The Weirding Roads: first blush

And the start, though not actually the start. This is about 1K and I wrote another 1K for the previous scene (twice) and then scrapped it entirely as an opening and went with the following instead. The MCs name has changed twice this morning, but I think I'll stick with Amaris for now.

Amaris woke from sleep with her ears, the way she'd learned to in the months of living alone. Soft, ragged breaths, the shuffle of feet, a sound of bandages pressing to flesh: the boy whose hiding place she'd scrambled into to try and to flee the weirding still remained. She set that aside, eyes still tight, a slow flex of fingers and toes. Still herself. The weirding had been close enough to ripple air in front of her, give it the grey light of dead stars. The taste of burnt copper still lingered on her tongue, but it felt like a tongue.

It took everything she had not to gasp in relief at that. She'd talked to some of the twisted – the changed, in their own terms – and met one man who had been altered by the weirding in sleep, to wake knowing he wasn't truly human anymore. Everyone else had been awake, running from it and engulfed in wild power to become no longer themselves, bent and twisted beyond human norm or seeming. She'd survived when she shouldn't have, not at all: she'd heard one of those chasing her scream, high and bubbly, the sound of shattering bone. They'd call it luck, her living, though it never felt like that at all.

The boy in the room had frozen on seeing her, frozen further at the weirding boiling in behind and she – Amaris shoved thought-memory away, buried deep, heard a hitch in breath, footsteps moving closer in a slow pain-shuffle and opened her eyes finally as she shifted position. Clothing had been placed under her head, the smell ill-washed and sharp, her knives shifted in position – all three found, none removed – and the small glow light she'd found not longer after she started being a runner was sitting up on a shelf in the small room, the light of it a washed-out yellow hue she'd never seen before.

The boy whose hiding she'd invaded was crouched down, watching her in still wariness. A mess of filthy bandages and queer glittering eyes studied her warily; his cloak was gone, source of the smell behind her head, though strips of it were wrapped about his lower right arm. She wouldn't have put his age past her own but it was always hard to know in the city. The weirding could twist ages, make years bleed away. If it could happen, the weirding could do it: that was the only law everyone agreed on. And even those scoured by the weirding had no desire to face it again, no matter how close to the stone bedrock of the city they had to hide from the eyes of others. Which explained him, but nothing else.

The room whose window she'd leaped into was large enough to hold the two of them in comfort. The wood was old city, solid and well-built leavened by occasional streaks of odd colours, stones and minerals left over from the weirding passing through it over the years. No door remained into the rest of what had probably been a home but neither was there a clue Almaris could see to explain that. The weirding wreaked what it did and all that was left was to cope with the world it left behind.

She sat up, palming the knife stolen from what had been a kitchen in the red square of the city. It had been a kind of miracle: for two days the weirding had boiled over one area in sights and sounds and smells that seemed scarcely anything at all and when it left not a person had been touched but every other thing had turned a bright, brilliant red. Everyone had fled it, waiting for the second shoe to drop. You could find good things in it, if you were careful enough, and a solid knife was worth at least a life.

"You have a name?"

"Zel." His voice was soft, a little hoarse, but a cough rattled through that. "You?" he said, a bit stronger.

"Amaris." She reached behind her and pulled up the ball of brown that had been the cloak, handing it back wordlessly.

Zel took it, unfolding it with both hands and putting it on. His movements were slow and stiff and a hiss of pain escaped him as the clothing brushed his new-bandaged arm.

She knew she should have left. Asked no questions, trusted to luck and just bolted out the window she'd come in. The first layer of the city was deep-touched by the weirding: no one remained down here by choice, this close to the old stone buildings and canals that had been the city long and ago. The twisted and changed lived on such levels, and worse things beside, but –

the memory of the weirding brushing her reared up; she shoved it back down, held up her knife. "Can I see it?"

Zel blinked, then held out his arm wordlessly. It shook, as much from the offer as the pain, and she moved slowly forward, setting down her knife and peeling back strips of cloak. The skin under it was pale-human but bubbled, like metal rippled by the weirding, and pale pus oozed out even under her light touch.

"What?" she said, not letting go of his arm. Some people's skin could burn, blood eat through wood and even stone. This just smelled of sickness, sharp and sour and he seemed without surprise.

"Being close the weirding hurts." Nothing else. Not how the rest of him must look, how badly such a wound would heal. He pulled his arm back, stronger than she'd thought he was.

Amaris let go. Smart would be going. Smart wasn't last night, fleeing three hunters at random. She hadn't meant to become a runner, but had nothing else she could offer others beyond the passing of messages. You don't last six months as a runner without getting some flow: people wanting things, the curious, the hunters for talismans. A Merchant Lord's interest, if the silent one a month ago had been anything to go by. Even luck couldn't last against all that.

She rubbed her left arm, stood. "Stay. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Zel said nothing; she left the globe behind, the only thing she could say to the wariness in his eyes, and slipped out the window before he could ask questions she didn't want to try to answer.