Post by sebi on Feb 8, 2011 21:37:18 GMT -7
Not done quite yet... almost there...
-------
Name: Prosper “Mutt”
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Sexuality: Hetero
Location: The Weyr
Rank: dragon candidate
Personality:
Appearance:
Long, shaggy, black hair
Tanned skin
Brown eyes
Missing his front teeth (a nasty brawl), left pinky (theft punishment) and half of his right ear (attacked by a dog).
Weighs about a hundred and fifty pounds. Wiry and malnourished, but well muscled.
Thin face, high jaw bone, long nose…
Frowning.
History:
Any of you boys ever lived in the docks? Those were the times, boys. Times like those where I knew which way was up, where I could go where I wanted, travel the next block down the road and nobody knew my name. Where you smelled horse shit, smithy fumes, urine, booze and smoke all day long.
It was beautiful. Boats coming in and off the docks. Grand boats, majestic beasts… there’s nothing like ten thousand pounds of oak and steel, a mass of sails and engines, a hulk, this burning thing… You’d think it’d swallow you up just to look at it.
Those were the times, boys.
Pa was a locksmith, had his own little shop. Built locks for pubs mostly. He freelanced for the local authorities too, when they needed breaking into somewhere… Pa used to always say that he was the only lockpick what worked with the law on this side of the globe… used to smile real hard at that, he did. Pipe stuck in those huge jaws of his.
Those were the times, boys.
Me, I learned a little on his trade here and there, mostly I got in trouble down with the sailors in the lower city. Got good with my hands. I’d jive with the winos and the thieves, the merchants and the beggars, the murderers and the coppers, the druggies and the pimps, the hookers and the nobles. Everyone’s equal, what’s visiting in the lower city. Everyone’s got money to lose and a liver to fill with whisky. Everybody.
Not to get all full of myself, but shit, boy, everything I’d touch back then would turn to gold. A face like mine, only twelve years old, the girls mistook me for a puppy, which was fine by me. If they wanted to ruffle my hair while I took their coin it was okay… Me, I provided a service. A cute for face to brighten their day. Price: what you’re carrying. I’d hustle and grift and con. I’d play dice games and card games, shop lift and purse cut and sell fake goods, fence stolen ones. I got the name “Mutt” on account of how I could sniff out a man with money to lose. There’s a look in their eye. You can tell just by looking. I’m good with that. People’s faces are like books to me.
I cut most of the thefts and cons out when Pa caught me with my latest grift earnings. I had a purse full of silvers and he took one look at the silk bag and hit me with a chair. Fractured two of my ribs, so’s I couldn’t breathe or stand for about a week.
He looked me in the eye and said “you ever steal like that again and I won’t have to kill you – you’ll be doing it for me.” He made me swear to stop, but he let me keep my earnings. “what’s yours is yours.” He said and he shook his head, he did. I swear, that whole week in bed where my belly was purple and I was coughing up blood, I was smiling like a bitch what got laid.
Those were the days, boys.
And things looked good. Pa never drank no liquor or touched no whores. Fact is, I think he was true to my Ma all the way up ‘til she gave birth to Rosie and died during. It was some hard times, those were… but we got over it. Folks die and that’s just how it is. Folks are fragile things. Y’know, like roses… one day they’re full and ripe and red and angry… next day, they’re just dead bugs.
And outta the ashes of Ma came Rosie… God, she was beautiful. That full round face, what always had a smile, even when she was two, three years old. Always brimming with joy. My spirit was like fireworks around her. I’d howl and beat my chest and nothing could touch us. Nobody. Pa didn’t make it easy on her, I think on account of what she did to Ma, but he fed and clothed her and loved her beneath that old wood pipe and the frown… everybody loved her… the happiest I’ve ever been.
Those were the days, boys.
But of course, stories are like those roses… they ain’t happy forever, boys. One day, you wake up and your life ain’t a rose no more. It’s like a dead bug instead. All shriveled up and cold.
When I was fifteen, I woke in the night and my Pa was in his rocking chair… was looking right at me, in my little cot next to Rosie’s. His face is all pale and he’s shivering like a new-babe. He’s got this look in his eyes, beneath this layer of red… and I know what it means, like I always know what eyes are trying to say. I don’t wanna know, but I do. He’s dying.
