start of a short story: the forester
Once upon a time, in a village that the forest was all around, and was before, and is now after, there was a priest.
Apparently it's four years since I wrote down this idea and called it tell me a story about healing. Keep your little ideas. You'll have time one day.
So here's the start:
Once upon a time, in a village that the forest was all around, and was before, and is now after, there was a priest. He was neither young nor old, neither fat nor thin, neither particularly shabby nor particularly neat. He was a third son of a family no older and no newer than any other family. He was quite tall, if that helps you.
He had been the priest of that village in the woods, which we may as well name soon, for several years. Some of the people who welcomed him to the village had died and been buried by him since his arrival, and some of the people who walked into the church each week at the time of our story had been born since and been named by him.
People lived more quickly in those days, and the forest village of Conyngham was not much slower than anywhere else.
A name for the priest? Oh, he never used it. They never told me it. ‘The Priest’ will do.
Fine, he can be Peter. But he never used it.
On a fine dry morning, the priest was going about his visits, returning a book here, mentioning a broken fence there, asking an old lady how her leg was feeling in her house. He had nodded without saying anything to the tavernkeeper, because they disapproved of each other, and been looking for something in his pockets as he passed the apothecary’s shop so that he didn’t even have to nod.
It’s like a pharmacist. But medicine was more a matter of opinion in those days, so they didn’t really get on well either.
Because they didn’t know how illness worked.
Well, no, I don’t, but other people do. People work very hard to find out how illness works, and how medicine works, and how much you should take, and when you shouldn’t, and all that sort of thing. I just haven’t worked at that specifically.
You might, yes. If you do your maths homework more readily.
The rest of the story will be along in a little while. Probably not four years again, but who knows, eh?
Is it clear that it's meant to read like only one voice telling a child a story? I was thinking like the Princess Bride novel, or the Just So Stories. I don't know if I ought to punctuate it differently. I don't WANT to put the child's voice in.