This is a cute little story. I liked the underlying sense of uncertainty around their keep-mommy-alive ritual.

Soooo criticism. The dialogue is adorable most of the time (“I know. I won't go to the stables,” said Ciara. “Yes you will. Just stay away from the war horses") but the character's voices are sometimes hard to distinguish from one another. I don't think you need to go so far out as full-on inflections but maybe looking at the individual characters' word choices might help vary up their speech patterns? Not that there isn't variation but if there is something I could critique on I guess it'd be that!

Yeah. I think that part of my problem is that Ciara and Deirdre are still too similar in my mind. In the original novel, Deirdre isn't around too much. She's mostly there to give Ciara motivation, and to give her something to work toward saving. One thing I'm hoping to do with these short stories is develop Deirdre into much more of her own character, so that when I finally begin to write the planned for novel that centers around Deirdre's youth she won't just be Ciara in a different set of clothes. Obviously I still need to work on it, but thanks for the critique. I always helps to know where I'm still weak on things.

Thanks for reading, too!

Part of it is probably how it is a short piece of a longer story-world. In a few pages you have to convey to a new reader not only the character's personality and the events of the story but the relevant background information, so the character's dialogues have a bit of exposition in it to try to give a bigger hint at the context around everything. Dropping some of the exposition might allow you to have characters talk in more freed-up language, but then you risk losing the reader, if it's a short story.

If I had ever come up with a solution for this conundrum I would share it but I have a lot of trouble with that too :B

There is that, too. I was conscious, the whole time I was writing this, of just how much my readers wouldn't know that I had already established in the novel, and I think that made it a lot weaker than it could have been. I don't normally write too many short stories with characters from my novels, just for that reason. This idea got into my head and I wanted to write it down, but I think for the most part I'll stick to new characters when I write my shorter stuff. At least until I maybe have a better handle on how to write short stories around characters like these and still have it be a strong, independent piece. Ah, the pipe dreams of youth.

Thanks again. Half the fun of posting these stories are the conversations they lead to!

Aww, well thank you. I'm so glad you like it! It was a lot of fun to write. As you say, it's kind of like visiting with all your old friends again. And I thought it was a nice opportunity to maybe show Deirdre in a bit of a better light, too. She's not heartless, and she does love her daughter. She just kind of sucks at being a responsible parent. I always kind of meant to write how Ciara and Embarr met, too. They mean so much to each other throughout Oseille, and they are so devoted to one another, that I thought it was worth showing a little bit of why this was. It is kind of sad, when you know the future, I agree. But with years ahead of them yet, there's maybe some happiness to be had, too. *Grins* Ciara was quite the rebel when she was a pup, wasn't she? I'm glad she lived up to your expectations!

As for Marcus, there's a Marcus in my second novel, who is actually the main antagonist of the book. He's mentioned a couple of times in the teaser I posted a little while ago. He isn't the same character, though. Silver Street does take place in the same world as Oseille, but it's set 500 years in the future and in different part of the world. I didn't actually think about it until after I'd posted this story. If the groom here shows up again, I may change his name. Or try to give him some way of being easily distinguished from the Marcus in book two.

Thanks so much for the comments! As always, I really enjoy reading what you have to say!

I kind of have trouble with naming my characters, sometimes, so I have a bad habit of recycling names without really meaning to. Especially for male characters.

I have actually thought of trying to write Oseille in the future, maybe focusing on one of Fiachra's descendants. (Niamh, obviously, won't have any, at least canonically, but I'd like to keep the family line alive through the ages.) I probably wouldn't set future Oseille quite that far ahead. It's always going to be a little medieval village to me. But it might be fun to take it even a hundred years hence.

That would be a great little resource, if anyone had the time to build it. Thought I have to say that I think you've come up with some excellent names, and much more interesting ones than most of mine.

Oseille in the future. I'll certainly have to give that some thought. It's already a bit more advanced than a human settlement would have been in the 14th Century, simply because they haven't had years of religious dogma oppressing the sciences. So what it could be like in a hundred years time? That could be really something to see!