The exercise:
Write about: the damage.
Honestly having trouble wrapping my head around how much repair work will need to be done to the highways linking us to the coast.
The exercise:
Write about: the damage.
Honestly having trouble wrapping my head around how much repair work will need to be done to the highways linking us to the coast.
3 comments:
I'm pleased to see that you won't be completely cut off for three months -- it was looking pretty bad when I saw it yesterday. But yes, there's a lot of work to be done by the looks of things. This has not been BC's year :(
Damage
"Is this legal?" Jannax scratched his head, careful not to pull on the long, thinning strands of hair that only barely covered his skull. Going bald seemed to be his destiny, but he was determined not to get there any faster than he had to.
"Yes," said Angantha. She was short, plump and had a jolly twinkle in her eye that was really just for ambushing people with her will of iron and her moderately unpleasant personality. She was the kind of person who counted her change out very slowly when paying for things, and sent her food back in restaurants because it was the wrong colour, or not squeaky enough. She also had four arms, an indication that there was spider-elf in her heritage somewhere, but she looked otherwise humanoid enough that most people had learned not to ask questions. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"Well, you're farming cats," said Jannax. He was a half-orc; broad, muscular and as hairy as a gorilla (except where, in his opinion, it counted most: on top of his head). His forehead, twice the size of a standard humanoid's, wrinkled like a dishcloth left to dry in the sun.
"Nothing wrong with looking after animals," said Angantha. She glared at a white-toed cat that had stood up and it considered her for a moment, then sat back down again as though that had been its plan all along. "If they're well-behaved enough."
"But you only want their eyes," said Jannax. Thinking was hard for him, it always felt like ideas were slippery as fish, darting away from him when he tried to understand them, and hiding when he tried to follow them.
"So?"
"There are a lot of damaged cats in the neighbourhood." Someone had told him that recently, and it felt like it might be appropriate here, though he was a little hazy as to why.
Angantha sighed. "I need cat eyes for... vitamins," she said, wondering if she could explain this to a half-orc without a lot of interruptions. "They go into potions of magical enhancement, but it's like you eating meat -- necessary for you to grow muscles. These potions grow the kinds of muscles that make magic. There's a big demand for these potions, and they are making us a lot of money. Which pays for that meat you keep eating. But cats don't regrow their eyes, so once I harvest a cat, I let it go so that it's not kept in captivity -- hehe, cattivity, perhaps."
"It seems wrong that there are lots of blind cats about," said Jannax. Someone had told him that as well, though he definitely wasn't sure what the point of that was.
"Have you been talking to people again? I told you not to do that; hit them, hit them again if they're still moving, and then take them to the bonepit." The bonepit was just a big hole behind Angantha's house with a surprisingly large number of fresh bodies in it. "There's nowhere else to get the eyes from. It's not like I enjoy this."
Jannax sighed; all this thinking made his head hurt. "I think," he ventured, hoping this would be his last thought for the day, "I think that maybe other people don't want to look after blind cats?"
Angnatha shrugged. "Cats are meat. Will you eat them?"
"Meat good!"
Angantha tilted her head to one side, eyeing Jannax with surprise; she'd expected some kind of caterwaul about how cute they were, or more questions of legality. She was pleased though: not putting blind cats onto the street would repair some of the damage to her reputation in the community, and if she called the cats something else... entrecote de chat, perhaps, she could pretend she'd stopped farming cats entirely.
The white-toed cat mewed, a little piteously, and she decided it was time to make a fresh potion.
[Partly inspired by how many video games make you essentially do this to make other items]
Greg - I think all we're missing at this point is a volcanic eruption and then we'll have the whole set!
Hah, thank you for that note at the end. Brings back memories of playing WoW and all the ridiculous item quests I did.
Also: I like Jannax. He's my sort of fellow.
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