Starbuck and his new shelter buddy Skye at 6 months old each

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Yes, Star is really that big now and sits on Skye a lot.  He's going to be huge.

Otherwise, it continues to be a rough spring.

I told everyone that my beloved Forester got totaled, I think.  The new Subaru is hard to get used to.  So much has changed in seven years, tech wise.  Then I had to put down my two elderly ragdolls within five days of each other due to kidney and urinary problems.  It probably didn't help that Star sat on them too.  Then I slipped on my own icy driveway and fell, breaking three ribs.  The first week after that was miserable, but I'm nearly back to normal now.

Someone asked for a snippet from the new novel.  If I've already shared this Prologue, let me know and I'll post the next bit.

Prologue

The Riverland:  Winter 24 – 25

I

The room was dark and stiflingly hot.  Sage burned on the hearth, but failed to cover an underlaying stench that caught at the throat and made eyes water, unless those were tears.  Flickering shafts of torchlight edged between the drawn curtains and streaked the walls, almost, but not quite, cutting through the miasma.  From outside rose a muffled chant, one word repeated over and over, punctuated by the clash of weapons, of pots and pans: 
“Wake, wake, wake…”
In the room was a bed.  On it lay two figures, one bending over the other, who did not stir.
“Wake, wake,” the former murmured in the latter’s ear.  “They call to you.  So do I.  Don’t leave me.  Don’t leave.”
And he shook the slumped shoulder.
The second form sunk farther into the disordered covers, emitting gas in a subterranean groan: 
… let … me … go …
“I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.”
“Wake, wake, WAKE!” cried those outside, to a final, cataclysmic crash.

II

Torisen woke with a gasp.  His tower room at Gothregor was quiet except for sentries on the outer wall calling out the last watch before dawn.  His Kendar servant Burr snored at the foot of his bed, grumbled, and turned over without waking.  Had he also been touched by the dream, if that was what it had been?  More likely, he had felt his lord stir but had sensed no urgency.
Torisen, however, was perturbed.
Pushing back the blankets, careful not to disturb Burr again, he rose and went to stand by the open window.  The breath of early winter entered it, cool on his bare skin, combing through his dark, white-shot hair, teasing the short beard that he had grown to avoid being mistaken for his twin sister.
Below lay the inner ward’s vegetable garden, in deep shadow for it was the dark of the moon.  Everything there had already been harvested, if not yet consumed, some not without a fight.  Some vegetables had grown to monstrous proportions, perhaps because of Torisen’s nascent link to That-Which-Creates -- carrot tops to the height of a man, arm-length cucumbers, rogue tomatoes.  He didn’t yet know how exactly creation was supposed to work.  His influence had previously been limited to thistles sprouting out of privies, dry rot, and strange diseases.  How was he supposed to relate to that, much less to embrace it?
It also worried him that he had yet to hear from his war-leader Harn or his sister Jame in High Bashti whether or not King Mordaunt meant to supply them over the winter in payment for the Knorth’s service as mercenaries over the past season.  To be fair, he hadn’t written to Jame or Harn recently either.  They must wonder what was going on.
He wondered about that as well.
Something was wrong in the Riverland.
Torisen had felt it for days as an ache in his bones, a roil in his guts, a disturbance in his sleep.  As Highlord of the Kencyrath, whose major houses were situated along this northern stretch of the River Silver, perhaps this sensitivity was to be expected. However, he hadn’t really felt it until he had begun to transition into That-Which-Creates, one aspect of his people’s hated three-faced god. 
True, perhaps that was better than to be his sister Jamethiel, who had been becoming That-Which-Destroys since childhood.  He might have guessed as much if he had been thinking in such a direction.  Where Jame went, chaos seemed naturally to follow, as witnessed by her setting a blizzard on fire, imploding Karkinaroth (twice), and indirectly causing King Mordaunt to be incinerated by a lightning strike.
“Some things need to be broken,” as she often said. 
Then there was his cousin Kindrie, That-Which-Preserves, who had been a healer for most of his life, having first to heal himself from the malignant attentions of Rawneth, the Witch of Wilden. 
Compared to them, given his own short-comings, Torisen felt half-formed, unready for what might come next.
Now, something was wrong …
In the past, he had occasionally shared dreams with his sister, foreshadowed by a premonition of their onset that had made him avoid sleep for days on end and pushed him to the edge of madness.  He now knew that these were the Shanir traits of foresight and far-seeing.  Oh, how long he had hated and feared those of the Old Blood, as taught by his father, a blood-binding Shanir.  To recognize that he was himself was one still gave Torisen moments of panic, even more so this recent revelation of his impending divinity. Sweet Trinity, who would welcome that?
This dream of a dark, stinking room, however, didn’t seem to involve Jame directly, or even him.  Was it a dream at all, or was he becoming sensitive to the Kencyrath’s deeper soulscape?
Something …
The window faced westward.  There, dawn tipped the Snowthorns and began to creep down them to pool in the river valley.  It was almost morning. 
“Ask questions,” Jame had told him on one of those occasions when, disconcertingly, she had made him feel younger than she was, although (despite being twins) he was at least ten years older.
Very well.  Once again, he would go forth and ask.

