Some thoughts of no import

  In the days before Captain was Captain, those many who’d known him could’ve described him in a true wealth of manners. So it was purely coincidence when they’d invariably choose to describe him as similar to a mineral of some kind: a man as hard as iron, or solid as a rock, or as foundational to the city as the cold marble it lay upon. They could’ve gone on for a while this way, and at times they had, describing Captain as not dissimilar to every inanimate object less pliable than month old flotsam. Since seizing control of Tellyphill people were much less inclined to describe Captain at length, and anyhow he’d seemed to have gone soft in just one area: the hour of his rising. For reasons that none cared to pry into, from the first day upon taking up residence in the old royal quarters, Captain’s hours of slumber were erratic. Mostly erratically long. So it was that Captain’s image was tarnished, but in a way just minor enough to be endearingly human rather than concerningly inco...

  As the sun threated its rise, Hailey was painfully reminded of the scant five days left until the summer prophecy, and despair had long since set in among the holy girls. Hailey was greatly worried, his all-too youthful face finally lined with worry after long years of unearned serenity. He’d ignored Dolstoy at first, and now could not get a hold of him no matter how hard he tried. The anguish would’ve been far greater had Hailey not had matters far more pressing to deal with. Chief among these was the rapid rate at which the holy girls were falling to some unclear despair. “Ruthela’s been unresponsive lately. She’s always been distant, but I suspect it’s something more this time. You have to do something about it Hailey.” He sat with Jen at their daily briefing. The heat never made it up to the point, so the pressure of conversation had to make up for it. As his discussions with Jen were of late mostly about girls despairing of life, this shouldn’t have been a great ask. And...

  “The crone - ’Don’t pout! Do you think you’ll be coddled for who your father is? Has it crossed your feeble mind that the river and the stars care not for your blood and your fine furs?’ Ademu - ‘The thought had never occurred to me. The woods shattered for my father, and they shall shatter to bear witness to his son.’ The crone - ‘Then you are fool beyond reckoning! But go and seek the birch and the oaks. Perhaps a gnarled root shall put stop to your brash heart!’” Excerpt from ‘Sons of the unburdened’, Assorted plays of the river tribes, Jennept’s archive of northern stories. Opal seemed to be having a marvelous time. To Chy it seemed that Opal was perpetually incensed with a pathological love of life. Despite, or perhaps because of, his true and unwavering belief, this was most offensive to Chy. He’d assayed a broach of this topic and had been met with scorn. They’d just crossed the city limit of Tellyphill, the dead of night and the general deadness of the city a cl...