A terminally-ill girl finds an unexpected cure through the pegasus myth come to life. First published in Moon Drenched Fables, June 2009. Won Best in Issue – thanks to everyone who voted!
Inspiration
Back in my last year of high school, I took an English class which centred on mythology. For my final assignment, I did a visual response to the Pegasus myth. Unfortunately, the analytical component was virtually missing (hey, it was my last EVER assignment for high school!), so I didn’t get a brilliant mark for it.
I did, however, have some pretty awesome images, and the seed of a story idea. Mythology has it that Pegasus was born when Medusa’s blood spilled on the ocean; he was born of sea foam and blood. Years later, that idea became my first published story, Sea Foam and Blood, about a terminally ill girl whose life is, in a way, saved by the Pegasus myth made real. These are the images that inspired the story so long ago.
Setting
The setting for the story came from a different set of experiences, but mostly horse-riding out at my friends’ farm in the middle of beautiful, rural nowhere. I love horse-riding, though I don’t get to do it much, and I always treasured the times we got to spend out on their farm, riding their horses. Hence, it was all-too-easy for Sea Foam and Blood to settle itself onto the land of Truro, and while it’s not a one-for-one transposition (Truro has no ocean nearby, for example), the link in my head – general layout, atmosphere, smell and lighting and colours – is close.
