It begins with a doe and her fawn...

I've been posting my creative writing a lot more these days, but I'm aware it's been a while since I posted an extract from The Thicket Dwellers that I completed last year. And so, true to my neuroses, I've started reading through my manuscript again. It's been, like, the sixth time! And as I go through it I'm going to post extracts that I like/that are relevant/that I just wish to share with you. So here's the first extract from within the prologue, from the beginning of the story... 

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'The cool loamy smell of the forest began to thicken and catch in the throat of the deer. The beasts were nearing the road. Pin-pricks of light appeared through the lattice-work of branches, growing in size and brightness until it passed them by ahead, then was gone in an instant, swallowed by the night. The dragging roar went on, but was without direction, and filled the animals’ pricked-up ears as they swivelled around to catch the sound. More lights came and went, but the noise did not cease.

     Moments passed, unmeasured by time, standing still like the breathless trees. The doe was still, her head bent to the earth, contemplative. The lights were gone a while, long enough for the roar to fade into quiet. The doe bounded, assured by the silence, breaking apart the stillness like a faltering, but stubborn, heartbeat. The fawn hesitated, but an unbroken umbilical cord pulled her to her mother in panic.

     The open road and predatory light. There was piercing noise that did not belong to the night.

     The fawn remained by the roadside, hidden amongst the trees and undergrowth. The cord had been snapped by the explosion that had emerged from a darkness thick as molasses, bringing with it an orange heat that singed the fawn’s eyelashes even from a distance, and roasted her coal-black eyes, so that they glowed from the depths of the woods. The mother-deer had been thrown onto the roadside, her body twisted; the car spun like a fairground ride. Broken glass burst into the air and fell like devastated glitter.'

Nina x