Ok, hello! So, this is a story I'm quite excited to write, it's based on 'Dancing at Lughnasa', as I said in the summary. I acted in it, and it was so much fun! It's a sad play really, but the way we did it almost made it like a comedy, lol. And I wanted to write a story based on it! So here's some brief background information: the story follows the 5 Mundy sisters, and their life in Donegal after their older brother Jack returns home from Africa after working as a leper priest there. It also includes Christina Mundy's on and off boyfriend Gerry and their son, Michael. The sisters' life is dull and spent all at home, except for Kate who is a teacher, and all they really want to do is dance. The story is told through Michael's eyes, but not everything that happened is actually something he saw, if that makes sense.

Soo, most of you won't know these but I'll put it up anyway! This was my cast list: Logan as Kate Mundy, Carlos as Maggie Mundy, Kendall as Agnes Mundy (I was her!), Jo as Rose Mundy, Camille as Chris Mundy, Gustavo as Jack Mundy, James as Gerry and Katie as Michael. I am changing the plot slightly, so this isn't the same as the play. And Carlos is only half Spanish, for reasons that you will understand a bit later on. Ok, I really hope you like it!

I had never been married, so I was still Katie Mundy at the time. I did get married late on, but by then half of them were gone. It had been so long since that summer of 1936. When I think of that summer, so long ago, different kinds of memories offer themselves to me. We got our first wireless radio that summer—well, sort of. It didn't go half the time—and it obsessed us. I remember, that because we got it just as August was about to begin, my uncle Carlos—the joker of the family—suggested we give it the name Lugh, after the old pagan god of the harvest. Because the first day of August was called Lá Lughnasa, and the weeks that followed were the festival of Lughnasa.

But my uncle Logan—who was a primary school teacher, and truthfully a bit of a killjoy—said it would be sinful to give any inanimate object a name, especially not the name of a pagan god. So we just called it Marconi, because that was the name emblazoned on the set. I remember it so well. Everybody loved that radio. It brought atmosphere to the little home. God knows they needed it. My mother Camille, and my uncle Kendall, my aunt Jo and my uncle Carlos forever condemned to doing housework, all because of a mistake my grandmother made. Their lives were often so dull, they certainly needed it.

"Jo?"

The middle-aged woman looked up at her dazedly, blinking her sleepy eyes at her. "Who are you?" she asked hoarsely, too weak to sit up in her bed. "Pretty young woman . . . your eyes, they remind me of a man I used to know." She frowned as she tried to remember. "What was his name . . . Jett Stetson, I think."

"No, Jo," Katie Mundy said patiently, sitting in the chair beside the woman's bed. How old was she now? In her fifties or sixties, surely. Life on the streets made her look so much older. "Jett Stetson is another man. But I remember him too. I think you and he were together at some point. But I'm not sure. I was only seven, after all."

Jo smiled dreamily, looking up at the ceiling. "Oh, yes. Jett Stetson. I remember him. He took me up the back hills with him, and we had a picnic on Lough Anna . . . he calls me his rosebud, because he said I had rosy cheeks—" Suddenly she stopped, looking at Katie with wide eyes. "Seven? You were seven?"

"Yes, I was," Katie replied slowly. She wondered if Jo had ever recovered from her disability. She doubted it. It probably wasn't possible. "You remember me now, don't you? You're my aunt."

"You remind me of James Diamond." She scowled. "Broke my brother's heart, he did. And my sister. And . . . and . . . I don't remember."

"It's ok," Katie said quickly as Jo's eyes began to close. "Have a rest. You need it."

But Josephine Mundy didn't wake up again.

Something else major happened that summer. My uncle Gustavo came home from Africa for the first time since I was born. For fifteen years he worked as a priest in a leper colony, in a village called Ryanga, in Uganda. He left that colony briefly when he worked as chaplain to the British forces in East Africa, during World War 1. Shrunken and jaundiced with malaria, he was coming home to Ireland to live the end of his life, even if he was only forty years old. It's funny, because when I remember the joy that radio brought, at the same time I can remember Gustavo shuffling from room to room, as if he was searching for something but couldn't remember what. And when I remember my mother and my aunt and uncles catching hands and dancing around the kitchen to the beat of the Irish dance music, I can remember jack sitting out on the garden seat, humming a little tribal song from Africa.

And even though I was only seven at the time, I always felt as though things were changing to quickly before my eyes. Maybe it was because Gustavo was nothing like I thought he would be. Or maybe because that summer brought out aspects of my family's personalities that I'd never seen before. Or maybe it was because, during that Lughnasa, we were visited a few times by my father, James Diamond. And for the first time in my life, I had a chance to observe him.

And what a man he was.

A prologue. I hope nobody found it boring or whatever, because it does get better, once I actually get to 1936, lol. Please review! XD