Will Hawkins

Originally you left Lakshou's gender unspecific, even using neutral pronouns in referring to him, but in this chapter, you used a masculine pronoun - was that a slip or have we now placed him in the masculine gender?

I will make a comment on the story from time to time, but here I will only comment on what a pleasure it is to me to read a story with no editing errors - the flow does not get interrupted by paragraph after paragraph with misspelled words and homophones, congratulations Cia and to your beta reader and editor, if you are using them.

All your commenters seem stuck on the idea that the crisp meat was bacon - the bunch of Yankees - didn't they ever hear of chitlins? As far as Kermit's comment goes: every good story has to have contra point and stress and he is just being a typical snark. Great creativity, CIA, excellent characterization, and pace in spite of the limitations of 1,000 words.

Whether one calls this the Christian Era or the Current Era makes little difference in the fact that readers are still enjoying your stories, David, in this the last month of the year 2018CE, some seven years after they were first conceived. A good story is timeless and the leavening of magic that you add to the tales that you tell just adds spice to the reading. There are evangelical Christians who believe, for example, that the writings of the Bible are the direct word of God and there are agnostics that hunt through the Bible only to detect and list the errors therein. They leap on the fact that the supposed direct quotations of the apostles, who were in the main illiterate, were not even written down for several hundred years after the deaths of the putative authors and therefore are greatly subject to misquotation and translation error at best. I read the Bible not for its history or morality, but for the beauty of its language. I do not believe it is the voice of God, only at best, divinely inspired, and even then, subject to the ignorance and prejudices of generations of men.

Superior characterization of even the secondary persons. We are learning the background at a steady pace and my interest is keeping up.

This story and the comments that have been applied to it were published in 2013. That is five years earlier than the date I am reading it. After a number of years writing, editing and rewriting a story it is usual for an author to become so tired of it that he no longer reads the comments. I will assume unless the author contacts me that is the case and will not be making comments. If the author desires me to make comments at this late date he may contact me at misterwill2@live.com, If a message is sent to that email address, I will be notified and respond to whoever may contact me.

“The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.” The Robert Burns quotation is slightly different, but with a similar meaning to the author's quote. As he mentions the original is written in more poetic language, in this case, a Scots dialect. Sara Lee is also a copyrighted name, in this case for a purveyor of baked goods. You may be familiar with, "Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee" a motto used by the company. Keeping the Refuge a secret and hidden from the Evangelicals is going to become an increasingly difficult problem as the facility grows with more and more refugees. Let's see how David solves that problem!

I personally do not agree with the author's views on politics, but I choose to ignore our differences and enjoy his creativity. I will continue reading and just allow my mind's eye to skip over the parts with which I do not agree and recommend that others do the same.

The Chicago River is notable because it was decided to reverse its flow so that sewage and pollution from the city did not flow into Lake Michigan, but southward into the Mississippi River watershed and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico. Completed by 1900, the project reversed the flow of the Main Stem and South Branch of the Chicago River by using a series of canal locks and increasing the flow from Lake Michigan into the river, causing the river to empty into the new Canal instead. This resulted in a reduction of polluted water into Lake Michigan, the source of water for the city of Chicago. Carabineer (corrected spelling: carabiner) a D-shaped metal ring with a spring-loaded opening on one side used to guide a rope used for climbing safety.

I have neglected to comment up to this point on the tale I am reading. It is my understanding that this tale, named Refuge, is one of a series of tales written by the author David Mcleod using the characters of the Greek and Roman gods in the various personalities (actors - characters) which he has included. The initial confusion I felt about these characters, because of my unfamiliarity with the ancient gods, has diminished to some extent and I am beginning to enjoy the interactions between them. Most importantly I wish to compliment David on his writing style, he expresses the different psyches of the characters very well and is spinning an exciting and interesting tale around them. In addition, I wish to compliment him on his use of good English in his creation. It is a pleasure for me to read a story that spins a good tale, but especially one that uses good grammar to do it.

Chiton: A robe of a rectangular piece of cloth, either linen or wool, pinned at the shoulder and belted, either high, just below the breasts on women or at the waist on men and long enough to nearly touch the floor though athletes and chariot drivers would wear chitons that only were long enough to reach halfway down the thigh.

My partner Jose and I have several different kinds of animals on our estancia in Bahia, Brazil. I could list them all off, with a little thought, but what I want to do is tell you what makes a rooster crow. Here at this time of year, it begins to get light at about 4.30am, but our roosters don't wait to begin to crow till then but start at about 3.00. So I googled 'rooster crowing' to find out why. The answer was quite interesting, roosters are not timeclocks, they don't begin to crow at the same time every day. What triggers the crowing reflex is a change in light conditions. At 3.00 or 3.30 in the morning, twilight comes here and that triggers their crowing. Oh, are you aware that astronomers use the expression 'Twilight' for two different periods of the day? Both in the morning and in the evening when the sun is just below the horizon are called twilight. So our roosters begin calling to their flock just at twilight, then as soon as the light intensity ceases changing at true sunrise, they quiet down. The hens which are broody will stay on the nest until the air warms up to daytime temps, then start roaming around pecking and scratching for something to eat knowing the warm air will keep their eggs warm for an hour or so until they have fed, then they go back to brooding again. That is the end of my lecture on chickens for today!!

Just as a note of interest: astronomers have recently (2009) discovered a small companion star to Alcor (until recently known only as a companion star to Mizar in the handle of the big dipper) this is unique in that it makes Mizar the only known 6-star cluster in the skies.