He looks at me and says “it caught up to us, Prosper.”
“What did?” I say.
And he coughs and hacks. He trembles again and rocks in the chair, it creaks in the darkness and Rosie turns in her sleep. Six year old Rosie. Beautiful Rosie…
“The plague’s here, Prosper. Get your things.”
“How do you know?” And I don’t know why I ask, because again, I know the answer, I just don’t wanna know.
“I’ve got it.” He says. “Don’t know when I got it, but I ain’t left the city, so I got it here… You need to leave.”
And we share a look and I know that there ain’t much more what ought to be said.
“I’d hug you, son… but I’m afraid it might spread… We’ll be lucky enough if you and Rosie don’t have it from me or some other bloke already...”
I just give him a nod.
I don’t take much. A duffel bag full of food and clothes, my Pa’s best lockpick set in case we can get a price for it or I can apply the trade someplace, a pack of cards and a couple books for me and Rosie… that’s it…Then we’re gone.
She’s so groggy that I gotta carry her to the docks and she keeps muttering as she rubs her eyes. “what’s going on? Where’s Pa?” But I don’t answer. We just head to the docks and pay fare. We get on a boat and we don’t look back.
We don’t ever look back.
We’ve run out of hardtac and candied fish and we’re still a hundred miles from shore. So close to a new life that I can touch it, but a week without food is too much for Rosie. Folks on the ship are inches from cannibalism, but Rosie says she ain’t gonna put up with that. Six years old and she already knows what’s best for her and everyone – she’s already as tough as nails. Pa’d be proud. She looks at me all too serious and says “Prosper… I ain’t gonna eat another living person. We’re not animals, Mutt.” She says.
I find her some meat soup the next day – you can guess what kind – and I’m holding it in front of her mouth in a bowl. It smells so thick and sweet that it makes my mouth water. “Just eat it.” I say. “It’s chicken. Just eat it.” The number of merchants I’ve cheated out of their money and I can’t con a six year old. She keeps her lips clamped shut. “I ain’t eating a person.” She says. “and you shouldn’t either.”
But I do. God… We’re like savages. Some guy gets shiv’d in the lower deck and we throw ourselves at his still beating heart like flies. When the crowd dies down, what’s left of him is put in a pot and stirred around. We eat the salt water, flesh broth and we savor every drop.
Rosie’s skin and bones… I gotta feed her… She don’t even know my name no more. She lies paralyzed in her tiny corner of the cramped double decker… She smiles at me when I come in, smiles like she always does and I feel my lungs bursting with pain from that look she gives me… she’s dying, boys…
I try to break into the captain’s courters with my dad’s tools. I think maybe there’s food there. They catch me and drag me down to the main deck kicking and screaming and begging for mercy. The captain himself carves off my pinky with a shaving blade. He eats it raw in front of me.
I don’t try to steal food again…
Rosie dies in my arms in front of me after two weeks without food… there’s nothing but human flesh to eat and she still won’t have none. Her body goes limp and she’s so light… God… she’s like a ghost.
Somebody sees her corpse and I see his eyes and I know what they mean, like I always do.
He licks his lips.
I tell him I’ll kill him if he takes her corpse, but he goes for it anyway. I get a knife in his shoulder, but it don’t do no good.
They take Rosie’s corpse and they eat her… God…
I got to shore another week later…
From there I’ve mostly walked…
Knowing I let Pa down… I let Rosie down…
I let everybody down…
And now I’m at the Weyr. There are nice people here. Food to go around.
I still don’t sleep. I don’t sleep ever. My eyes are wide open and I count the little grains in the wood on the ceiling.
But I suppose we’ve all got hard lives in this day and age… I got no reason to complain. At least I knew Rosie. Knew her once upon a time. That’s good enough, that I had a sis like her. An incorruptible. A damn angel if there ever was one.
