Sunday February 28th, 2016

The exercise:

Write about: the dark season.

I'm going to pretend that today will be the end of my steampunk writings for now. We'll see what tomorrow brings, I guess.

But for now, I'm bringing things back to a scene that took place before my opening on Thursday. Because, apparently, that was not where this tale began.

Mine:

It's coming was spoken of, but not by those who had a reputation for sanity that they wished to maintain. Old men in tattered robes stood or sat on street corners and warned passersby of what was to come. Toothless hags screamed from their bedroom windows at anyone who came within earshot.

The dark season will soon be upon us, they said. Get yourselves ready.

Ready to do what? a few bothered to ask.

To leave, they replied. Every last one of them said it. To leave.

When it came at last we thought it was just another winter. The grey clouds arrived to cover the sky at their usual time. Warmth seeped slowly away. There were no early indications that it would be a winter without end.

Captain Miranda was one of the first to start assembling a flight crew. When I agreed to be her helmsman I didn't know where we were headed or why. I was in need of a job, that's all. My desire to leave the city had nothing to do with that itch at the back of my neck that kept telling me that something was deeply wrong.

Nothing at all.

We launched at night. While it was certainly unusual, it was also not unheard of. At any rate, no one tried to stop us. No crew member left word of where we were headed. I don't think any of us had anyone to tell, really.

When we reached the edge of the Wastelands two days later there were some murmurings among the crew but it never neared mutiny. We trusted Captain Miranda. She had told us we were going to find the sun again and we believed her. Each of us would follow her orders to the very end, there was no doubt of that.

Even if it meant flying over the most dangerous, inhospitable terrain our planet had to offer.