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Garia's plans are derailed by outside events and she is reduced to sitting with the Queen. This does provide an opportunity to have an honest private conversation, though the results are not what she expected. Later, Garia learns some important new information...

Somewhere Else Entirely

by Penny Lane

104 - Eriana Revealed

Sixteen Feet of Steel Chapter 7

Chapter 7

*Before…

“Then Chrissy please.”
“Alright then but a shame.”
“A Shame?”
“I like Christiana; it’s not a name I have heard before.”
He’s smiling and I’m blushing…I’ve never had this kind of close attention like this before…never like this…ever.
I swallow hard and get the book from our wheelbarrow.
“Here are my notes.”
My blush fades as he takes the book suddenly serious and starts reading while pacing and walking the saddle off.
He finishes and looks at me. “This is very good; it’ll save us a lot of time since you’ve organized things so well.”
I blush again but it’s that…It’s that getting recognition blush when you’ve never been getting it…as the youngest son; a lot of my tasks were things needed doing. Nothing this big, not often.
And that Sir Alaan looks serious and that he’s not being charming or flattering means a lot.
But Scarlet Fever….I look at the village.
He says it before me. “We’re just getting started with this.”

*And Now…

Diverting Pastimes

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After breakfast, Burt was wandering through the duchess’s huge town house, simply enjoying yet another day off from mucking out the stables and lifting sacks of grain. He was convinced he had the better part of the deal he and his beloved Lady Ann had made, even if he had written her a note to give her the fortnight off.

It still seemed incredible to him that he’d been able to write that note – and sign it with her very own signature; but it wasn’t the only change he’d noticed in his education. He was finding it easier and easier to discuss the arts and culture with grandmamma – something he never could have done before; and he really enjoyed it. He thrived on the intellectual conversations he was having now if truth be told.

At Last Drustina meets with her foe. The two armies meet on the South banks of the River Mersea where the Brunbah Creek enters the Mersea Estuary.

No need for maps, this is just a straightforward, 'stand up - knock down' fight.

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Atalanta's Story - Chapter 8. My thanks again for William Durr for all his help. This Chapter is long, probably a little too long, but there was no help for that. This chapter has some adventure in it. This chapter includes a pic of Atalanta as I see her.

Spring brings with it new life, change, and confusion. An opportunity for predators to feed on the young.

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I’d been sitting alone in the restaurant for more than half an hour. It was starting to dawn on me that I’d been stood up.

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The Angry mermaid 123
or,

Y Morforwyn Dicllon 123

The battle at the mine!

Drustina ends up holed up in a mine as she fights to defend her band of survivors.

“I Am Who I Am”

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Lady Ann woke up feeling extremely grumpy.

She’d just had what had to have been the worst night’s sleep of her life. She’d staggered home pissed in the early hours of the morning, vomiting several times on the way home and then had to make her bed up when she got back to the hay barn above the stable. As a mere stable hand, Burt wasn’t given proper lodging. Now she was living his life she literally had to roll out his thin straw mattress every night and put it away in the morning. It was hardly worth the effort. She could feel the joins between the floorboards through the flimsy thing!

She’d tossed and turned for the rest of the night feeling cold, uncomfortable and queasy. Try as she might, at three o’clock in the morning, feeling like death warmed up, she’d been unable to block the draft coming in from outside in numerous places. And it was spring! Imagine how much colder it would be for the real Burt when the weather really took a turn for the worse come autumn. She thanked God she’d be back in her own warm bed long before that.

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