My Rosie… how I reminisce, boys…
My Rosie…
Family:
Father – John [Deceased] (age 50)
Mother –Josaline [Deceased] (age 35)
Sister – Rosie [Deceased] (age 6)
-------
Name: Prosper “Mutt”
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Sexuality: Hetero
Location: The Weyr
Rank: dragon candidate
Personality:
Appearance:
Long, shaggy, black hair
Tanned skin
Brown eyes
Missing his front teeth (a nasty brawl), left pinky (theft punishment) and half of his right ear (attacked by a dog).
Weighs about a hundred and fifty pounds. Wiry and malnourished, but well muscled.
Thin face, high jaw bone, long nose…
Frowning.
History:
Any of you boys ever lived in the docks? Those were the times, boys. Times like those where I knew which way was up, where I could go where I wanted, travel the next block down the road and nobody knew my name. Where you smelled horse shit, smithy fumes, urine, booze and smoke all day long.
It was beautiful. Boats coming in and off the docks. Grand boats, majestic beasts… there’s nothing like ten thousand pounds of oak and steel, a mass of sails and engines, a hulk, this burning thing… You’d think it’d swallow you up just to look at it.
Those were the times, boys.
Pa was a locksmith, had his own little shop. Built locks for pubs mostly. He freelanced for the local authorities too, when they needed breaking into somewhere… Pa used to always say that he was the only lockpick what worked with the law on this side of the globe… used to smile real hard at that, he did. Pipe stuck in those huge jaws of his.
Those were the times, boys.
Me, I learned a little on his trade here and there, mostly I got in trouble down with the sailors in the lower city. Got good with my hands. I’d jive with the winos and the thieves, the merchants and the beggars, the murderers and the coppers, the druggies and the pimps, the hookers and the nobles. Everyone’s equal, what’s visiting in the lower city. Everyone’s got money to lose and a liver to fill with whisky. Everybody.
Not to get all full of myself, but shit, boy, everything I’d touch back then would turn to gold. A face like mine, only twelve years old, the girls mistook me for a puppy, which was fine by me. If they wanted to ruffle my hair while I took their coin it was okay… Me, I provided a service. A cute for face to brighten their day. Price: what you’re carrying. I’d hustle and grift and con. I’d play dice games and card games, shop lift and purse cut and sell fake goods, fence stolen ones. I got the name “Mutt” on account of how I could sniff out a man with money to lose. There’s a look in their eye. You can tell just by looking. I’m good with that. People’s faces are like books to me.
I cut most of the thefts and cons out when Pa caught me with my latest grift earnings. I had a purse full of silvers and he took one look at the silk bag and hit me with a chair. Fractured two of my ribs, so’s I couldn’t breathe or stand for about a week.
He looked me in the eye and said “you ever steal like that again and I won’t have to kill you – you’ll be doing it for me.” He made me swear to stop, but he let me keep my earnings. “what’s yours is yours.” He said and he shook his head, he did. I swear, that whole week in bed where my belly was purple and I was coughing up blood, I was smiling like a bitch what got laid.
Those were the days, boys.
And things looked good. Pa never drank no liquor or touched no whores. Fact is, I think he was true to my Ma all the way up ‘til she gave birth to Rosie and died during. It was some hard times, those were… but we got over it. Folks die and that’s just how it is. Folks are fragile things. Y’know, like roses… one day they’re full and ripe and red and angry… next day, they’re just dead bugs.
And outta the ashes of Ma came Rosie… God, she was beautiful. That full round face, what always had a smile, even when she was two, three years old. Always brimming with joy. My spirit was like fireworks around her. I’d howl and beat my chest and nothing could touch us. Nobody. Pa didn’t make it easy on her, I think on account of what she did to Ma, but he fed and clothed her and loved her beneath that old wood pipe and the frown… everybody loved her… the happiest I’ve ever been.
Those were the days, boys.
But of course, stories are like those roses… they ain’t happy forever, boys. One day, you wake up and your life ain’t a rose no more. It’s like a dead bug instead. All shriveled up and cold.
When I was fifteen, I woke in the night and my Pa was in his rocking chair… was looking right at me, in my little cot next to Rosie’s. His face is all pale and he’s shivering like a new-babe. He’s got this look in his eyes, beneath this layer of red… and I know what it means, like I always know what eyes are trying to say. I don’t wanna know, but I do. He’s dying.
