{"id":664,"date":"2020-12-06T14:56:37","date_gmt":"2020-12-06T14:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=664"},"modified":"2020-12-06T14:56:45","modified_gmt":"2020-12-06T14:56:45","slug":"new-beginnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/new-beginnings\/664\/","title":{"rendered":"New Beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Siegfried, the scout, was running out of hope and time.\u00a0 His return journey home would have to be within the hour.\u00a0 He pushed on a little longer and finally found his tribe\u2019s salvation.\u00a0 A remote village with a river running alongside nestled in the foothills.\u00a0 He circumnavigated the dwellings in the moonlight, giving it a final check over before he returned to speak to the elders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As dawn broke, the villagers resumed their daily chores.  The priest attended to his duties of administering help to the sick and giving the last rites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Siegfried was treated as a hero, and was the first to be invited to take his fill of the tribe\u2019s meagre rations.  Their sheer numbers had stripped the location of all it had to offer. They all desperately needed new lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The villagers were woken by the constant ringing of the church bells, they rushed from their homesteads and headed towards the village church and waited expectantly for the priest to deliver his news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have guests, I am sure that you will all welcome them into your homes.  Like us, they have been made outcasts.  Their leader tells me that outlaws have razed their village and their crops.  There are women and children amongst them, please find it in your hearts to feed and clothe them.  They are all waiting to meet you and have gathered outside the church grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The church buzzed as the congregation began talking all at once.  Their excitement was palpable, they had never had anyone visit the colony before.  They were all looking forward to hearing any news from the outside world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut father, do they know about us?  Have you told them?\u201d one parishioner asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought it best for them to have a good night\u2019s sleep first, they are tired and hungry as they have travelled for many hours.  You can explain everything in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So each of the travellers were invited into the villager\u2019s homesteads.  Siegfried had warned them all to keep a low profile until they were over the thresholds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, they could do what they wished.  Not having tasted fresh meat for a long time, the vampires did not hold back.  They gorged themselves on the villagers and their livestock, not killing everything but holding some back for farming blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all the residents had left the village square, the priest chatted to Siegfried explaining about how the isolated village had come about.  How its villagers had been exiled from their previous homes because of their genetic blood disorder. Alarm bells started to ring in Siegfried\u2019s head but it was already too late to save anybody, neither villagers nor vampires. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Siegfried, the scout, was running out of hope and time.\u00a0 His return journey home would have to be within the hour.\u00a0 He pushed on a little longer and finally found his tribe\u2019s salvation.\u00a0 A remote village with a river running alongside nestled in the foothills.\u00a0 He circumnavigated the dwellings in the moonlight, giving it a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A chilling new story from SWANSEA WRITERS: \"New Beginnings\"\n#flashfiction","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[121,363],"tags":[367,366,365],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-121","category-dec-2020-ring-of-death","tag-blood-disorder","tag-outcast","tag-vampire"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-aI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":669,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions\/669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}