The exercise:
Write about: a visitor.
Yup, snow day. 11 cm of snow fell overnight and our townhouse complex wasn't plowed until late morning. Don't think the streets were much better, but the city plans on working through the night to get everything cleared.
Boys helped me shovel the driveway and clear snow off the vehicles before lunch. And by helped I mean they did that for a little while and then spent the rest of the time we were outside building a snow fort.
3 comments:
That's a good covering of snow! I can see that you wouldn't be going very far until that was moved to the side -- and that it's going to take a while. I think the boys did something very important there, snow forts will clearly be needed to defend the town house from the Ilmatu now that it's cold enough for them to hunt :)
A visitor
Dread walked with Fabian to the edge of the grounds of Admiralty House and then turned back, indicating that he had a number of irritating disciplinary-committee hearings to attend that afternoon. Fabian, still rather taken aback by the idea that the Assessors might have stolen a Museum artefact to conceal that they'd lost a key -- granted, an expensive and difficult key to replace, but a key nonetheless -- half-listened and waved goodbye. The streets around Admiralty House were quiet with little traffic and less foot-traffic and he was soon away from there and into the main hubbub of the city centre. He paused for a moment, orienting himself and wondering why he'd not been paying attention to where he was going. He found the sign of a toy-shop that he recognised -- he'd bought presents there for Nimrodia, his daughter, and realised that he'd walked two streets past where he ought to have turned.
He turned about and nearly walked into a short, grubby looking child that appeared to have a disfiguring skin disease. He caught himself and started to apologise. Then the child looked up and there was a moment of cognitive dissonance while his brain insisted that this was an afflicted child while his eyes told him that this was a middle-aged person with tattoos. Then the two worlds collided nicely and he recognised the Rust-elf in front of him.
"Rystin?" he said and then paused to marvel that he could remember that name.
"Hi," said the Rust-elf awkwardly. "It's uh. It's you. Again."
"I was having lunch," said Fabian, waving in the direction he thought Admiralty House might be. "I'm on my way back to the Museum and I nearly walked into you. I'm so sorry!"
The elf seemed to relax, standing straighter and making eye-contact.
"Ah," he said. "Then perhaps you'll pay my shop a brief visit? If you have time, of course."
"Of course," said Fabian, quelling the urge to check his tablet and see if anyone or anything was waiting for him. That would definitely be rude, he was sure of that. "Is it close."
"Behind you," said Rystin.
Fabian turned again and found himself looking at a shop-front that made him think of affordable antiques: there were ornaments and small statues, the kind that might sit in a front-garden guarding a bird-bath or tiny fish-pond. A second, narrow window seemed to showcase clocks, or things with clockwork in, though now that Fabian actually looked he saw that they all seemed to be carved from stone.
"Oh," he said. "My wife -- my ex-wife, that is -- would have loved this."
"She's not here," said Rystin with a sly smile. "You would be my only visitor at this time."
Fabian went inside. The interior was dim and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but as they did and he saw more clockwork, more ornamentation, and a cluttered looking work-bench with tools and tiny gears and springs scattered across it he finally made the connection.
"You're an artificer?" he said, looking around more carefully. Now he'd understood he started to see how the statues were cleverly constructed to be able to move and when he looked closer still he saw where the tiny steam engines that drove them would be housed.
"Yes," said Rystin sitting on a stool at the work-bench. "Many Rust-elves are; we find we're good at it."
"I can see that," said Fabian, now distracted by a chess-set that, if he was right, had pieces that could move by themselves. He wondered if that would help or hinder the players. "This is amazing work. Some of these could be in the Museum, you know. Well, if they were a bit older, we don't have anything much in the way of a modern collection. People seem to think that if it wasn't made six centuries ago it can't be worth looking at."
"And yet the things they buy were often made less than six months ago," said Rystin. "And if it they commission something from me, the last part of it would have been made only days ago."
"I know," said Fabian. "People are very strange." His eyes lit on a diorama of soldiers, or perhaps militia, charging a dug-in position and the weight of the box in his inside pocket was suddenly obvious to him.
"Actually," he said. "While I'm here, would you mind taking a look at some figurines I have and telling me if you think it's worth me getting them valued?"
Greg - I will try to remember to commend them on their forethought...
Nice to see Rystin making another appearance so soon. I'm very interested in seeing how his part of the story plays out.
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