Be still. Know beauty. Let it flow from the depths of your soul. For that is its source. Let it flow through you into the rest of the world. Let it flow and watch as it is reflected back at you.

This is the nature of beauty. It is perceived and projected. it can only be seen by those who allow it to come from themselves. There is as much beauty in the word as you put into it.

Those who say beauty is transitory are wrong. Beauty is eternal, for it is an essence that flows into and through the cosmos. What is transitory is your own willingness to see it.

Just a bit of short fiction for a change in pace.

The crescent moon rode high in the sky as Lukas approached the old cemetery. He softly padded through the grass, carrying a shovel over his left shoulder. He avoided the stone path, not wanting to make the slightest sound. One of his sources told him that this graveyard still had a caretaker on duty at night. All accounts indicated that the man who filled the job was old and probably would never see or hear the grave robber. But Lukas wanted to take no chances.

Once he made his way past the first row of tombstones, Lukas began to wave among the markers, bending near the more worn ones to read them. He had compiled a list of names of wealthy people who had been buried here between two and three centuries ago. He knew that graves dug for members of those family at that time held the most promise for obtainable booty.

After ten minutes, the grave robber smiled at the tombstone he had just read. It bore the name Anselm, a name that was high on his list. He took a step back, put the blade of his shovel to the ground a few feet from the headstone, and stepped on it to drive the shovel into the dirt. He then pried the shovel and dirt from the ground.

He was about to repeat this process when he heard a low, gravelly voice behind him. ?I do hope that you are digging your own grave. It will save others the trouble of doing it for you.? Lukas spun around to confront the undertaker, only to receive the shock of his life. He stood frozen, his mouth slightly ajar as he stared into the crimson eyes of a dragon.

The creature?s scales were black with a slight sheen. The dragon?s hide seemed to blend into the blackness of night, only betrayed by the moonlight glinting off it. After a few seconds of shock, the wyrm spoke again, ?Well? What do you have to say for yourself??

At that, Lukas took several scurrying steps backwards, falling over the tombstone in the process. Both he and his shovel fell to the ground, each making a soft thudding sound. ?Be careful, you fool!? the dragon hissed. ?You almost broke the oldest marker in this cemetery.?

Lukas finally found his voice, though it was strained and tenuous. ?W-what are you??

?I should think that is obvious.?

?What do you want??

?At the moment, I want to know why you?re seeking to disturb my treasures.?

?Your treasures?? Lukas asked. His brain wheeled in fright and confusion.?

?Yes, my treasures. This graveyard is their home. Not all dragons hoard their treasures in caves, no matter what the story books say.?

?I?see?Are you going to kill me, now??

?The thought has crossed my mind. I don?t take kindly to grave robbers.?

?Please don?t!?

The dragon sniffed derisively. Lukas watched as a small stream of smoke escaped each nostril. ?I don?t see why I shouldn?t. You were trespassing. You invaded my home. An you were about to disturb my treasures.?

?I didn?t know it was your home!?

?I don?t see why that should matter. You were still someplace you do not belong attempting to take something you have no right to.?

?I?m sorry.?

?You?re sorry you were caught. And you?re sorry that the consequences of being caught may be dire. But you?re not sorry for doing wrong.?

?Please! I beg you!? Lukas cried, more terrified.

The beast sighed. ?Oh, very well. I will spare you this time. But do not return, or I shall devour you without a second thought!?

?Yes! Yes! I promise I will never return! I?ll never rob another grave!?

The dragon snorted. ?I should hope not! Now be gone!?

Lukas leaped up and ran towards his home, never looking back.

—

Another figure stepped from the shadows as the grave robber fled. The dragon spoke, not turning to greet this new presence. ?And how long have you been watching.?

?I arrived just in time to hear you scold the young man for tripping over the tombstone. By the way, you surely realize that it?s not the oldest tombstone here.?

?Of course I know! But for some reason, that statement always puts them more on edge.?

?Ah, then the dramatics of terror outweigh accuracy.?

?Only when it comes to protecting my treasures.?

?You realize he?ll tell everyone in town about meeting you, right?? The old man asked after a moment?s pause.

?Yes.?

?And you realize that some will come out here some night to check it out for themselves??

?They usually do.?

?I didn?t think you liked nosy people any more than you liked grave robbers.?

?I don?t. But at least they?re less of a disturbance. Besides, I felt I needed to make my point as strongly as possible with this one.?

?Fair enough.? The caretaker paused. ?Of course, you also realize that he probably now thinks there?s even more gold and jewelry here than he had first imagined, right??

?So you figure he assumed I consider such trinkets my treasures??

?Well, that would be in line with the story books.?

The dragon sniffed at that. ?You humans are so foolish. Well, if he thinks such nonsense, then so be it.?

The caretaker chuckled. ?Yes, I suppose so. But it?s late and I?m tired. So I?ll leave you to your horde of souls and the collective wisdom entombed here.?

?Very well, old friend. Good night.?

?Good night to you, as well.? With that, the old man began the walk to his home on the far side of the cemetery. The dragon watched him for a few moments before fading away.

Tonight, I wrote the next installment of Harald’s Story. If I did everything correctly, it should automatically show up on WOTL tomorrow. At this juncture, I thought it appropriate to offer some of my own musings on this story, and possibly on writing in general.

The section I wrote tonight contains a couple events of significance. The first event is the departure of Father Delling from the tale. Strangely, his passage into the shadows is rather understated, given how fond I and some of my readers have become of him. There’s no fanfare or grand speeches. In fact, the goodbyes themselves are not recorded because they are observed from a distance. And yet, this seems appropriate for the old monk. I do not know if he will return. I have played with the possibility that he might make a brief appearance as the story wraps itself up. But even that is merely a possibility.

