March 2011 Blog Posts (5)

I had mentioned previously that Elspeth was not a witch. That did little to stop others from calling her that behind her back or more openly to me. She had no altar in the house or in the woods outside, no fire with cauldron bubbling away over it. She did not cackle; her laughter was actually quite infectious most of the time. But she did not attend church services and had little time to spare on those few occassions when some priest or preacher decided to pay us a visit 'for the benefit of…

Her name was Jennifer Twoeagle and I found myself very surpised to discover we were virtually neighbors! Her father ran the air charter service next to the lodge and cabins Elspeth and I lived next to.

Now, I suppose some of you wonder how I could have gone so long in my life and not run into her before this. I suppose the proper answer is that I had. Definitely in school but, considering I tended to be the target of taunts and other torments, I didn't really notice those few…

The next two years or so, while not necessarily uneventful, can be summed up like this: I attended school from Monday through Friday, came home, did my homework and chores around the house or outside as circumstances and weather required. I would watch television some evenings but more often would listen to the radio or sometimes Elspeth would read to me or we'd play games. On Fridays after school she would take me into North Bay and I would stay with Master Quing until Sunday evening;…

Elspeth used her connections and called in favors and, soon enough, whatever records of Miriya Kyirsocs having been born or lived in Prague became...irrelevant. After all, when several thousand people fled to avoid the Soviets, of what importance is a baby only a few months old? I doubt I was even noted enough for some bureacrat to mutter a 'good riddance' over.

Thus, I came to have an 'official' birth certificate that said I was born in Toronto, Ontario on 1 April, 1968 to a…

In the year 1968 AD, the city of Prague in the nation of Czechoslovakia was like many other major cities on Earth. Cosmpolitan, cultured, urbane, a center for trade and the dealings that keep a city and a nation operating. And, like many cities of the time, it was a hotbed for unrest. A great war was over twenty years in the past yet the people of the city and the nation found themselves oppressed and restricted by policies put in place by those who had deemed themselves liberators of the…