This is the fourth chapter of the Fang & Bone serial; click here to visit the previous installment of Fang of Triseria. Please share your thoughts on the story in the comments, or visit the project hub for more information.
Corea stepped into the darkness of early morning outside her small home. She took in the scent of damp earth and enjoyed the cool sensation of the mist clinging to her skin. She appreciated the quiet of the mornings when she and Garen would do their chores, in those few blissful hours before their grandmother woke up and the coughing began.
Only Garen had not been seen for days. Six days. No, it was day seven now. She’d need to go to the mayor again today. Petition a search. But first, chores.
There were always chores.
The home was more of a hovel. She was old enough now to know why. The ramshackle building was erected in haste to shelter her grandmother upon the escape from the old town, before everything that mattered in her 13 years of life. The homes were meant to be temporary, a measure of preserving some semblance of existence for Gordhurst.
But now it was a rotting box, kept standing by the efforts of herself, Garen, and Mister Gorten. Grandmother had her small closet, hastily assembled and kept near the stove. Meanwhile, she and Garen occupied the rotting wood floor mounted near the other side of the stove, their bedrolls facing the old burner.
It was a rotting box that required constant work to maintain. Their first step was always to chase off the bats nestled under the beams extending from the roof. They’d find quiet corners beneath the wood and thatch and huddle together. Their droppings were the only reason she and Garen didn’t try to kill them off.
Corea gathered thick slops of guano with a small trowel and dumped them into the bucket. She walked over to the inn, Mister Gorten’s place, and checked for piles there, of which there were enough to fill the bucket. The hovel was only a few yards from the inn. The shit helped maintain the modest garden they shared.
After some time, Corea made her way to the well, drew water, and washed her hands. She wiped them quickly across the apron she wore for choring and they were still quite wet. The morning air was chilling and bumps rose across her arms, but she welcomed it.
She paced around her home, looking for obvious cracks. She would pluck away sickly green leaves that tried to grow along the bottoms of the rotting wooden walls. Thankfully there seemed to be no need to patch between boards with tar today, nor were any planks overly rotted.
Garen was 15. Old enough to join the town guard of New Gordhurst – a collection of shanties erected around the inn and postal stop miles out from Gordhurst proper; she was there as they were built in the days after the tide of ghouls. As soon as Garen reached the morning of his fifteenth year, he marched to the mayor’s home, not much finer than the others in town, and signed up. There was a little ceremony and all, and within a month he vanished on a scouting expedition toward the old town.
Grandmother was too sick to protest much. She didn’t really speak at all for the past few years she had taken Corea and Garen in.
It was only Corea who protested her brother’s duties. She’d even kicked mud and dung at the mayor’s feet. Garen made her apologize for it. The mayor laughed and sent Garen toward the old town anyway. No harm.
Except her brother had been missing for seven days by sunset tonight.
Corea slipped out of her boots and to the door of her grandmother’s room. Inside the old woman slept propped up on the few pillows the Gorse family had. Her breathing was shallow and there was a rattle to it that made Corea nervous. She slid the door shut, scrapping the leather-hinged boards across the wooded floor.
She stoked the fire in the iron stove and set a small ceramic kettle in front of it, mounted on a stack of clay bricks. She squeezed the remains of the last day’s waterskin into the kettle and threw in a bundle of herbs that had been portioned out. She placed the chipped lid on the kettle and slipped back into her boots to walk across the dirt floor that led out of the home.
She stepped into the morning air again. It was still cold. Red dawn crept over the rutted street to her right. She’d need to check with Mister Gorten within the hour. He was kind enough to pay her to help him tend to the inn and tavern and she was thankful for it.
For now, the morning was hers to look for Garen and gather wild mushrooms and leaves. Hopefully, she would find all she was looking for.
Click here to visit the project hub for Fang of Triseria; click here to read the next installment of Fang & Bone.
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[…] is the fifth chapter of the Fang & Bone serial; click here to visit the previous installment of Fang of Triseria. Please share your thoughts on the story in […]