Kestrel Creed Chapter Four

Don’t forget to start with the Prologue .

Hey friends, thanks for your patience. I had a very good November, despite being sick. It has taken me up until now to catch up with my normal life, which is why this chapter is so late in getting posted.

I have decided to just let you all read the chapters as drafts, with little editing. Once the draft is complete, I will begin editing in earnest. That may not happen until Mid-January. I hate delaying but things are what they are. I am plodding along as best I can. Thanks again for your patience.

As I stated, these chapters are ROUGH drafts, so keep that in mind when you cringe while reading them.

Thanks again for your interest in my Kestrel Creed novel, and feel free to leave a comment.

EDIT (12/13/13): I added some important information to the latter part of this chapter, and corrected a few typos I had missed on my first pass, as well as performing minor wording changes here and there. Hope it doesn’t throw you off.

CHAPTER FOUR

 

Nika stared at the campfire. She started to rise, but sighed heavily and sagged back down onto the dusty fringed Arabian-patterened rug she sat upon.

“Pacing won’t bring him back any sooner,” she said to the empty air.

Creed had left just before dusk, and he wasn’t back yet, damn him. She raised her head again, skyward. The stars told her it was well past midnight. She might have consulted her father’s pocket watch, but Kes had made her promised to use the timepiece only when she could not otherwise divine the time “from nature’s signals,” as he’d said. Creed was strict, sometimes even a hard taskmaster.  But she knew it was for her own good. At least that is what Creed kept telling her.

“How else, Button,” he’d said, “are you going to find your way in the pitch of night?” Nika chuckled. Always Button, but she didn’t mind, it was what her father had called her. It was Creed’s staunch opinion that “timepieces are a crutch.” He was probably right, as usual, the meanie. There was so much to learn, and Creed’s knowledge was so vast. Not just about the stars, but in most all things: bushcraft, weapons, the way of people and their motives, and much, much more. It made her head spin; there was such a wealth of knowledge in that fella’s head, all the things he was teaching her – about being a hunter. A survivor.