Last two day I wrote elsewhere.
Pinch 1 – Grumphook discovers an early effort of some boys to escape and flames the terraced farmland.
This scene seemed like something I could work on without getting too caught up in and easily throw away if needed. I’ll probably stick with imagery rather than delve into Grumphook’s character.
Grumphook lay sleeping in the cool mud of the pig pen she’d modified to suit a dragon. Those modifications included smashing the mill pond upstream to divert more water to make more mud and removal of the pigs via ingestion—the final pig cowered in the broken nearby shed. She heard the alert in her dreams, and for a momemt it mixed incongruosly with her rending of a fat just-sheared sheep. Her body reflexed into the air, wings shifting back before unfurling upward then than flapping down and around as if she were trying to hug the air beneath. Her legs kicked the ground in mostly the right direction with mostly the right traction. She instictively rolled downmountain to gain speed and loft with less energy. A stone chimney crashed into her left shoulder before she completely abandonned the squeeling dream-sheep.
An upslope wind bent the tops of Douglas firs as it approached the village and the dragon. Grumphook timed her climb to coincide with the favorable wind and rose into the mountain sky higher than her sisters. It didn’t take long for her to spot the cause of the call that woke her. She saw the warmth of the boys huddled near a cool rock spur. It would have been a sufficient hiding place if dragons had human eyes.
—
I was planning to go into how she didn’t much care if the boys got away or not. That she did of course try to flame them or at least scare them. But she decided to take her retribution on the village instead, so she flamed the terraced farmland.
The boys who excaped thought they had caused the eradication of their village and never returned while the village which doesn’t get razed thinks the boys were lost as well. Then maybe I can bring them back somehow. Maybe one of the boys is Gertrude’s son.
374 words on day 650