This is an excerpt from the work-in-progress, a story I had no inkling I would be writing a couple months ago. Quite first draft-ish, of course. The not-yet-titled book will be not so much a novel as a sequence of related novelettes and short stories.
Zil was right. Tesra tomorrow—sleep now. But anticipation, excitement, maybe a touch of apprehension, prevented her from falling at once into slumber. The merchant’s donkey in the next stall didn’t seem ready to sleep either. She could hear it moving about, uneasy, restless, snorting softly now and again. A low ‘yip’ sounded somewhere in the dark. Close maybe.
“Doggie?” murmured a half-asleep Nib.
Lellie’s first thought was of wolves. She’d never seen a wolf but she had seen their hides, so she knew they existed. As to their exact appearance, much less their size, she knew far less. The girl suspected the marketplace storytellers tended to exaggerate such details.
Then the donkey exploded, braying loudly and insistently, waking all the travelers and, undoubtedly, anyone within miles. Immediately, figures rushed toward Zil, a man and a pair of what certainly weren’t wolves. Just what they were, she had no idea.