The other event of significance is not about plot, but the storytelling itself. I have added a new point of view to the narration. This new section is told from the point of view of Captain Soren. To be honest, this both surprises me an troubles me. When I introduced his character, I had no intention of telling his point of view. And yet, tonight’s work made it clear that it was appropriate to do so.

This troubles me because I find myself wondering if Soren, a character I introduced to play a relatively small part, might have just taken on a bigger role than I had planned. I grant you that he would not be the first character in the story to do so. Both Berit (who I planned to deny even a name beyond “Girl” when I first imagined her) and Brother Jens were originally introduced as small actors meant to merely push the plot along, and somehow managed to insert themselves into the heart of the tale against my own plans.

Alas, I am a poor author at the mercy of his characters! I fear they may next demand that I include their names be added to the author line. Or perhaps one of them will make mention of their cut of any royalties. It’s an amusing thought, though I’m not sure how amusing it really is.

I think the next installment I write will likely be told from Jens’s point of view. I’m a bit concerned by that possibility, as I’m not sure I can catch his inner voice correctly. Point of view can be tricky like that, and Jens is possibly the character whose point of view is most difficult for me. I’m not sure whether that’s due to how unfamiliar his mindset has become to me or how familiar it used to be.

I’m reminded of a friend of mine, whom I shall call Trish. Six or seven years ago, she tried her hand at writing. For her, writing was one of the ways for her to try to process through her own confusion and resentment toward her funamentalist Christian background. Her main villain was a domineering woman who embodied everything she despised about those from Trish’s background that had hurt her. To put it mildly, this villain was a caricature of pure evil. And unless you’re trying to write a fairy tale, such caricature’s don’t really work that well. Fortunately, Trish was trying to write a fairy tale.

Unfortunately for Trish, she tried to write a few chapters from her villains point of view. I can honestly say that those chapters did not work at all. A narrator who oozes that much evil is simply unbelievable, even in a fairy tale. Under such circumstances, you have to make the person’s point of view seem at least someone reasonable, even if it’s ultimately objectionable.

I sincerely hope that my efforts to relay Brother Jens’s point of view is more realistic than Trish’s portrayal of the inner workings of her villain’s mind. But I still worry that I’ll be able to do it justice. Hopefully Brother Jens himself will step up and guide me through the process, as so many of the others have already done.

While checking out my site stats this morning, I discovered that someone found me by following a link from a site I’d never heard of before. As I’m always fascinated to find someone new who is linking to me, I went to check out the page that linked to me. After reading the first paragraph, it quickly became obvious to me that the author of the other blog had decided to repost my “panacea” post from March 2007.

Now, I’ll admit that I’m always delighted when someone finds value in something I wrote and wants to share it with other people. In many ways, it’s a great honor to discover that someone redistributed an entire post that I wrote. Granted, I’d be even more pleased if they linked back to my original post (this particular blogger linked back to my blog, which I appreciate), and then only quoted portions of my work on their site with their own commentary. After all, it’d be nice to know why they found my writings so valuable and added their own ideas to the mix. It’s that whole creative feedback process. But not everyone does that, and I understand. And perhaps there are those cases where reprinting the entire post makes sense, especially if the site doing the reprinting is a repository of articles on a similar theme.

One thing about such occurrences does bother me, however. That’s the fact that the the people who occasionally reprint my posts don’t contact me before doing so. As a rule, doing so is considered good manners and possibly even an ethical imperative. It might seem strange to some people, but there are some good reasons why you should always contact someone before reprinting something they’ve written (or even quoting parts of it):

1. It allows authors to track the impact their writing has.
Simply put, as a writer, I like to know what kind of audience my writing is getting. So if someone picks up one of my posts and says, “Hey this is so good, I want to share it with others,” I want to know about it! And if they repost it online, I want to be able to follow it there and see what kinds of responses it gets. Again, this goes back to that whole concept of feedback being part of the creative process.

2. It helps authors preserve their intellectual property rights.
Even bloggers have a right to “own” what they write, and it’s important that others respect those IP rights. Now, I personally tend to be rather generous about this sort of thing. It’s unlikely that I would ever deny someone the opportunity to quote or reprint something I wrote on my blog. I’d just ask them to acknowledge me as the author and link back to my blog (or otherwise give their readers a way to contact me). However, there are other bloggers who may feel differently. In fact, I remember a blogger who ran into a bit of a situation not too long ago. This particular blogger happens to be a freelance writer. A print newspaper picked up one of her posts and decided to print it in one of their issues. The problem with this is that this blogger had already planned on rewriting this particular post into an article that she planned to submit to various publications. The fact that the paper snatched up her blog post without talking to her created issues for her ability to modify and sell her own work. Fortunately, the paper who printed her post without permission was more than happy to compensate her for their error. But the point is, it’s important that you talk to someone before redistributing something they wrote to make sure you don’t create such problems for them.

3. It gives authors the opportunity to revise their work.
As much as I’d like to keep up this image of being this fantastic writer, I have to admit that some of my blog posts are not as well polished as they could be. This has led to one memorable occasion when I winced to find something I threw together somewhat quickly tucked into a repository of articles on another site. As I read it, I began to notice a number weaknesses in the post. Had the individual asked me for permission to include that particular post in their collection, I almost certainly would’ve offered to do a major rewrite first so that they would have a far better article to reprint.