Fishing

[seidskratti]

Title: Fishing
Challenge/Prompt: #17: Night
Original Fiction
Rating: PG (implied violence)
Summary: In the Lower City, no one and nothing is safe.
Author's Notes: Toying around with a new setting. Might muck about with some more drabbles tied to the same story.


The air was silk against his skin, the Lower City smog thick as water tonight. Rook was a fish, moving by touch. Here's the old lamp near where Old Jack was murdered—feel the pictograph gang-signs the Wildboys carved—and here, at last, the familiar doorway. He ducked inside, expecting jeers of greeting.

Instead, “You're late,” purred a voice that affected the languid drawl of nobility. Unfamiliar. Who? Even inside, the haze was thick. Rook shoved his goggles up.

The ambush came from either side, thugs' knives more sure than fishermen's spears. Rook glared accusation, lifting his hands.

Caught.

Rooftop

[seidskratti]

Title: Rooftop
Challenge/Prompt: #16: Rain
Original Fiction
Rating: G
Summary: A lady of breeding at wits' end turns to the only ones who cannot help but listen.
Author's Notes: Another bit from my same unnamed setting. Different character, different part of the same schizophrenic city.


The storm rolled in down the valley and Yessa waited on the rooftop of her townhouse, the ancient gravel biting into her knees as she prostrated herself. She cupped the glass offering bowl in her outstretched hands, whispering her mantra over and over: “Blessed Mara of the rain, heed thee now to my heart's pain.” Again, again, until she lost the words and held only to the rhythm, echoing in her mind and in her heart.

When the first droplets finally fell, tears were already flowing, and the prayer became an outright plea: “Mara, Lady, help me find my son.”