Children finding their way

Many apologies for such a long absence - that old friend of mine, LIFE, came to stay and rather like those house guests in the old days of Jane Austin and Dickens just stayed and stayed:) LIFE is going to visit someone else , I hope, any day now but is going through that stupid ritual of just getting out of the door then remembering one last thing it forgot to mention. However, we are by the front door:)

So back to words, to writing and to this long and torturous process of The Children’s Tale, the first three were so easy to write in comparison.

Why the difficulty?

It wasn’t helped by the discovery that I was combining two stories in the one, two stories that didn’t really mesh very well. Stupid me!

That was last year, I had to untangle the two stories and reassemble them. I had been trying to write The Ancestor’s Tale but obviously my subconscious was telling me, or trying to, that the most obvious follow up to the three previous was a tale about how the children of our companions were going to manage in this world of want and war.

I have spent most of my working life with children, both privileged and not. In my travels around the world it is the children I have been watching. Mainly because the growth of baby to adult is so fascinating, the connections and conclusions they make so endlessly varied. And although I worry for all caught up in events beyond their controlling it is the children I worry for more.

So the children of my tale?

The Feral’s children would appear to be the privileged children, secure and fed. However, their fathers are at war and their responsibilities in the absence too high for their years. They are also, neither Feral nor Human, where do they belong? Where is their allegiance?

The mined-in settlements are fearful of the world outside and lacking knowledge, they have their own cultures formed over the 50 years of their confinement and with some troubling and disturbing history to absorb.How will they manage to assimilate with others.

The rag-tags are displaced,terrorized, many orphaned and alone.How will they find the trust so badly needed.

All have to find not only their place in this environment but, also need to help create a world they would wish to inherit, if they ever reach adulthood.

There is time for their ancestors to explain why and how all were in this predicament. Time enough for them to present their reasons and excuses. Their stories lie in a different volume.