quote:

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Rell stood up and stretched his aching back. Weeding the fields was a slow, back-breaking, boring task. But, if they didn’t do it, the weeds would grow faster than the corn and choke out the harvest before it even started to grow. It didn’t help that his father kept up a running account of how things used to be, before the Great Mage War.

“Back before the War, we’d have had a mage bespell the seeds before we planted. Then the corn would grow faster than the weeds and choke them out. Things was easier, then.”

Things might have been easier then in some ways, for all Rell knew. He’d been born after the War, so he really couldn’t say. He would certainly welcome any magic that made this chore easier or quicker. But there were no more mages. All dead in the War, every one.

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You have a good 2000 words more before you begin to get in the area of a maximum word count for most of the attractive publications.

I did add a couple of hundred words--and still came in just at 2000 words. But if it needs more, I'm not sure where or what, yet. Unless, of course, I take one of the suggestions and turn it into a full-fledged novel. But that takes the story well beyond this ending, with lots of try/fail cycles and more characters.

More internal conflict to support Rell's ultimate decision? Maybe break up the action with some of that? I could do that, probably in 2500 words, total