All right. As I've recently read a book (a great book! Show Your Work! by
Austin Kleon!) and he recommends showing/sharing what you're working on I've decided I'ma try it.
I wrote this novella (it's complete at approximately 30k words) around (almost) three years ago in March 2015.
Elegy of the Stars is set on a planet called Glast. It's in traveling distance of Earth and the novella revolves about Oria, a street girl who doesn't rely on anyone but herself. During a theft gone wrong she suddenly has to trust another street rat, Quinn, to get her to safety, and a sort of relationship between the two forms. They plan a heist to the local star-cult to steal enough food to survive the winter. But if that heist goes wrong... both of them might not survive.
Here is chapter one of Elegy of the Stars:
1.
I
am Seirios.
Sirius
in your language.
The
watcher on the evening sky, who guides your seafarers home in even
the darkest of nights.
Thirteen
years ago she was born and they created a star; a binary star system
in the center of Oblivion, the sole city on the planet Glast, the
place of her birth and dreary existence. They called it Seirios. The
Scorcher. A bit like her own name, Oria, which meant bright and
burning in the language of Glast. Seirios destroyed the world as they
knew it. Its genesis – also called the Cataclysm – collapsed
laboratory of the time and pulverized most of the city into white-hot
debris. But still, an achievement was an achievement.
Oria
clutched the colourful scarf tighter around her thin neck and
suppressed a snort as she averted her eyes from the stars where they
gleamed from the shrine atop the Hall of Harvest. She would have been
more impressed if what was left of the Administrative Council came up
with a way to feed those who starved and froze to death next to her
in the dusty alleys and derelict buildings of Oblivion. Heber had
told her the Consortium of Science's power was reduced now that they
had been decimated, most, if not all, of its members... changed by
the radiation.
Heber
was an idiot. He knew nothing about the real world beyond his science
and math and all the other useless things he tried to teach her when
she visited.
Why
would he even think she wanted to know she was thirteen human years
old? That Glast rotated around a sun so far away one human year
stretched to 500 Glast days? How the Seirios cult operated? What the
cultivators had done to the scientists to drag them down into the
hole they were in now? What did it matter when she was trying
not to starve or freeze to death every other day?
And
it wasn't even winter yet.
Her
teeth clattered at the thought but it might also have been the chill
wind ghosting through the alley. How was she going to survive the
cold season with its ice storms and perpetual darkness this year?
She
crouched to check whether her moccasins were hidden by the hem of her
trousers. The toes when she peeled away the soles were purplish-blue
with the cold. She had to be careful if she didn't want to lose one
of them – perhaps swipe a scrap of leather somewhere to close the
holes before winter arrived. Still. To the west a scattering of suns
too distant to provide much warmth or light was rising and they would
do for now. They would have to – or she would be weak again
tomorrow. Her stomach grumbled. It had been doing that for a while.
Oria
let the soles go, and they popped back against the rim with a weak
crack. Her hands went up to her dark hair and she gathered it into
the balloon cap Heber had given her when she asked if he had anything
less conspicuous than the dress he tried to deal her the last time.
She dropped the filthy blanket that hadn't been washed since she
swiped it from the clothes line from her shoulders and stood. The
wind increased. Her nose seemed to blister with the cold as she made
her way down the alley to its mouth.
Still.
It
couldn't be helped. She hadn't eaten anything solid in two and a half
days and nobody could survive on a sip of water muddied with rat
excrement and pieces of mouldy bread somebody else already half
chewed and then spit out alone.
She
drew the hat deeper into her face as she exited the alley's south end
and the glow of Seirios increased. The Hall of Harvest was still a
few minutes walk, and the distance felt like a trip to Earth with her
empty belly and all but bare feet unprotected from the wood-and-glass
splinter strewn ground, but the artificial star bathed the city
itself into a beautiful light.
It
was easier to be a boy on the street. Nobody looked twice at a
farmhand on their way back to the master they served, but they would
want to take advantage of a lonely girl. Not that she was a solitary
case in the city, an abandoned girl looking for food and shelter, but
if Heber had taught her anything useful at all, then it was that men
didn't care whether there were other girls just as vulnerable as she
when they found her first. Of course, she hadn't know what that meant
at the time, but several long years on the street had wisened her.
Which was the reason she now carried a knife whereever she went.
Which also was the reason she was glad to have a chest as flat as any
boy's, on contrary to the older girls she sometimes met.
She
ignored the guards' stares as she approached the Hall of Harvest.
Today she was an acolyte of the Seirios – the child of the
Administrator or one of the other cultivators – out to attend her
first (or second) convergence with the adults. It was best she
pretended to belong even if she didn't. The guards wore uniforms and
weapons. They were initiates into the official ranks. The ones who
still had to prove themselves to the Administrator and his staff. At
least that was what Heber said.
