AW: June 2011 Blog Chain

(FYI, the NY state senate still have not come to an agreement on the proposed Marriage Equality bill. There's still time to make a difference. Read my last post to find out what you can do to help.)

Anyway! I've skipped out on these blog-chains for a few months, so I was having withdrawals! I joined AbsoluteWrite's June Blog Chain to assuage them.

This month, the prompt is Setting the Scene.
So here goes. This one's an excerpt from my current WIP, (less than three):

You do not need a time capsule to visit the 1300s. You just need to visit York.

We stand in the Shambles at dusk, listening to our tour guide spin his first tale. For the first time since we’ve been together, my eyes are not fixed on John. I stare at the buildings around us, the streets underfoot, every piece of this setting. The Shambles make up the oldest part of town. The tiny, close streets that have been the city center at least since 1086. Most of its current buildings are from the late 1300s and early 1400s. Ruts in the cobblestones show where horses dragged carts down this road for centuries. No cars could fit down the Shambles now, except maybe a Smart Car.

Overhead, two houses on opposite sides of the street lean so close together that they almost form a roof. You could stand in the upstairs window of one and shake hands with your neighbor.

The guide walks down the street and we follow, over the smooth-worn, mismatched stones, past the fourteenth-century church, with its melting glass windows, and into the city square. Toward a distant grass hill, atop which sits a huge white tower. The castle keep. A shiver runs down my spine before the guide even begins his next story.

I have an active imagination. I am good at picturing myself in other places, other worlds or time periods. It’s a requirement for a writer.

Here in York, I don’t even need to try. I am walking down medieval streets. Where I stand, Roman soldiers once built a capital city. Angles conquered that city. Vikings routed the town and created their own settlement. William the Conqueror quelled the northern rebellion here. Major battles in the English Civil War that John’s always talking about happened on these very streets.

“I see what you meant about this city,” I whisper to him.

Check out the other chain participants' blogs here!

orion_mk3
juniper
LadyMage
dolores haze
jkellerford
Ralph Pines
TheMindKiller
AuburnAssassin
pezie
WildScribe
Inkstrokes
Irissel
Guardian
Lyra Jean
egoodlett (ME!)
cwachob (the lovely crit-partner!)
xcomplex
Della Odell
Aheïla