Temptation [A Young Writer's Prize Submission]

Author's Note

Hi there Wattpadders :)

This is a message to say that I am writing a sequel to Temptation. It will be called Redemption and continue the story of Mercy and Lucien. I hope you will appreciate that this new book is a work-in-progress and even as I write this message, I have only written one chapter, and I am still working on the rest.

Thank you for your support with Temptation, and I will start to upload Redemption within the next few days, although updates will be a little less frequent, as I am also starting University in the next couple of weeks.

I want to give you a little taste of Redemption, so you can see where Mercy is heading. Enjoy

Chapter One

Personally, I like the phrase: it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. It’s a phrase that means I am free to do whatever I like without fear of the consequences – which sort of defines my life at this moment in time. If I asked permission for everything, I’d never be where I am now.

But everything about forgiveness is strange. I have to wonder why people feel the need to be forgiven. There’s something so integrally human about wanting or needing forgiveness.

Sometimes we want forgiveness from ourselves – we feel we’ve let ourselves down and can’t bear to live with the guilt. Other times, we need forgiveness from family and friends, to heal the divide in our relationships. That I can understand – after all, we are nothing without the love of others around us.

Then there are those who require forgiveness from their deities. I think that’s the one kind of forgiveness I have yet to understand. Until recently, I never believed in God – never felt his presence. Now of course, I’m caught right in the middle of it, so I haven’t much choice but to believe in him.

I’ve never had the kind of relationship with God that I felt I needed his permission, so I can’t really understand those who do. I can speculate, though. There are those who look up to him as a father, a teacher, a guiding force. If they turn away from what he has taught them, they feel it is necessary to apologise, to be welcomed back into his embrace.

Still, forgiveness is a strange concept: there are so many rules surrounding this simple transaction. You’d think it was just about apologising and moving on with your life, but there’s so much more to it.

Firstly, if you want to be forgiven you must be willing to be sorry: you must repent. Secondly, you may have to meet several conditions to be considered worthy of forgiveness – one of which is to abjure the thing that made you guilty in the first place.

That’s probably the most difficult part. One thing I’ve noticed about people recently is that they like to sin. Sure, there’s the guilt there, but they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t want to – mostly because they wouldn’t bother. They slip away from their humanity; they lost control, or so they claim. In truth, it’s because God gave them free will and they took advantage of it.

I can’t claim to be an exception; I chose my path of my own free will. The only difference is that I can’t bring myself to repent.

I stared around at the trees around me, wondering why the hell my imagination would have brought me here. The sun was setting in the skies, and birds of all colours flocked to the trees around me – some species I had never seen before. Their cries filled the air with sound; so intense it was difficult to pick out one individual bird.

I began to walk through the trees, absently noting that my bare feet seemed to know exactly where I was going, even if I had no idea. As the evening grew darker, my feet moved faster, determined to reach their destination by nightfall.