Hesitant, Hopeful

Pardon the long pause and the somewhat strange reappearance. I thought I'd share something I found on my computer tonight. A start I made a long time ago. This is all there is of it--although there is another, different-ish sort of piece of this story still floating around somewhere, I think. I'm currently trying to decide if I should pursue this for NaNoWriMo this year. I have another idea, but I'm somewhat surprised to find I like this scrap of prose as much as I do. It's rough, no editing.

Here it is, before I change my mind...

The bells tolled.  A cycle had passed.  The inhabitants of Middle Sunroen, Mainland, slid the caramel glass markers down their wooden frames.  Three more cycles would bring the light--seven cycles of bright daylight and then there would be darkness again.  The darkness would bring sixty cycles of night filled with pitch, hungry shadows. 

The bell tower, it's length towering up into the starless black eternity above, rose at intervals with oil lanterns that did nothing to penetrate the darkness. Every house stood aglow from within. Total darkness was heresy.  The church had decreed that to invite darkness was to consort with the spirits of the nether--blasphemy punishable by death. No other punishment was sufficient. It was heresy not to fear what you couldn't see. In Middle Sunroen, it was prudent to fear those things.  The rule of law, the church's rule, was absolute.

Sephoranie slid her fingers under the glass window's frame and pushed up. Shadows spilled inside, palpable, an unliving soup of sickening darkness. The small girl shivered, pulled her heavy woolen wrap around her shaking shoulders, and lowered herself out the window onto the moist street.  The candles on the wooden bedside-table did nothing to light the alleyway where the scuffling of tiny feet pierced the ever-night. Davyn would be waiting, to leave him alone in the night because she was afraid to venture out was nothing short of cowardice. They took an immeasurable risk in defying the precepts.

The window slid back into place with an audible click and she turned to move away down the alley way toward the street. It had only been just two years since she had turned eighteen, just legally old enough to go out alone. Still, her mother would not allow it. There had never been a reason beyond caution. What her mother didn't know wouldn't hurt her. Time was running out.