I’ve been reading through my next big WIP this week, and gods am I excited to be working on it. It’s gonna be so good! Eventually… In the mean time, here’s a little snippet of an unnamed side-character. She might not even turn up in the book, to be honest. I mostly wanted to explore this particular part of the world. Enjoy!
Wall-Runner
She sat on top of a parapet, the mist billowing below like a field of white reflecting the cloudy sky above. Eyes trailing to and fro, she looked like someone just staring into the middle distance until she spotted what she was searching for—movement. At once, her posture stiffened, back straightening as she pulled the looking glass from her belt and aimed it at the spot. It was far, almost too far even with the trusty tool’s help, but still she saw them moving around. Small, scurrying, a family of hares maybe or else the miniature deer that resembled the one’s in the courtly forest inside the city walls, but more important than what they were was what was near them—less mist.
The first few times she’s observed the phenomenon, she’d thought it a coincidence but it had happened so many times now she was sure it couldn’t be. She didn’t know what it meant precisely, only that it had meaning, more meaning perhaps than anything else in her life. This was why she no longer mourned her failure as a Recruit, her transfer to the position of Wall-Runner—nothing in her training had filled her with such a sense of meaning as this, these quiet observations she marked in the small notebook in as neat a print as the rough charcoal pencil allowed her, this knowledge that she was on the cusp of understanding something monumental.
She heard the sound of boots on steps many yards away and in a fluid movement that looked from a distance like she was adjusting her position, she slipped the notebook back into the folds of her cape. This was why she’d chosen this spot—enough distance between herself and either of the stairs to keep her observations from prying eyes. She couldn’t say why, or from whom, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that if the others found out what she knew, she might be in an awful lot of trouble.
“Anything?” the Captain grumbled by way of greeting as he approached.
“No, Captain. Nothing to report.”
“Great. Carry on,” her superior continued, sounding none the happier for the lack of news. He turned and she counted his steps back towards the stairs, giving it twenty extra seconds before she stuck her hand under her cape and fished the notebook back out. Raising the looking glass, she looked for the hares-or-deer again, but they were lost in the mist.
“Patience…” she mumbled to herself. Soon she would have one more puzzle piece, and you never knew which puzzle piece would be the one that made the picture clear.