III

Hooves clopped on the stones of the River Road.  Overhead, bare branches interlaced against a pale sky randomly flecked with drifting snowflakes.  Burr and Torisen’s steward Rowan rode a pace behind him, just ahead of his armed guard.  Safe passage was supposed to be guaranteed on the road, but these days everyone walked wary.
They were travelling southward, toward the toe of the Riverland, where Torisen’s sense of distress drew him.  For one thing, he had business there which he had neglected for far too long.  Then too, he had recognized the voice in the dream.  It hadn’t spoken to him, but it might as well have.  He was Highlord.  This land and its people were his responsibility.
At midday they passed the Ardeth fortress of Omiroth.  Lady Distan rode out to meet them dressed in rose-red leathers as if for the hunt, but more as if to forestall an invasion.
“My son, Lord Ardeth, is not available,” she said, looking down her nose at them.  The hawk on her fist panted angrily, bating against restraint.
They greeted her politely and, taking the hint, rode on.
Rowan drew up level with Torisen.
“The rumor,” she murmured to him, “is that Timmon has slipped his mother’s leash and run off to Karkinaroth after Lyra Lack-wit.  I assume that he hasn’t come back yet.”
Torisen noted wryly that his steward was continuing her role as his informal informant.  It worried her how little he knew because of his dislike for employing spies.  Jame had taken him to task for these qualms too, not appreciating how hurt he had been when the late Lord Ardeth had set Burr to spy on him as a boy, newly returned to the Kencyrath.  Rowan and Jame both had a point, though.
“Ask questions,” indeed.
“Has there been any news from Kestrie keep?”
“Nothing recent.  The last I heard, the twin Edirr lords were still raiding the Coman at Kraggen across the river for sport.  Huh.  Won’t those two ever grow up?”
That was the business which he had neglected.  It had seemed trivial at the time, given what else was going on, but now he regretted it.
Late afternoon they arrived at Kestrie in winter’s early dusk.  The keep loomed over them on its steep, tree-clad hill, all of its windows curtained and dark.  The nearly vertical forest below, however, was beaded with torchlight where parties seemed to be searching, calling encouragement back and forth:
“A-roo!  A-roo!”
As they rode up the switchback road, the visitors found themselves suddenly surrounded in a flood of bodies and brought to a halt.  Torches were thrust into the faces of their shying horses.  Storm, battle-trained, reared back on his haunches, teeth bared.  Torisen barely kept him from striking out with his forehooves.  Wild eyes peered up at him out of stark white faces more bone than flesh while dark mouths opened and closed.
“A-roo!  A-roo?  No.  It isn’t him.”
And away the wild hunt rushed.
“What was that all about?” Rowan asked, steadying her spooked mount.
Torisen could only shake his head, but his unease grew.
Inside the keep’s walls was a central courtyard, the gate to which stood open.  It had once been a garden, but many feet had churned it to mud except against the far wall where brush and other kindling had been piled haphazardly.
No one came to take their horses.
Torisen had been here before.  Leaving his guard behind, he warily climbed an open-faced mural stair to the twins’ quarters.
The door at the top of the steps was closed, but opened at a push.  Out breathed a gust of hot, stinking air.  The interior was lit by fires on all of its many hearths.  The windows that overlooked the courtyard below were heavily curtained.  A fat fly bumbled into Torisen’s face.  He swatted it away in disgust.  Farther into the apartment, beyond a dark, open door, more flies buzzed.
“Hello?  Is anyone here?”
