Posted on by Doyce

Day in the Sun

Just something that’s been tickling the back of my brain for awhile.
I remember a time when I was very young, riding in a car with green, leathery seats that got very hot when the sun shone on them in the summer. The car was green as well, although a different shade, and it seems to the me of my memories that most of the cars back then were that color. It was a popular trend I suppose, or maybe my child’s perception was skewed.
At any rate, there were several undisputed facts; the car was green, the seats were green, it was summer, the sun was hot, and the seats were hotter. We had the windows open to let the air in and my mother was driving us to town on an errand.
The road was a winding black hardtop that looked down into sharp ravines between the hills — drops that seemed to go down and down farther than anything in the whole world as far as I was concerned. I would crawl up and look down and out from the tiny back windows of the two door and think about what it would be like to go sailing off the road and into the ravines, tumbling over and over and finally exploding at the bottom, just like on TV. (We lived a long way from town and when it was only you and a younger sister for a playmate and no one else for five miles, you learned to entertain yourself.)
So that day, with the sun beating down and my boredom rising, when I saw a goblin shambling along the bottom of a ravine with an old and rusted sword across his back like the yoke of a wagon, I didn’t bother mentioning it to my mother. Even at that age, I assumed I’d imagined it.
I believed that for the next 28 years.

11 Replies to “Day in the Sun”

  3. You met the guy, didn’t you? You went to a con and there was your goblin, wearing his sword behind a dealer’s table and he leaned over to you and said, “And I had a couple of babes in chainmail bikinis with me that day, too.”

  4. 1. I may not need to finish it — that might be the whole story. :)
    2. I don’t know what (or at least which) I’m going to write for NaNoWriMo. Since I don’t know what I’m writing, I couldn’t possibly be starting early :)
    3. I’ve never seen a Convention Sword Dealer that wouldn’t make goblin quickly back away from the table and shield his eyes. Yikes.

  5. No, it wasn’t your imagination. The Dakota plains are rife with goblins, especially along those dark gullys and river bottoms where no man has travelled in a thousand years. The natives learned to avoid the areas and the white settlers soon after. There are goblins and ogres and orcs all along there. No trolls though (shifting eyes nervously).

  7. Doyce, don’t make me whine and throw a temper tantrum!! ;-)
    I’ll get Jackie to help too.

  9. being your little sister and all, I can’t believe you never tokd me about that story. Now I am going to think about it every time I go home, and I go home alot more than you do, thanks for planting the seed.

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