Insecure in October

Hello my dearies and welcome to this month's IWSG post! (you can find the other participants on a linky list if you click on the tab up above)

brought to you by Ninja Captain and Author Extraordinaire

Alex J Cavanaugh

Not only is it the first Wednesday of the month, it's also the second day of my self-imposed October Blogathon. This month, I am trying to post every single day, and not only that - I'm going to post about my writing, or bits of my writing, or something specifically relevant to writing. No complaints, no whining, nothing blue, if you know what I mean.

The reason? I have come to the realisation that I do two things waaaay too often: I don't blog at all or I blog only to complain about how little time I have for writing. So for once, I am not going to talk about that. Instead, I give you a small sample of what I'm writing right now - tell me, what do you think of it? I haven't checked it for tenses or grammar or the like, I'm just going for the feel of it right now.

The market was teeming with people, and every one of them wanted to shake the peacemaker’s hand. It made Rashid’s skin crawl, but it wasn’t his choice, and it certainly was not an argument he could win. Master Aleh said it was part of a Peacemaker’s job description to be known to people, and that was that. So they walked through the crowded Moonday morning market, not jostled, exactly, but certainly surrounded by what the master called his Potentials. Potentially his customers, potentially affected by what he did, by the judgements he handed down. 

Potential threats, is how Rashid thought of them. It took all he could all his willpower to keep his hand from clenching on the grip of his sword. It was his job to keep the master safe, and in this kind of environment, that was close to impossible. Even more so since the master insisted on handing everything he bought to his bodyguard, as if Rashid didn’t need his hands to protect him. Halfway through the market, he was already loaded down with no less than five neatly wrapped parcels. If someone truly meant the peacemaker harm, it would be impossible to even put himself before the blade and protect his master that way. All he could do now was glower at the people pressing against the peacemaker, vying for his attention, and hope he looked scary enough to give any evildoer pause.   

It took them what felt like several hours to cross the market, and by the time they got to the master’s home with the things they’d set out to buy, Rashid was covered in cold sweat and he could have sworn he wore through his teeth, he’d been grinding them so hard. Jol, the master’s housekeeper, met them at the gate to relieve Rashid of the parcels he was carrying. Jol could have done the shopping for them, of course, but the master liked to think of their weekly trip into Rashid’s own personal hell as a recruiting trip, advertisment of his services. Unfortunately, it worked. 

“Master, there is a man here waiting to speak to you,” Jol said while trying to close the door and keep hold of the parcels at the same time.