t go out there anymore, the flowers only bloom when they’re supposed to. The trees have longer memories, though.”

Aquila fluffed his feathers and stared at me. “I know, it’s stupid,” I said, and leaned farther out the window. “Matthew told me it’s just because the trees were cultivated over generations to bloom long, and he doesn’t have as much time to tend the flowers as Victoria did, so they die off more quickly. I still sometimes like to think it, though. It was the only magic I ever really had.”

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Don’t forget to check out what the rest of the WIPpeteers are up to this week- just click here for the links. And as always, a big thank you to our sponsors… I mean, our lovely host, K.L. Schwengel!