The professional who shoes horses is known as a farrier, not a vet. A Veterinarian is a doctor of animals, all animals, not only horses. A farrier is a specialist in equine hoof care, including the trimming and balancing of horses' hooves and the placing of shoes on their hooves, if necessary. A Smith is a worker in metal and may adjust shoes to fit a horse by heating and bending them, but would not be able to treat diseased or injured hoofs.

The Anglo names for the constellations the Navajoes (Diné) call First Man and First Woman are the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. They are dancing in the sky around the North Star which is their campfire.

It does seem that Zosa has a sense of humor. Her comments about horses and the picture of a mountain goat for her lunch imply that she is not all fearsome thoughts. Even dropping Phillip from a great elevation might be considered a dragon game as she knew she could catch him before any harm as done - it is much like a father throwing his baby up into the air.

loofa: the fiber remaining from the drying of the fruit of the Egyptian Cucumber vine. It is used as a body scrub. The immature fruit is edible, but if the fruit is left on the vine it dries and all but the fiber and seeds rot away. The seeds can be shaken from the fibrous core. The plant is only distantly related to the familiar domestic cucumber used as a salad.

Many years ago in our time folklore has it that in the days when sailing ships were making voyages of discovery circling our blue marble, scurvy was a great problem among their crews until the British Navy discovered that the juice of the lime (or lemon), when added to the sailor's daily ration of grog, at first for flavor, prevented it. This was the origin of the nickname "Limey" applied to British sailors, but preserving the freshness of limes over periods of months at sea was a great problem. It was not until it was further discovered that sauerkraut, the pickled cabbage leaf common to Central and Eastern Europe, had the same effect and could be preserved by packing it into wooden barrels for storing in the holds of sailing vessels, that this problem was solved. Note that these explanations are based on folklore and are not widely accepted by modern philologists, but they are consistently unwilling or unable to offer better reasoning. When the fresh limes were used up British sailors were served sauerkraut to replace their anti-scorbutic effect. Fortunately, the sailors were still known as Limeys rather than becoming known as "Krauts". That derogative appellation was applied to members of the German Army, as a slang term beginning with the era of World Wars I and II. .

Many years ago when I was, I think, seventeen, I spent a summer vacation working at the tourist lodge at Mesa Verde Arizona. Because I was shy and inexperienced in the ways of those who worked alongside me, I spent many hours talking with the Navaho silversmith who was paid by the lodge to create silver jewelry as a tourist attraction on the front steps of the lodge. One of the things I remember to this day is the word ya-ta-hay that he taught me. It means greeting in Navaho and we greeted each other with it whenever I joined him sitting while he worked his magic with silver. Even now, about seventy years later, I remember that word. I have been studying the history of the Bible of late and have come to the conclusion that, while there are good rules of conduct contained between its covers, the writing is a lie. Even the names of the various books are untrue. All but two of Christ's disciples were uneducated men, even by the standards of the day and could not have written the way they did -- as a matter of fact, the books that bear their names were not even written down for over 200 years after the death of Christ. No one who was present to witness the crucifixion of Christ was even literate and so could not have recorded a diary of the acts or the sayings of Christ. The Bible we use today is a total fiction, based on folktales and traditional stories passed down through several generations by word of mouth. In addition, there are a large number of books which were not included in the Bible we read today by the Council of Nicea, a meeting of Priests who arbitrarily decided what was to be included in the Bible and what was to be discarded.

A dragon with leathery wings and two legs is called a Wyvern and may have a personality far different from the four-legged dragon with which we are more familiar. It depends upon the source as to whether a wyvern is meaner or more pacific than a dragon, but some sources say that wyverns often become companions (familiars) to humans and can communicate with them.

Learning a language with not even a basic knowledge of its grammar or syntax is the peak of difficulty. I am surprised that any progress has been made. That marks Philip as a near genius as far as I am concerned and therefore it will not be too long before he recognizes Argon is from a different world. His problem, I predict is going to be convincing others as to his conclusions. Excellent beginning, David. I think you have me hooked!!

'Walk softly, but carry a big stick." was a diplomatic method originated by Theodore Roosevelt in his negotiations with foreign nations in the early years of the Twentieth Century. Essentially it means make low-key and polite demands on foreign powers, but keep a large army in reserve in case of a failure of those negotiations.

Construimus, Batuimus; "We build. We fight" is the official motto of the Seabees. The unofficial motto "Can do" was first used during the Second World War by Seabee Units in the South Pacific as Army, Navy and Marine Corps forces reoccupied islands overrun by the Japanese in their surge over the Pacific. The Seabees would move into these islands so closely after the armed military units to begin the process of rebuilding the military facilities like airfields that they were frequently involved in the 'mopping-up' operations of the remaining Japanese forces. There are tales, many of them factual, of Seabees raising the blades of their bulldozers to protect the operators from enemy small arms fire!!

chelation therapy is a method of removal of insoluble heavy metals including iron, mercury, uranium, and plutonium from the human body by uniting these metals with specific acid compounds to render them soluble and therefore able to be excreted from the body by normal excretion processes. In this case the cure for radiation illness. The process is very dangerous as it also flushes calcium and other vital metallic substances from the body and these metallic compounds vital to human life must be continuously replenished during the cleansing process, and the process may also injure the liver and kidneys.

The word Barbarian comes from the Greek Barbar, or someone who stutters. It refers to people whom the Greeks considered primitive because they could not speak Greek -- Barbar is an imitation of a stutter -- later a version of the word was applied to a native of North Africa, Berber. It is more likely that Roo and his friends were infected with Bacterial Meningitis rather then Viral Meningitis as the viral form of the infection is far milder than the bacterial form and is seldom fatal. It is usually self-curing in about a week and bacterial is almost always serious and commonly fatal.