Her
pulse quickened as she came to the gates. Would they let her through?
Was it usual for children to arrive early at the festival market
without their parents? She wouldn't know. She didn't have any parents
nor did she care to. The only person closest to a father was Heber,
and Heber would have reproached her if he knew about this plan.
And
yet.
How
else was she going to survive? He couldn't feed another mouth. He had
it hard enough with his sick sister and even if he would have let her
stay with him she could fend for herself. It was difficult enough to
feed one person.
Then
she was through.
The
Hall of Harvest itself was the size of one of the giant spaceships
that made the trip to distant Earth every once in a while and would
do so again after winter started. Once filled with wealthy scholars
and scientists, or so she had been told, the only people who were
able to afford the market nowadays were the farmers and asteroid
miners themselves. The ceiling crisscrossed with intricately carved
light-pipes that transported the Seirios's illumination to the
distant fields on the other side of the planet and made the
cultivators richer every day.
The
market itself was a coagulation of carts and stalls with wide
displays of food almost nobody could afford, situated in the heart of
Oblivion's least destroyed district. Oria strolled along the aisles
casually, dark hair tucked away into her hat, gaze cast down though
there was nothing to see underfoot but sand and dirt. It hadn't taken
long for her to learn that it was best to appear as if you belonged
even if you didn't.
She
found her target relatively quickly. A stand half concealed between
two others, whose owner sold fruit, like apples and pears and grapes,
and that Seirios-mutated fruit called starfruit, which supposedly
tasted like sweet sugary heaven, and which she had never had and
could never afford. The symbol of the Administrative Council was
painted on the wooden frame of his stand. Another Cataclysm-richened
farmer.
The
farmer himself was fat and bald. Most of them were fat. Two apples
less wouldn't hurt that one's wallet, but that didn't mean he was
going to give them up for free.
Oria
picked her way closer, always staying hidden inside the shade cast by
the surrounding ruins, her gaze darting around for guards or
cultists. It was a gamble and the wager was her life. If she was
caught by the city watch she would be whipped and beheaded on the
public spot to set an example.
But
she wouldn't be caught. The farmers lived in abundance and didn't pay
enough attention to the paupers who starved in droves just around
their corners. On top of that she was fast, faster than anybody she
knew, and she knew a fair few fast rats around these perimeters, most
of who couldn't be trusted, the rest crippled or blind from the
Cataclysm and in much more need than even herself. That was why her
next stop would be the deformed old man close to the Seirios Cult's
headquarters. Though she could hardly afford it, she had allowed him
to rely on her.
And
then maybe she would check on useless Heber, see if he hadn't died of
idiocy yet, or his mutated sister hadn't gone insane, as many of the
mutation victims did, and murdered him in his sleep.
But
that was after.
Oria
slowed her steps as she approached her target's stand. She had
already caught sight of her quarry, two apples at the lowest edge of
the layered display, one of them wizened and the sickly pale colour
of diseased skin, nothing the high society would want to buy anyway,
the other round and red as her cheeks would have been had she been
one of the councilmen's children, and was scouring the lavish display
for anything else she could take.
A
scrap of leather to wrap around her shoes so the soles would last
another day? A morsel of bread to go with the apples? Maybe even an
egg from that basket a little higher up? But that would be too risky.
The apples were already uncertain enough although she could swipe
those without raising her arms, inconspicuously, and be gone before
the farmer noticed they were missing, which she doubted he ever would
in any case.
Oria
reached the stall. There was a basket of turnips on the other end
from which she could grab a handful when she left, but for the moment
her attention was focused solely on appearing as if she belonged, and
that included wearing an impassive and impertinently unconcerned
expression and not staring at the goods even though their delicious
scent was enough to drive her mad with hunger.
Quick
as an arrow she snatched the two apples without halting her pace,
just as she had planned, just as she had done several times before,
ambling along casually, without so much as a tiny skip in her step,
and stowed them inside her shirt. The process was so familiar by now
that her heart didn't even speed as it had the first few thefts. Then
it was time for the turnips.
She
was small enough she wouldn't have to bend to reach the basket. It
would do to stretch out her left hand, snatch a turnip, and then
proceed leisurely back to the end of the market from which she had
come, where she could begin to sprint back to her sheltered alley and
examine her loot.
She
hadn't taken so much as a step forward when a hand grabbed her from
behind.
You can also find it here if you use fictionpress (sorry! I'm old-fashioned): https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3318299/1/Elegy-of-the-Stars
If you want, leave some comments, either here or on fictionpress! Every input helps!
