Day 11: 3418 (Book total: 3418, NaNo Total: 106,037)

Book 2 has begun. Obviously I'm not writing as quickly, but it's been fun so far. And I'm starting to get the other work done that I need to get back to.

Snippet from the opening of the book:

Standing up on the butte he could see most of the way to town. Dust rose along the dirt road curving through the brown land beneath him. He watched the top of a truck dip down into a ravine and up again, and he could see a half dozen deer dart down toward the sluggish river to the right.

Looking upward he saw the distant mountains, snowcapped, with the sun starting to settle down between two jutting spires, casting purple and orange color into the sky and across the land. The White Maiden would rise soon to light the land of night.

A wind brought the scent of a mesquite fire and dinner cooking somewhere nearby. He breathed it in, eyes closed, savoring the moment and locking it into his memory.

He wouldn't be here tomorrow.

They called this world Home, the place were a confederation of people had come to live, most of them the remnants of the ancient Native American tribes of Earth. The traditions, a hundred years later, had melded more than the first settlers had intended. And they had new traditions as well, to suit a new world. People said this was so much like Earth that it could be the first lands. Others said it would never be the same, and wrote stories of all they'd lost when they came here. But they'd made a long migration, and there was no going back now.

He didn't care. This was Home and home -- the place he'd always know. He loved the land, and the little area of humanity they'd carved out, bringing deer and dogs, corn, gourds, and even mesquite brush. They brought horses, sheep, cattle, goats, and even coyotes, wolves, and cougars. They brought as much of the old world as they could to the new, and let nature lose on a world that had little life of its own. It was still a mostly dead world.

One of those dogs barked down in the lowlands, probably at the passing truck. He would miss that sound.

Fool.

But darkness came suddenly, lights coming up in town a few miles away. He watched for a moment, and then looked upward into the sky and the stars.

His heart sang. He loved Home, but he wanted to go -- to see those other places. Tomorrow he'd take that first step.

The day he had turned ten, his mother took him to the elders of the tribes for his official naming. His grandmother sat on the council that day, just as she did now. He liked to visit with her, but he'd fidgeted, and wandered off. His mother finally found him and frantically pulled him back to council, apologizing for the delay.

But Grandmother had laughed. "I name him Feather in the Wind, because this one will never stay still."