Day 29 Writing Short Stories

Red

Blades had kept her alive, so had her nimbleness. But mostly, it was her ability to read people and their basic needs. Within minutes, she clocked their insecurities and their weakness, how they held themselves, how they carried their blade, what side they favored. And after years of brutal training, she did it automatically. She was the Shadow’s blade, and she would keep being the Shadow’s blade and shift the balance of the city to his desires as long as she kept reading the room and staying alive.

Once, the Shadow’s men were called assassins. It proposed things done in secrecy. But her red hair made sure she was known. Her blades kept people alert in her presence. And her reputation always preceded her. More so now. They laughed at her fiery hair and said that it was all the warmth she had gotten, that there was just ice where her heart was.

Tonight, she was meant to be the kingmaker with her blades. The city had had enough of the foolish child and his whims. It was seen better that his cousin would take the throne. And she was to execute that. The guards let her in. The king’s knights let her pass. So it was paid. There was no need to walk in the shadows, and she knew what it meant as soon as she arrived behind the king’s door and heard his mistress inside with the king. She was witnessed.

All her instincts told her to step in and finish what she had started despite the consequences. This was how the script went, and she was to follow it. The scars from the lashes on her back felt tight. She reached for the door handle and pulled her hand back, listening to the guards’ murmurs. They waited expectantly, alarm curled on their lips, ready to be let out.

Her hands trembled. She tied her fingers around the door handle, but she couldn’t. She stepped into the shadows as she did in the old times. She counted the guards’ steps, feeling in the echoes how the castle warped and turned itself. The cousin would be in the other halls. This was how it should go. Hidden.

The cousin was fully awake, pacing in his room. The guards on his door made it hard to finish what had to be done, but not impossible. She waited for their attention to shift, their chatter to take them, and she killed the first one and then the second with one shift move, her blades silencing their arteries. She brought the guards down as silently as she could and then stepped into the cousin’s room. He recognized her. First, he was smiling, but then that smile turned to terror, and she took pleasure in seeing her red hair reflected in his dying eyes.

“Take this as my resignation,” she whispered into his ear, knowing that the Shadow’s witches would hear them. She cut her hair off and let it fall on the cousin’s chest, and then she slipped out the window, climbing down the rugged stone wall. She knew where the road would take her. It would be to the salt mines, to home.

—

The gods of randomness gave me a second chance to write another fantasy story with slight alterations from yesterday. This time, instead of lyrical, I got my voice-driven style. And the quest changed into a voyage and return, and from first-person to omniscient third-person point of view.

On a side note, why does chaos exist in medical cabinets? Or at least it does in mine. On another side note, last night I had a bizarre dream, and I remembered telling a friend in the dream that the only constant in life is dust; that we all become dust eventually, that our houses are riddled with it. A strange dream with thunder and airplanes. I was trying to get somewhere. Not sure where.

I couldn’t find the omniscient rhythm in the story. I really wanted to, but it didn’t come out naturally, so I dropped it and didn’t force myself to use it. I’m not sure if I did our hero justice. I have this sense that something is missing, but I’m not sure what. I feel restlessness seeping in, pulling me away from the computer. I managed to write my own book today. The words felt right. I’m glad that I got something right at least there.

Now I need to get off the computer and do something else.

Thank you for reading! Have a day in the wild ❤