Joyfully Retired

Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea asks us to share the first paragraph of a book we are reading. As you can see it’s called First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros. As readers we are often captivated or turned away by that first paragraph or two. Let’s see what you think about the first paragraph of my current read.

“All of them? Even the children?” The firplace sputtered and crackled and swallowed his gasp. “Slaughtered?”

“Worse.”

There was silence then. And in that hush lived all the things that could be worse than slaughter.

“Are they cvlos4?” Hios back tingled as he imagind something dreadful creeping through the woods. Topward them. He looked around, almost expecting to see red eyes staring througj the fark windows. Or from the corners, or under the bed..

“All around. Have you seen the ligh in the night sky?”

“I thought those were the Northern Lights.” The pink and green and white shifting, flowing against the stars. Like something alive,  glowing, and growing. And approaching.

Olivier Brule lowered his gaze, no longer able to look into the troubled, lunatic euyes across rrom him. He’d lived with this story rfor so long, and ikept telling himself it wasn’t real. Ot was a myth, a story told and repeated and embellished over and over and over. Around fires just like theirs.

It was a story, nothing more. No harm in it.

BHut in this simple log cabin, buried in the Quebec wilderness, it seemed like more than that. EVen Olivier felt himself believing it. Perhaps because  the Hermit so clearly did.