Random Chapter Excerpt

Without to much set up or ado, this is just a shard of something I've been working on for a little bit, part of a much larger puzzle that is my third novel (they get more difficult to write). Its just a scene from the chapter and I hope it captures the sense of the heroine as I want it to. I'd be interested in reading comments on the sort of person she comes across as.

Something in the way she looked, the way her eyes conveyesd a deep and penetrating melancholy that seeped beyond her beauty so it left an aftertaste. Something that could only be recognized when she was no longer near, her effects diminishing with her absence.

Her needs were both physical and emotional, bound up in scars from her past, her present and what she'd held to be her future. The lack of a positive male role model, in fact the reinforcement of negativity by an oppressive and recessive father in tandem with a mother who meant well but was unable to satisfy her children in ways that they truly needed. And they left. He, her brother, joined the Navy while she, marrying a sailor on a moment's whim to escape but only found a new, different kind of prison. And one that she refused to allow to hold her. You cannot keep wild creatures for long, they will gnaw their own limbs off to escape confinement.

It was part of the reason she detested the zoo so much though she was fascinated by the animals all the same. It was a moment that would live in my memories, the inner torment she experienced while staring, humbled, at a polar bear. The flicker of emotion across her eyes, the crinkle in the outer most reaches of her deep strong brown eyes. Her lips parted for a moment as consternation, or something very much like it, passed through her forethoughts. And then the polar bear stood up, walked across its habitat and dove head first into its pool. All nine feet of polar bear, maybe more, a blur of white fur and she clapped her hands together and grinned like a little girl.

She was the most alluring mixture of woman and girl. At once powerfully sensual but also projecting an aura of abatement, that life may have interacted with her and affected the course of events but it had not changed how she was going to conduct herself.

And we walked on, she happily recounted the bear's feats. The woman lost in the girl for the time being. Another facet revealed, another mystery unveiled. Because as we left the bear behind the woman reasserted herself with each step, before we were out of eyesight of the exhibit she had reverted completely and was admonishing me for my excitement, the both of us knowing full well that she had been the alleged transgressor. And I accepted my charge, as was my purpose, the guilt vacuum, the container of secrets and keeper of pacts, alliances and coups.