Igenlode Wordsmith

I'm not entirely happy with this, which as can be seen didn't come out quite along the lines I'd originally intended it: the idea of Ellen as a twist at the end -- once I'd realised that she had died only a few weeks before the Hallowe'en in which the story was set -- came to me quite early on, before I'd started writing, but I'm not sure I really managed to dovetail together the two ideas. Scarlett can't wait to be rid of Charles, but the whole idea of needing to cover up the truth doesn't make so much sense once we see that she would be happy to completely ignore it where her mother was concerned... and I'm not sure that the intended implications (that Scarlett, true to form, ignores "unconditional love" when it is within her grasp and hankers for what she cannot have -- and that poor Charles' unrequited passion anchors him to earth in a way that Ellen's reunion with her dead lover does not) really come across...

The Paths of the Living

October 31st, 1864

There were no boys left in the South.

Of all the things that were so wrong — so very wrong — about that moment on All Hallows’ Eve when Charles Hamilton came again to her, standing hesitant in the doorway, somehow it was that thought which caught first in Scarlett’s weary mind.

There were no boys left in the South any more; only old men of sixteen or seventeen, grey-faced and haggard as the Cause that had drained the youth of a nation. And she herself was no longer the child she’d been when he’d married her. That pretty, heartless kitten was gone, and a scrawny half-starved creature stalked in her place, glaring through cat-green eyes. But Charles at twenty was still a boy, as unformed and innocent as the day he had left her... and as unchanged.