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Chay
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:29 am

Home --- &RPaward

Post by Chay » Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:17 am

Template to use when awarding stories/ other entries:

Ely edit 22 Oct 2021:

1-6 qps, depending on length and quality.

Potential +1 qp: if part of a series: o

Total: 1 qps

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Outside the Market Hall, a bloke stands at the cart of a pretty fruit vendor. They gesture amiably as they talk business and pleasure. The man grins and says "Home is where the heart is." Chay overhears his words in the busy square, and thinks the man a halfwit. She lifts a few of the man’s meager possessions from his pockets and moves on. She rubs at her mouth and considers. Ner had a home ‘cept Lugard. An if my heart is here? She huffs a laugh. Be dead already.

She sweeps through the streets unnoticed. No one pays attention to a cherubic lamb of almost eleven years - or maybe twelve? Who cares anyway? She was still small enough to be useful. More importantly, she looks the part. Chay takes in her fine, new clothes and grins. A set like this and she could go back to pretending she was a moppet of some high-to-do who escaped the leash of her nursemaid for the afternoon. Always good money in that. Better? Good fun.

Chay startles, standing there on the cobblestone street. Lost in scheming and conniving again! She looks over the rooftops to see the sun kissing the tiles in its descent. Hurry on. People gots no patience for tarryin nippers.

Quickly she makes her way to a familiar street, to a familiar building, to a familiar pipe, to a familiar handhold. She pulls her way up to the rooftop, skitters across to the other side and down to a scaffold. She runs the length of it and eyes a broken gable window at which she gives a half-jump and her hands gain their purchase. Clambering up to the next rooftop she is met with a toothy grin.

“Oy Chay! What’s been?” Chay smiles with obvious joy and flaps her new cloak at the boy. “Ho ho, you got a new grubstaker, aye?” She shrugs, then shakes her head. The boy stands casually in front of a sort-of-door to a shack. Haphazardly placed sheets of metal and wood form a sort of residence to which she and the boy hold an unholy allegiance to. He nods at the shack behind him and warns “Don’t get stuck Chay. He won’t fancy that, not a pinch.”

The boy’s name is Trag and it is short for some ridiculous other name like Bontrager or Trageron or Tragedy. The last one Chay made up herself because no one should be saddled with such a name. She could barely spell her own, much less say it, if her voice ever stopped betraying her. Light’s honest truth they were all in a bit of a tragedy, but having each other made it less like a disaster and more like the type of surviving that everyone endured.

No one looks out fer me ‘cept maybe Trag- an we look out fer each other. Chay warms at the thought and looks at Trag gravely. She nods. She was grateful to have found him - to have him as a best friend. He's great fun, too. When they weren’t working they kicked tiles off the rooftops to see whose could land the better distance. You won regardless if a tile brained a townsfolk treading below. That prune-faced maid across the street would come out, all in a fit at the broken pieces littering the street, broom in hand and sweeping like the dickens. Chay thought the woman could sweep the stink off a vagrant if she were given the chance.

“He’s been waitin fer ya.” Trag thrusts his hands in his pockets and moves past Chay to peer over the rooftops. “He ain’t in a bad mood neither. Yer lucky today.” He turns to grin at Chay. She nods again and grins back, adopting a confident stance. She saunters through the doorway like she owns it, hearing Trag chuckle at her back.

Chay
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:29 am

Family

Post by Chay » Thu Sep 23, 2021 12:57 pm

Chay struts into the shack and weaves her way through orderly cots to plant herself in front of a desk made of crates. A strange man with a shadowed face stands to the side, head inclined, and draped in a hooded cloak. Behind the desk the infamous Mesuel Indalin, also known as The Childmaster, holds his court. Mesuel rubs his filthy hands together and continues, “We sees a lot, we does, my childers and I.” He turns to look at Chay, his dirty hair hanging slack around his face and branded neck. “Here be one of me nestlings now.”

Mesuel fixes a stare on Chay and speaks to the cloaked man as an ingratiating smile spreads across his face. "It's a kind man I am, to take in these poor unfortunate urchins off the streets." The shadowy individual drops a small, bulging purse in front of Mesuel. The Childmaster clears it from the desk and secrets it away. His face twitches as he stands to whisper something in the stranger’s ear. Without a sound the stranger leaves, and Chay stands alone with her master.

Chay tries to resist the urge to shuffle her feet, revealing her anxiousness, and scolds herself. Do somethin adult an important lookin! She tries to look down on Master Indalin while unfortunately still having to look up at his standing form. The result is a comical presentation. Her chin is tilting so high as to nearly be on level with her eyeballs. With her head back so far her eyelids droop closed. Forcing them wider only serves to make her nostrils flare as her peepers bulge. Mesuel unwittingly saves her from more idiocy as he sits down and leans forward, his elbows resting upon the desk. He steeples his fingers and asks “Back already, me plum puddin?”

With a deep breath, Chay offers a badly wrinkled stack of papers and sets them down on the crates. She smooths them with care. It took a lot of effort to get this, and Master Indalin knew it.

When he sent her on her way, it was probably assumed she might not make the trip and return alive, or simply not return at all. Stealing horses and hitching rides were everyday-type things for Chay. Pinching a meal? The same. She’d slept under the stars, or slept in a hayloft for a night or two, but it was always near a city and that city was almost always in Murandy - usually Lugard itself. She understood and was content with managing the perils of her own home. She had never traveled for weeks at a time, across unfamiliar lands no less!

But she did it.

Master Indalin picks up one sheet of paper and squints a beady eye at it. His cheek pulls gruesomely with another nervous tic and he discards one sheet for the next. He asks “Did you find all the rooms, duckling?” Chay scrambles to point to some marks where her layout suggests locked doors. She looks up at him with a hopeful expression.

Mesuel smiles condescendingly. “Me liversnap, I tells you to get all the rooms. Not some. You want me to feeds you still? You can’t think me deprive me own childers for a mite who can’t follow orders?”

Chay panics a bit. This is not how she saw this going. I nearly wrestled the Wheel itself to do this job and it wasn’t enough? The whole bleeding Tower is there on paper! She pulls the last sheet of paper and puts it on top, indicating a handful of rooms off a spiraling staircase. She makes a small pleading sound and looks up at the man. This man - who has stood in the role of a parent for more than half her life. Begging for charity, she points at the page forcefully.

The Childmaster slaps his hand upon the desk and swoops down to her eye level like a hawk. He spits coldly “I needs eyes, not shirkers.”

As quickly as he chided her he straightens, offers a soothing smile, and lowers his voice to a softer tone. “Poor nipper. Did they gets a look at you? The ladies in their Tower?” Chay stands still, frozen to her place. Mesuel gestures around at his shabby kingdom. “I sees you had skills t’ benefit us all when I brought you in, three years gone. We has no loyalties but to ourselves - our family.” He sits back on a crate and nods at the doorway where she knew Trag still stood. He waits, then asks again “Did they sees anything special about you?”

Chay quickly shakes her head.

Master Indalin gathers the sheets of paper on his desk and tacks them next to some other notes. The oily man reaches to the side and grabs a sack. He tosses it across the desk. Chay catches it and smiles openly, her face radiating happiness at his expression of approval. Through the burlap she can already smell the bread and heavily spiced, dried meat. As she turns to leave, eager to share her earnings with Trag, Mesuel’s voice follows her out the door. “Hand-picking childers is my gift. You’ve a quick mind and quicker hands. You keeps your talents with your family, and your family will always keep you.”

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