Rule of Three Blog Fest: Part Two

 
I have to apologise upfront because I have so far been absolutely terrible at participating in the Rule of Three Blog Fest. ;_; Thank you so much to everyone who commented on the last entry I made; this week I really need to get myself together and do some more wandering and commenting on other people entries, because honestly there's some fantastic stuff coming out of all of this!

My next entry also manages to be a bit of a rush job; last week I had just come back from Egypt, and this week I have just come back from a couple of days Oop North in York. Hilariously it's going to be evne stupider next week as I am going to Western Australia via Singapore on Wednesday; I've really managed to pick all the worst days for this, because travelling is cheaper during the week. Never mind, I am going to play better the next few days (although I'm spending the weekend in Suffolk, probably...).

In the end I did manage an entry for this week, although I am pushing the timing thing (it's seven in the evening on Thursday in London here, though I suspect my journal is still on New Zealand time anyway). I've got a few details to go with it after the continuation of the story. So...let's head back to Renaissance, shall we...?

SALVAGE

Part One: Flotsam
Part Two: Jetsam

She hits the ground hard, and for a moment she sees stars – but it is bright daylight, and the sun blinds her when she looks upward. There is no night sky here, save for that which has just fallen over her heart.

“Don’t even try to get up.” His voice is all that remains of him, the rest wreathed in shadow. “This is where you belong.”

“No, I—”

“It’s done. It’s over. I am through with you.”

“No, please—”

The slam of the carriage door steals the last of him away. The horses rear, and the wheels turn – then, they are gone.

The pain follows fast. Curling around her abdomen, she wants to weep for her loss. But she can feel the heat of the sun and knows it will be pointless; in the hours to come, she will scarcely have moisture enough to sustain herself, let alone the burden he has gifted her with.

She should hate it, she knows. But it is not its fault. It asked for life no more than she asked for this death, and she supposes they are in this together and must muddle along the best they can. That is what allows her to push aside her fear and sit up.

She knows where they are, for all it is a place she knows only from vague stories. The fallen mining town had never had enough glamour even for ghost stories, and she herself had never thought to come here. It had been so far outside the sphere of her existence as to be in another universe. It had been nothing more than a place from his past.

It is most likely the reason why he put her there, too.

“Us,” she corrects, voice sudden in the silence. “Us.”

One palm lies flat on the ground, the other over her stomach as she pushes up. She grimaces; the fall had not been far, but it has jarred her. When she looks to the distance, she finds the carriage long gone. The dust settles, golden and dancing in the late afternoon light; it is much closer to the earth than stardust, for all its glittering colour.

She is not given to despair. But as she looks about, she realises suddenly that despite its name, she is the only new thing in Renaissance. The age of the town weighs it into insignificance, and it is a place of forgotten things.

“My name is Leidi,” she says, as if she is afraid she will soon not remember. And her fingers move into her palm.

“…but what shall I call you?”

There is no answer, at least not from the tiny spark of life deep in her belly. But even if there had been, she likely never would have heard it any more than she did the actual answer that did come.

“Hello.”

Leidi’s head has fallen forward, her thoughts adrift as a comet with no trajectory. But then the voice comes closer, and a cool hand anchors her again to the earth.

“Hello,” the voice says again, and Leidi looks up, like she’s heard the wind whispering her name. “I think I’ve been waiting for you.”

Prompt: Someone is killed, or almost killed/a relationship becomes complicated.
Word Count: 532
Main character: Leidi (supported by the as-yet unnamed man and woman from the first part).

Rule of Three Blog Fest: Part One

This is a bit of a rush job, I must admit, if only because I've just arrived back from Egypt this afternoon...and although I'd already written the first part of the story for this very post, once I got in my sister texted me and I ended up toddling back out into the wildlands of London to have dinner at one of my sister's beloved Michelin restaurants. Ha. Combined with the fact I haven't slept more than four hours a night save for one in the last nine, well...I apologise in advance for any dodginess in the story. And hopefully next week we'll get a more coherent entry out of me, too! ^_~

Salvage:

Part One

Flotsam

True love is not supposed to end like this, she thinks, and lays a hand upon the bore-riddled wood. It holds no answer for her. Nothing in this place does.

Yet I am here.

Rough gravel loosens her steps as she crosses what had been the main street, the midday sun as harsh upon her skin here as it would be far out into the Schiavona desert. When she tries to look up the light cuts through her hand yet stops at her eyes, blinding her; she is forced away with her head down.

When dawn had first broken, waking her from sleep, she had thought this perhaps a quiet kind of hell. It seemed only right, that the town where her passion had first flared would die, too, with the passing of her beloved. His presence had animated so much of the fading town, bringing hope to linger long in places where it had been thought to be lost forever.

There had been hope for her, too. Her father had come from beyond Assart to seek his fortune in a town nearly bled dry, but Renaissance had not been kind to him. She remembered well the day she had buried him. The sun had shone then. It always shone in Renaissance, even now, even when there was no-one left to see it.

I’m here. Then her eyes catch another fluttering broadsheet, the date half-erased by dust and sand, and she shakes her head.

I’m no-where.

Making another circle of the main street does not take long. Renaissance had never flourished, not even at the height of its mining glory. That glory had seemed a long time ago, even when she had first arrived; it is even longer now, if the grainy dates hold true. Which they do. She can pretend all she likes that they are too faded to read, but her daddy had always ensured his little girl learned her numbers and letters.

For all the good it did me. But she cannot resent him. He hadn’t meant to die, leaving her alone. He hadn’t meant for the magistrate’s son to fall in love with her. Above all, he hadn’t wanted the mine to fail and for Ferdinand to leave her here.

“Alone.” She forms the word, the first she has spoken aloud, with care. It carries no weight nor sound. If only she could have said the same for her own body when she had cast herself into the hollow womb of the closed-down mine.

It is unfair. She had thought it would end there. But she is here, again. The town has collapsed. There should be a sense of relief, revenge. It had ended her life, but in the end its own life had gone out too.

But it is still here. And so is she.

And something has changed.

She begins another circuit of the main street, adrift and alone. In this state she can do nothing but watch. And wait.

She does not think she need wait long.

*****

This entry is part of the Rule of Three Blog Fest; please see this page for details and to read the entries of the other talented authors taking part!