Defense of the People Foreword -

It took me ten minutes to write this sentence. No, I'm not kidding. The indecision of how to start this foreword and the indecision of whether to put a period or a colon after 'kidding' has kept me back a good twelve minutes now. Let me tell you, I'm no prolific author. Writing is hard. What I type into my word processor has to be forced from my mind onto the page, and even then the words just don't seem like the right ones. Yep, I'm going on twenty minutes and I've got… 92 words? Hey, that's almost 5 words a minute! And I wrote a 45,000-word story?

Assuming you prefer to start with the foreword, you're about to read what's been my obsession since August of 2000. Ironically enough, this is just an offshoot 'mini-story' that fleshes out the events that encompass a few days in a larger story. That larger story details the actions of two of the main characters in this one. In truth, with the school year about to start up again I can't promise I'll ever finish my larger story (currently with the awful working title 'Blurred Lines'), so I wanted to get this out and make sure I'd contributed something. This story will end up being a bit of a spoiler, as it reveals one of several plot twists in Blurred Lines, but I'm sure you'll have forgotten by the time I finish B.L. anyway.

After reading almost every story in Miavir's archive, it would have been sacrilege not to add something, not to give back to the community. Here's what I've come up with.

Acknowledgments and Thanks:

- To all of the authors who wrote the wonderful stories that I've tried to model mine after: Cherryh, Howell, Otrstf, Niven, and Heinlein. If these authors hadn't written what they had, I wouldn't have had a shot at this. Their stories are truly inspirational to mediocre author like myself.

- To all of my friends, who are still my friends despite having not seen me for a year or so. I can't begin to imagine how much social interaction I'd be lacking if my friends didn't call me up a few times every week. The real world can start to slip from you if you get yourself entangled in a story without an anchor in reality.

- To my school's pathetic excuse for a liberal arts program, because otherwise I wouldn't be taking artistic solace in writing fiction.

Note: Hrasi. I know it sounds and looks suspiciously like the name of another feline race Cherryh invented, but I swear they're not just a cheap imitation. The Hrasi are a different, unique race; I'm just horrible at creating names. It is also for that reason that many Hrasi names and words sound like Japanese. What can I say? Japanese sounds alien to me.

If after reading this story you have any comments, suggestions, or scathing insults, please send them to me at pyanfarchanur@hotmail.com