Reading along here, as I get the odd chance. Janie, beautiful stuff. You have a natural storyteller's voice in writing, as I am sure you do in person, too. Sometimes it doesn't translate to the written word as well as you have done. Congratulations.

Here's the wee opening of the novel I wrote last November as part of National Novel Writing Month - it turned out to be a fictionalised autobiography from my earliest memories to about age thirteen:

Prologue


She spoke to the stars and they answered back, her child's mind having no conception of the physical distance between them. It was thus with all of the sagebrush, antelope, coyotes, eagles, and all other flora and fauna. She spoke their language; they invaded her mind, in a benign way, giving her comforts. The sameness did not bother her; in fact she noticed something new each day as she wandered among them. All was in silent communion; her lips did not move, her mind was agile. "Good morning, sacred Eagle," she would smile. Feeling a warm and safe glow from the dip of a wing, a piercing cry in the bright blue sky, she would continue with her morning greetings, smiling as she went along. She was small-boned, her baby-fine red hair lifted easily with any tiny breeze and her green eyes shown with curiosity.