Rainbow Snippets climb a mountain

A change of focus for this week’s Rainbow Snippets. This week’s snippet is from a short story, The Dark of the Sun, which is included in DSP Publications’ anthology 7&7. The anthology is coming out on 10th May and can be downloaded for free from the DSP Publications website. It’s a showcase of genre writing, not necessarily with romantic elements, and each story takes on one of the traditional sins and virtues. My story addresses Faith, through the story of a priest who has lost his after the death of his husband. As he leads a party of pilgrims up a very high mountain to witness an eclipse, he is forced to face his own doubts and fears.

Here’s a bit of the climb.

Today’s climb was harder, even with a shirtless Amra encouraging them all along the way. He lost the monkey’s company not long before they climbed past the tree line, which was also when several of the party began to feel dizzy and queasy. For most of them the symptoms passed quickly, but one of the priests continued to vomit beside the path every few steps, and Meru Tanicius struggled to catch his breath even when they stopped. The path rose and fell, scrambling up a succession of ridges, first through the trees and then across scrubby heathland thick with spiky, flower-bright bushes. There were few animals up here except for the striped mice scrabbling through the undergrowth, but birds sang freely in low nests and eagles drifted overhead.

By the time they reached the camping spot, Tomal was worried about most of the party.

And, since the spring is still blooming madly, here’s some more pretty pictures of the local woods. I work in a small village ten minutes drive from the local town. Usually I catch a bus or get a lift to the station, but in summer I sometimes walk a rambling route back along foothapths and bridleways. It’s a good seven miles and takes a few hours, so I only ever do it on Fridays but I never regret it and this week I was rewarded with even more bluebells.

Rainbow Snippets is a wonderful little Facebook group in which writers gather every weekend to post a six-sentence peek at one of their works. All genres are included but the snippets must be from books with a LGBTQIA+ protagonist.