Post by Kit on Jan 14, 2012 20:49:32 GMT 10
Title: Climbing blooms
Ratung: PG
Words: 400
Summary: Roach, pucntured by a friendly climbing rose during a robbery, finds himself distracted. A look into a Sotat thieving den.
Lakik, as anyone with sense and teeth knew, had a sense of humour. This was never a good thing.
Roach stood in the Thief Lord’s winter lair, the air thick with half-rendered fat and the incense he had nicked from the Temples for respectability-sake. (“Breath of the gods, this!” he’d said, holding up sticks of frankincense and laughing at the stupefied expressions he charges wore. “And it’s a divine world we do live in, where ladies and mages pay twice its worth.”)
Hajra air was never cold, but it was clammy—clammier than Slug with the fear-sweats, and more reeksome. Slug, the git, wasn’t looking at him. None of the gang was looking at him, not when he had to stand before the Thief Lord dripping blood all over the place. His palms throbbed.
Roach’s head ached with the waiting, and he was hungry enough that he was sifting tastes from smells. If he concentrated, then swallowed hard, he could taste the roses from that nobleman’s house—prettier than any sky even when they’d sliced into his palms rather than let him go. The air had been thick with rose-scent, then, and it was livelier, denser scent than the syrupy stuff that went into cheap damask perfume or a street-vendor’s sweets. Breathing it now, waiting for His Lordship to open his mouth, feeling something crawl with tedious industry over the small of his ragged back, Roach half wished he was back on that wall. Not to nick fancy fittings. Just to be surrounded by plants so intent on survival that they made you bleed and filled your air with their own life.
The Thief Lord laughed. “So,” he said. “You got yourself bloodied up by pretty flowers?”
Roach said nothing.
“Well,” said the Thief Lord. “They’ll scar up nice and clear. That’s good. And you know why that’s good, Roach?”
“Nossir.”
“It is good because they’ll show me exactly where to cut the next time you drop a purse,” he said, still smiling. “Gotta be careful with those fingers of yours. Understood?”
Roach shifted, eyes sliding across cracks in the floor, and tried to replace air with memories.
Ratung: PG
Words: 400
Summary: Roach, pucntured by a friendly climbing rose during a robbery, finds himself distracted. A look into a Sotat thieving den.
Lakik, as anyone with sense and teeth knew, had a sense of humour. This was never a good thing.
Roach stood in the Thief Lord’s winter lair, the air thick with half-rendered fat and the incense he had nicked from the Temples for respectability-sake. (“Breath of the gods, this!” he’d said, holding up sticks of frankincense and laughing at the stupefied expressions he charges wore. “And it’s a divine world we do live in, where ladies and mages pay twice its worth.”)
Hajra air was never cold, but it was clammy—clammier than Slug with the fear-sweats, and more reeksome. Slug, the git, wasn’t looking at him. None of the gang was looking at him, not when he had to stand before the Thief Lord dripping blood all over the place. His palms throbbed.
Roach’s head ached with the waiting, and he was hungry enough that he was sifting tastes from smells. If he concentrated, then swallowed hard, he could taste the roses from that nobleman’s house—prettier than any sky even when they’d sliced into his palms rather than let him go. The air had been thick with rose-scent, then, and it was livelier, denser scent than the syrupy stuff that went into cheap damask perfume or a street-vendor’s sweets. Breathing it now, waiting for His Lordship to open his mouth, feeling something crawl with tedious industry over the small of his ragged back, Roach half wished he was back on that wall. Not to nick fancy fittings. Just to be surrounded by plants so intent on survival that they made you bleed and filled your air with their own life.
The Thief Lord laughed. “So,” he said. “You got yourself bloodied up by pretty flowers?”
Roach said nothing.
“Well,” said the Thief Lord. “They’ll scar up nice and clear. That’s good. And you know why that’s good, Roach?”
“Nossir.”
“It is good because they’ll show me exactly where to cut the next time you drop a purse,” he said, still smiling. “Gotta be careful with those fingers of yours. Understood?”
Roach shifted, eyes sliding across cracks in the floor, and tried to replace air with memories.