Feet hit the floor in the bedroom and one of the twins emerged.  From what Torisen could see in the dim light, he looked terrible.  His clothes were disordered, his face pale and slack, his eyes red-rimmed.  Torisen wasn’t sure which twin it was.  Even their own mother, it was said, had never been able to tell them apart. 
“Shhh …” said the apparition on the threshold, one finger to chapped lips.  “We are sleeping.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, just another raid on the Coman.  A bit of fun.  We got hurt, but we will wake up soon and be better.  If only we weren’t so cold …”
His face coursed with sweat.  Normally a trim, handsome, young man, he seemed bloated within his clothes, and a cloud of flies followed him.
“When?”
“Three days ago?  Five?  Day and night run together.  How should I know?”
“I have to ask – are you Essien or Essiar?”
The other stuffed swollen knuckles into his mouth and giggled around them.  “Yes.”
Shouts of triumph sounded outside the keep: “A-roo, roo, roo!” 
The clamor grew as the Edirr Kendar crowded into the courtyard.  The light of their torches pried between the curtains.  Torisen threw them open.  Ah, cool air.  But oh, what a scene.  They had dragged a man with them, whom Torisen recognized by his robes as a Coman ambassador.
“He came to apologize,” said one of the Edirr lords behind him, and laughed.  “What a joke!”
The Edirr below threw the Coman into the pile of kindling.  He foundered there, snapping branches, then regained his feet and looked up to the window.
“It was an accident,” he cried.  “We didn’t mean to kill your brother!”
The Edirr thrust their torches into the dry brush.  It flared up around the Coman.  Flames climbed his garments.  He flailed at them, only spreading their rout, tried to surge free, but was driven back, again and again, until he fell, wracked with coughs.  Then he lay still.  The fire crawled over him.
Torisen ran out of the room, down the stair, into the courtyard.  There Rowan and Burr grabbed him by the arms to prevent him from trying to interfere.  All of his people and their horses, he saw, had backed up against the walls.
“You can’t help,” Rowan said in his ear, shouting to be heard.  “Look at them!  Their lord has driven them mad.”
As Torisen rode away, the image remained in his mind of Essien (or was it Essiar?) leaning out the window, laughing, while firelight threw shadows up his grotesque, swollen face.

IV

That night the company camped half-way between Kestrie and Omiroth.  There, Torisen wrote posts both to Jame and to Kindrie, unsure if the Edirr situation called for a preserver or a destroyer.  He, at least, felt entirely out of his depth. 
Toward dawn, bells announced an approaching post rider from the north, unafflicted by Kestrie’s madness.  By him, Torisen sent the messages, one to be transferred to a northward-bound courier, the other to be carried by relays to the south.  Kindrie could be summoned within hours.  It would take the riders twelve days to reach High Bashti and at least that long for Jame to return, if she came post-haste. 
Then he curled up in his bed roll, but was unable to sleep.  His decisions gnawed at him.  Neither the Coman nor the Edirr had asked him to judge their conflict, but he should have -- shouldn’t he?  Where did his responsibility begin and end?  He could speak with authority when he must, but not in the face of such ravening madness.  Even as the Kencyrath became clearer to him, he felt more and more baffled by it.  So much was wrong.  So much needed to change.  And now, with the other two in play, it wasn’t entirely up to him who needed to do what.  Did he resent that or welcome it? 
Questions, questions.
But one query in particular lingered, keeping him awake until dawn:  had he spoken to the live Edirr twin or to the dead one?