This is why I edit.

In a little change of pace form what I normally do, I'm going to post the first draft of my Wordsmiths story, then, once the editing is finished the final version will be posted. It's a way to do some record-keeping in the absence of strikethroughs and erasures and notes scrawled in the margins of papers.....and Lordy, on re-reading this thing there should be GOBS of editing marks. Shew-wee!!

If you read this first draft, and have suggestions, please leave them in the comments - any help is good help, baby!

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“God help ye Peggy, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. How stupid do you have to be to believe that shit that your Da pours out of his bloody drunken mouth? Even your tetched Ma, God rest her, kent that the talk of little folk twas nuthin’ but a tale of faeries! You’ll quit this talk right now. There are no pots of gold, no promises on rainbows, no help comin’ on the dew for the likes of you.”

Those were the first lies she told me.

God help her, is what I said, God help her that she dinna ken the ways of the wise folk, the twitching of the spines of the magickal ones. God help her, not me. I knew. I knew there was a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow.

I knew there was a pot of gold at the end the rainbow because my Da had told me. He’d TOLD me that the gold waited just beyond the horizon of the unbelievers, the weak and faithless. He told me that any carnyman herding a Ferris Wheel could tell you the same, that the gold was waiting at the end of the rainbow, slick and wet with sundew, slightly warm from the land whence all weathers and their gifts came.

The gold was as sure as a strong breeze would come after a hot spell. As sure as the great wheel would stop at the top of the sky for each car in its turn, canting seat and seated against gravity, throwing fate together with fortune.

Sure and all there’d be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That bit was as certain as a baby’s cry. The less certain bit, and the one that almost always caught the misunderstanding folk the hardest, was deciding which end was the start, and which was the beginning.

(To the reader - this highlighted bit is the crux sentence. In all likelihood it's going to move to the end...whaddaya think?)

My Da knew. He told me. He did not tell her, for why would he? She is a nun, what had the teaching of me after me Ma went over the bridge, and nuns canna be trusted with one single bit of secret. Their tongues wag even when there’s nothing to say.

My Da told me the secret so clear as to be something a dullard could have dreamt during an afternoon’s nap, for what could be more sure than that the end is always at the other end of the beginning? The big secret is that what’s the middle is what makes the riches. Gold, indeed. Any fool could do with gold.

Her first lie set me to packing. Now, I’m leaving. When I drop to the ground outside this window, when she finds the spoons I used to dig, when I hear her wails of anger come from under her hot bleak capes, I’ll know.

I’ll know my pot is just beginning to fill.