Not to say I'm absolutely in love with this. It's just that it's complete enough. It could be the first chapter. If, you know, I don't completely axe it.
Edit: Okay, I'm splitting this into 3 parts. It's so long for one blog post.
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She thought she would be okay on the path, but now Esmeralda felt unprepared. School had taught her the area around Fishery (surrounded on three sides by swamp, the last by water), but studying maps in school was different from being there. There are small villages periodically through the swamp. These were not originally villages, but outposts for guards to sleep when not on duty, protecting us from the unreformed natives of the swamps. Once out of the swamp, the towns are more scattered. She wondered if this would feel less intimidating if she had been more adventurous as a child, like her siblings. Perhaps she should have waited until morning. Once Fishery was out of sight, the path was the only thing she had to keep from being entirely lost. The air seemed to be a thick greenish brown, which she didn’t even realize was possible. The fog made it much darker than she had anticipated, even though the moon was nearly full.
How could she have believed that knowing it all on paper would mean she could find her way in real life? She knew from school that Fishery in itself was a great feat of the God King. Traveling to and from Fishery was certainly easier now, but it was generally done with more than one girl who was not even of age yet, alone in the middle of the night. She paused to look around, and then quickened her pace. Esmeralda tried to ignore the swamp and concentrate on the glorious stories of the God King. How he always kept the smartest by his side, and worked with them to figure out how to use the ocean beyond all of this swamp.
‘The natives simply lived in the swamp, but we were smarter than that. Fishery was a place built half on the swamp, half on the ocean itself, so that we could use the waters and not have to endure the hardships of the swamp. The God King and his best workers built the brick path as they went so that the families could make it through the swamp to live in this great city.’ She was proud to be from Fishery, and to be a part of the Empire.
She loved stories of the God King. That’s how she became friends with Sarah. Their family used to live in Capitol, and when the family they served came to Fishery, they packed up too. They came to town around a year after Esmeralda’s father died. And they had a collection of God King books. Their master had given them the family’s children’s books after the children had grown and left. Sarah and Esmeralda met at the Festival, where Sarah was buried in one of the books, holding onto her mother’s hand, ignoring the festivities. After Esmeralda learned Sarah had such a collection, they began meeting secretly, and reading them to each other. Esmeralda loved the stories, and loved even more that the subject was taboo in their home. She never found out why they never talked about the God King in their home. There was never a punishment for it because it was never acknowledged as something bad. It was something to be swept under the rug, nothing more, nothing less.
Esmeralda always assumed that the stories of Fishery and the swamp were exaggerated, like how much of the road the God King himself built, and the vastness of the swamp. While she could say nothing of how many bricks the God King had laid by hand, she now considered “vast” to be an understatement in terms of the swamp. She had no sense of how far she’d gone or how long she’d been traveling.
She noticed a man in armor walking her way, so she tried to look confident. She had to hide her shaking hands when he asked what she was doing here, late at night, but she had prepared.
"I know it's late sir. I got word that my cousin is sick in Penance, and they don't know how much time she has left, so I started out as soon as possible."
He thought about this. Esmeralda thought about all the things that could happen if he didn't believe her. What if he sent her to the Penance prison? That's not the way she wants to get into the city. But they don't send you to the mines for little things like this. Do they? What if he thought she was a threat? If he had to "take care" of her? She could be taken down by most people fairly quickly. A trained guard in armor could tear her apart. Before Esmeralda's mind went any further, the guard turned to her and asked if she knew the way. She told him she did, and that she tries to see her cousin as much as she can. In fact, she had just come back from there, having spent the year with her. She had only been back for a month. It was frustrating considering it takes easily twice that long to travel there, but it was her cousin after all. The point was, she was sure she hadn't forgotten it. Esmeralda wasn't sure why she built on the lie. Since she had already tricked him, most of it was fluff. Regardless, he was satisfied with the answer. He asked to look through her bag, but then let her continue on. He was only the first guard she would come across, and she had a pretty good story now.
Was it necessary to lie at all? The guards patrolling the path here wouldn't be concerned with a girl running after her siblings. Especially if they believe her to be an adult. They were here to look out for smugglers and to protect us from those damn natives. The stories of the natives in the Blight are worse than stories of the Penancians. The natives in the colonies supposedly have some respect for the kingdom, but it's better to be safe about things like that.
The first town she came across was right in the middle of the swamp, and it felt like it. The air was thick, slimy, and dank, and the people were no different. Well, they didn’t look any different. Esmeralda wanted to assume they were perfectly nice people that were unkempt because it was difficult in the swamp, but she felt no need to find out one way or the other.
There was a pervasive smell in the inn that seemed like what the swamp would smell like if it had somehow gone bad. When she walked in, there was a strange man in the corner, staring at her, and another strange man behind the bar, who ran the place. He reminded her of the monster in the children’s book Sarah read to calm her the first time she ran away from home. That story was about the early days, when the God King was just starting to build the kingdom, and a great monster was threatening the people. The God King, of course, fought the monster, and when it was destroyed, he vowed to always protect his people from the evil of the world. It was all very grand.
She suddenly felt very aware that she was not in Fishery anymore. She could feel her heart beating, and had a brief thought of getting home on fumes and adrenaline. She told herself to keep going. There was nothing she could do in Fishery. Everything was towards Penance. And from what she’s heard about Penance, Esmeralda was wondering if she’d ever feel safe again.
But nobody had harassed her. Nobody had even talked to her, or even come near her. She let the weirdness of this new place get to her. She marched up to the bar, determined to be cheerful and friendly, and asked for a room. Looking at the man again, a bit more calmly, she realized that he looked nothing like the monster. He was not, by any measure, an attractive man, but not monster-like. She grabbed the key and headed to her room. She still felt a bit spooked by this place, but she was exhausted. All she could do now was close her eyes and hope nothing gets into her room while she sleeps.
