Reblogged from Jim Webster, aka Tallis Steelyard:

Fate decrees that certain things only happen in winter. I was minding my own business. I was sitting in the cabin of the barge working on a few ideas I had for a poem. Shena, my lady wife, was working on her accounts. In the past hour I had moved only to make coffee for us, and to put more wood on the stove.

There was a knock on the door. I put down my pen and opened it to see a small child standing there.

“Message from Madam Galwaine.”
Now Madam Galwaine was one of my oldest patrons. Eventually age had got the better of even her indomitable spirit and she had finally conceded that she could no longer live in her own household. Still she had a will of iron, and she announced that if she was going to die anywhere, it would be in the house where she was born. Unfortunately for her daughter, this house was the farmhouse of a small farm the family owned deep in the Aphices. Still, given that a grandson and his wife now lived there, the daughter was happy to agree to this. So the old lady moved. I looked down at the small child at my door.

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