You have an engaging prose style. Your narrative tone is consistent, and you know how to balance action and dialogue with exposition such that neither gets in the way of the other. You set the scene well and your characterizations are clear and concise. This stuff can sort of be taught. Sort of. But really, it's more in the realm of you know how to do it, or you don't. You do. So you're off to a good start.

Something that can be taught, and which you need to study, is structure. Right now, yours is kind of a mess. One thing that isn't clear: is this a stand alone short story, or the first chapter of a projected novel? If it's a novel, you still have structure problems, but you also have more time to unfold the plot elements. Still, a chapter needs a narrative arc, a movement from Point A to Point B, something like a short story. But, whereas a story needs to bring the various elements to some point of closure, a chapter needs to resolve things to the point that you can move on to the next phase, whatever it might be. As I said, you are kind of doing that, but your arc is a bit fuzzy and you seem to take detours that will just confuse your reader.

Keep in mind, they have no idea what you are doing when they start out. All they have is trust that whatever you present to them will be important. There will also be a tendency to assume that whatever you introduce first will be most important, but that's not something you have to necessarily pay attention to. It's useful to misdirect the reader, as long as you don't pull rabbits out of your hat and make them feel cheated.

That's exactly what I felt like you were doing. Your opening passages are ambiguous as to time and place, although it's clear that we're not in the present world of the 21st century. But where are we? We don't know. And keeping that information from your reader doesn't really accomplish anything, and just runs the risk of annoying them once they discover that there is a whole host of information that you suddenly drop into the middle of the story, without explanation or set up.

Here are the elements that you spring on us, half way through:

• We're not in this world at all, but, rather, a parallel universe next door, like ours, but different. It's the Land of Golo, which is not explained.

• We discover, in passing, that both Delwyn and her father are direct blood descendants of the House of Mitu. What is more, they are descended from Mallick himself, who was the first man.

• The wolf that Delwyn hears early in the story, again in a throwaway moment, suddenly gives way to talk of battles long past with the Wolves of Mork Tarnet

the dark tower of Roja the Red. An evil twisted spirit that has been plaguing all peoples of Golo and beyond. She is the wife of the spirit called Belo the White. He cares little or nothing men, so he does not care to rein in the bitch of the south," Rand said.

Understand, there's nothing wrong with any of these elements. They would seem to be perfect components of a fantasy adventure, and, quite frankly, your reader will most likely want to know more about all of them. Once they get over their annoyance as having all this crucial information slipped in and sprung on them after they'd already begun to form assumptions about the particular universe you've been creating for them.

This could just be a stylistic preference on my part, but if an author is going to thwart expectations that he's already spent a good bit of effort building, (three different scenes involving Delwyn and the people of her village), it should be for a reason. I see no reason here, and, in fact, some points like her lineage and the bit about the Land of Golo could easily been made part of the opening exposition, where it would properly set the stage and be received without question by the reader. House of Mitu? Got it. Descended from Mallick? Ok. Dark Tower? Why not?

The fact that Delwyn feels estranged and distant from all this lore could also be easily established, at which point you could show her interacting with the other characters, and we would have a much firmer sense of place. You could probably wait until she hears the wolf before having her reflect on the old tales, which, of course, she has no time for. But it's stretches credulity to think that she's never heard of the legends of the past.

What you want to avoid is pulling your reader out of his state of willful suspension of disbelief and forcing them to think, "Aw shucks, that's not how she'd behave." These are all small moments I'm talking about, but it doesn't take many of them to make your reader lose interest. And they they'll no longer be your reader.