He looks at me and says “it caught up to us, Prosper.”
“What did?” I say.
And he coughs and hacks. He trembles again and rocks in the chair, it creaks in the darkness and Rosie turns in her sleep. Six year old Rosie. Beautiful Rosie…
“The plague’s here, Prosper. Get your things.”
“How do you know?” And I don’t know why I ask, because again, I know the answer, I just don’t wanna know.
“I’ve got it.” He says. “Don’t know when I got it, but I ain’t left the city, so I got it here… You need to leave.”
And we share a look and I know that there ain’t much more what ought to be said.
“I’d hug you, son… but I’m afraid it might spread… We’ll be lucky enough if you and Rosie don’t have it from me or some other bloke already...”
I just give him a nod.
I don’t take much. A duffel bag full of food and clothes, my Pa’s best lockpick set in case we can get a price for it or I can apply the trade someplace, a pack of cards and a couple books for me and Rosie… that’s it…Then we’re gone.
She’s so groggy that I gotta carry her to the docks and she keeps muttering as she rubs her eyes. “what’s going on? Where’s Pa?” But I don’t answer. We just head to the docks and pay fare. We get on a boat and we don’t look back.
We don’t ever look back.
We’ve run out of hardtac and candied fish and we’re still a hundred miles from shore. So close to a new life that I can touch it, but a week without food is too much for Rosie. Folks on the ship are inches from cannibalism, but Rosie says she ain’t gonna put up with that. Six years old and she already knows what’s best for her and everyone – she’s already as tough as nails. Pa’d be proud. She looks at me all too serious and says “Prosper… I ain’t gonna eat another living person. We’re not animals, Mutt.” She says.
I find her some meat soup the next day – you can guess what kind – and I’m holding it in front of her mouth in a bowl. It smells so thick and sweet that it makes my mouth water. “Just eat it.” I say. “It’s chicken. Just eat it.” The number of merchants I’ve cheated out of their money and I can’t con a six year old. She keeps her lips clamped shut. “I ain’t eating a person.” She says. “and you shouldn’t either.”
But I do. God… We’re like savages. Some guy gets shiv’d in the lower deck and we throw ourselves at his still beating heart like flies. When the crowd dies down, what’s left of him is put in a pot and stirred around. We eat the salt water, flesh broth and we savor every drop.
Rosie’s skin and bones… I gotta feed her… She don’t even know my name no more. She lies paralyzed in her tiny corner of the cramped double decker… She smiles at me when I come in, smiles like she always does and I feel my lungs bursting with pain from that look she gives me… she’s dying, boys…
I try to break into the captain’s courters with my dad’s tools. I think maybe there’s food there. They catch me and drag me down to the main deck kicking and screaming and begging for mercy. The captain himself carves off my pinky with a shaving blade. He eats it raw in front of me.
I don’t try to steal food again…
Rosie dies in my arms in front of me after two weeks without food… there’s nothing but human flesh to eat and she still won’t have none. Her body goes limp and she’s so light… God… she’s like a ghost.
Somebody sees her corpse and I see his eyes and I know what they mean, like I always do.
He licks his lips.
I tell him I’ll kill him if he takes her corpse, but he goes for it anyway. I get a knife in his shoulder, but it don’t do no good.
They take Rosie’s corpse and they eat her… God…
I got to shore another week later…
From there I’ve mostly walked…
Knowing I let Pa down… I let Rosie down…
I let everybody down…
And now I’m at the Weyr. There are nice people here. Food to go around.
I still don’t sleep. I don’t sleep ever. My eyes are wide open and I count the little grains in the wood on the ceiling.
But I suppose we’ve all got hard lives in this day and age… I got no reason to complain. At least I knew Rosie. Knew her once upon a time. That’s good enough, that I had a sis like her. An incorruptible. A damn angel if there ever was one.
My Rosie… how I reminisce, boys…
My Rosie…
Family:
Father – John [Deceased] (age 50)
Mother –Josaline [Deceased] (age 35)
Sister – Rosie [Deceased] (age 6)