Tag: 100-days challenge
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Patina – Chapter 113

Sadja had followed the Hunter on a series of days of training, outside in the snowy woods. She got her first few killings, though it was mostly small-fry, tiny critter Eerie that wouldn’t be able to threaten the town. All in all, after she told him about the failing generator and the worries about holy…
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Patina – Chapter 112

A little trick Sadja learned was that if you kept quiet and let people talk as if you were not there, eventually they’d talk about interesting topics. Now, that’s not to say she was completely asocial: look at her, she was helping. Covered from head to toe in grease streaks, crouched on a scalding pipeline…
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Patina – Chapter 111

The Hunter settled his hunting rifle on his right shoulder and kneaded his aching eye. Setting up guard wasn’t the kind of job he was the best at anymore, but they had corralled him into doing it again, and truth to be told, it was indeed a welcome change from hour after hour of wall…
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Patina – Chapter 110

They ate beneath a slab of rock sticking out of the snow. Dry vines and splotches of faded paint covered its surface, creating patterns of alternating colors that attracted Sadja’s attention even as she sat down to pry her canned food open and enjoy decades-old delicacies. “Is there a way to make these anew?” She…
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Patina – Chapter 109

Sadja had her eyes closed and the world spoke in rhythmic whispers. Her body lay against a tree, a grey wizened pine that had seen too many winters to remember the time before the war. She felt its roots trying to find purchase in the frozen soil, beneath the snow and tiny pillars of sap…
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The Care of Flowers – 3/3
Atropa Belladonna smiled and brought herself to a seat between two bushes. With her naked feet dangling in the night air and her ivory mane she might have seemed as harmless and fragile as those terracotta dolls the Children of Men sold in one of San Marino’s shops. Even concealed as she was, Artemisia’s chest…
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The Care of Flowers – 2/3
Night came as it is wont to do: a thief with its wide black bag, spilling stars from east to west, leaving only a few thing alabaster lines lingering on the trail of the sun. Artemisia sat on a wide and comfortable chair at the edge of the roof garden. Her shop was closed down…
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The Care of Flowers – 1/3
As seen from the outside, the shop might have seemed utterly innocent. A tea room hunkered on the inner slope of San Marino’s hill, sitting on the very crest of the rock tide; on the one side large dark table that looked onto the cobblestone road, on the other the astounding view of trees and…
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Patina – Chapter 108

Cramped inside, cramped outside. Sadja reached for the larger pen, tracing down the last few letters on the sign in thick black lines. Her hand was steady, but painting signs while sitting on her knees for hours on end was starting to get to her. “Is this correct?” She asked the old smith-woman who had…
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Patina – Chapter 107

Valeriana, current Augur of Dorsoduro, never liked it when a communal meeting was scheduled. It was always for the worse reasons, and there were at least two she could count. The threads she sent onto possible futures all buzzing into a bad situation for all of them. The first reason was the most cruel winter…