Thursday, September 11, 2025

This is the eighty-third installment of West Wind, your weekly drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season. As Summer draws to a close, I’ll be showcasing one of my published stories each day, because there are getting to be quite a few! This is the fourth installment, check out yesterday’s if you missed it.

Today is also the 24th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Please pray for all those affected by the tragedy, both then and now. Please also pray for the family of Charlie Kirk, and for the souls of all those involved.

Whew, after such a somber intro, how can I feature a story that’s purely comedy at it’s core? Partially because I already scheduled it that way, but also because I’m here to tell stories, and sometimes silly stories are the best way to deal with the tragedy and pain that seems so prevalent nowadays. If we can’t laugh, it makes it harder to hope. And we definitely need hope.

Nestled in a Peaceful River Valley Was a, affectionately called Nestled for short, is the product of an April Fool’s Day challenge that ended up becoming quite foolish. It’s best if you just read it and don’t take too much stock in it beforehand. You can’t listen to it, unfortunately, since I don’t intend to narrate it at all. Part of the comedy comes from the typographical errors and issues that seem to crop up every now and then. Maybe the editor was asleep, or my ProWritingAid subscription had lapsed? Hard to tell.

Since I can never leave anything well enough alone, I’ve come up with some other ideas about this same world and characters, of course ignoring the continuity and established storyline completely. Wodcuter Rall and Missy Princess would have traveled together to de-feet the Dark Lud and bring pieces to the land, while gathering other motley adventurers along the way. In the process, as one does in an adventure-type setting, they would have accumulated much golds from the after-effects of the monsters they had slayed along the way. Happy to have so much goldings, Rall would be planning out living the rest of his life in peace and comforts. But, as they journeyd back to his hometown, the residents of the various towns where they enacted spectacular battles and raided the contents of jars, barrels, and armoires in people’s homes, would demand reparation. Being the agreeable sort, Rall would reparate them, and by the end of his return journey he would have no golds at all. Shrugging his powerful shoulders, he would return to the woods to cut them.

Comedy golds! But the thing is, since I just told you the entirety of the story, I don’t really need to actually write it, now do I? I’m realizing that lots of these little story fragments that I keep picking up on the way can just be displayed by themselves, without having to expand them out into a fully-immersive story experience. Flash fiction and short bite-sized experiences are such the rage nowadays, so why not go with it? I think there are a few other pieces and parts like this rattling around in my story toolbox, so you might see a few more in the next few days. Tomorrow though, well, I hear there’s a train scheduled to arrive…