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eBook Category: Fantasy/Romance
eBook Description: A strange wind is blowing into Gwyn's life. With the strength of a vicious storm blowing up the prairie around her brother's home, she finds herself forced to seek shelter with an unlikely "Prince Charming." Things take an even more curious turn when the roar of a dragon brings with it a stranger ... are things really what they appear? [Fast & Fanciful Short Fiction Winner March 2007]

eBook Publisher: Echelon Press, Published: 2007, 2007
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2007

12 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [39 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [64 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [14 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [168 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [15 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [69 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [86 KB] , hiebook (KML) [68 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [70 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [12 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [16 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [54 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [25 KB]
Words: 4531
Reading time: 12-18 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 1590805429

Gwyn shielded her eyes with a saluting hand and scanned the fields of wheat. Waves of wind sent the stalks genuflecting in the north field. Her eyes followed the direction of the wind. No sign of the tractor on the road. The eastern pastureland was too grazed to bow down to nature, but the cows turned their hind sides to the wind, pointing their noses toward the red silo at the far corner of the property. The porch wound all the way around the house and Gwyn followed it, scanning the border of the McTierney farm, and eventually let her eyes rest on the southern acres. She rang the bell again, watching the wind ripple up the rolling, untamed prairie to the south. A day for a maiden with long hair and flowing dress, but Gwyn had neither.

She made one more lap around the porch and gave up. When he was hungry, he'd come and eat. Donny always kept Dad's watch in his pocket, and the tractor had a radio, air-conditioning, and a clock. He wouldn't be destitute. She thought about calling him on his cell phone but the last time she did that, he went retro on her when he got to the house.

"My cell phone is just for emergencies. Matters of life and death," Donny had said that night at dinner. "You don't call me to ask why we don't have the Food Network channel. You gotta work the system. The sun comes up, and I go out to the barn or the fields 'til it sets. I come in to eat or sleep."

"Sounds boring as hell," Gwyn said.

Donny stood then, and tossed his napkin on the table. He leaned over her. "It's a normal life, not like you've been living in your big city. It's the way you were raised, Gwyn. You ran from it once and look what it got you."

Gwyn had only been back at the farm a few weeks and was still in the process of sorting out her 'big city' life. This time at the farm was meant to be a break from the pressures of her job, a time for her to think about her lack of a life outside of work. She wasn't going to play farm-wife to her brother just because she was female. He'd sent two women running down the road in the decade he'd had the farm and now she knew why. If he expected her to 'earn her keep' by washing his dirty underwear, keeping house, and cooking his meals, she told him, then he was in for a big surprise.

So she slept half the day and wandered the house at night because her body was accustomed to working nights at the hospital. The television was no help: nothing but soap operas for company, not even a satellite dish or a respectable cable station to give her mind a rest. Instead of being thankful for the meals she made when she was awake, instead of responding with gratitude for her thoughtfulness, Donny came in each night, eyed the growing pile of clothes on the sofa, and grunted. Watching him wash dishes and fold clothes had been immensely satisfying. He only played at being a farmer, anyway. Who was he kidding with his lord-of-the-manor ways? The farm was half hers. The Parkers who owned the neighboring farm had been renting the McTierney fields since before Dad died and there was still plenty of Mom's money left. What Donny did all day was a mystery. He wasn't even a gentleman farmer like Dad had been.

She supposed her life was equally as mysterious to Donny. He'd never had a paying job in his life. He had no idea how hard it was to make it in the real world. The farm was a fantasy, an escape from the brutal reality of diseases that couldn't be cured and lives that sped past in the blink of an eye. On the farm, the days were long. In the city, time got away from you until suddenly, you looked back at all the things you didn't do because you were too busy, and that was when you noticed what was missing.