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The sky groans, a metallic rasp like nails on a chalkboard. Aloetta tightens her grip on the rusted handrail as the walkway sways. Skydebris falls past her, down to the Undercity with its sprawling streets and billboards. From up there, their home looks small enough to cup in one hand, rot and decay and putrid stench and all.
"You ever ask yourself what the Overworld's like?" Aloetta bellows. Her voice sounds uncomfortably loud even to her: the sky's fallen silent again.
Mermot, a scrawny teen with a carefree grin, adjusts his backpack behind her. "People fighting over scraps while the lords feast, same old," he says.
Aloetta snorts. "And who's to say they're not all lords up there?"
Her companion shrugs and the two press on, Aloetta gripping the handrails like her life depends on it, and Mermot following along behind her. At some point Aloetta stops, curses when the sky groans once more, and Mermot makes some sort of quip. This repeats a few times until they reach a platform.
Long, thick chains, coiled together rising ever upwards into the sky itself, while thick pillars root firmly into the ground below. Swaying walkways connect this platform to others of its kind, dotted around the upper reaches of the Undercity in a pattern no one understands.
Or at least, not anyone down here.
Aloetta lets out the tension in her legs and sinks to the floor, while Mermot puts down his backpack and fishes out their rations.
"So whaddya reckon their food tastes like?" Aloetta asks.
Mermot shrugs and hands her a small, grey tin. "Recycled sewage and bitter dreams, same as anything else."
Aloetta spits but has no reply.
"Fifty-three times," she says.
Mermot pries some sticky paste from his tin and pushes it into his mouth. Recycled mystery meat, probably from their ancestors.
Aloetta continues anyway. "You think we'll get something this time?"
"Disappointment, if I had to guess. Yours, mostly."
She knows he's serious. Mermot only accompanies her because it puts money in his wallet, not because he believes like she does. Believes that somewhere in that endless sea of grey, there's a speck of colour, a glimmer of hope. A promise of a better life.
Aloetta glances back the way they came. The walkway swaying gently in the wind. A single misstep is all it takes to become one of the many on the human compost heap that is their home. What she won't give to have a life spent at home, far from the dangers of the Wastes.
It's a life she wishes to pass on to the children.
"I'll succeed. Even if I have to go down a hundred times, I'll succeed."
Aloetta's courage feels bleak as the grey sky above. Fifty-three times she's descended these rickety sky-chains, each descent a gut-churning plunge into the Underworld's festering maw. Experience doesn't ease her descent, and she grips the chain till her knuckles turn white.
Mermot reaches the floor moments after. His expression is like he's amused at their routine self-inflicted colonoscopy. "Woo, best part of the journey over."
For all the time they've spent together, his mind's still as mysterious to her as on the day they met.
He reaches out with a rag--once, she had given him that handkerchief--and dabs at the sweat beading around her forehead. "Maybe you're getting too old for this."
"I'll be too old for this when I'm in a damned cask," Aloetta growls.
Either that, or buried somewhere in the rotten guts of the Underworld, feeding the lifeless mud and dreck. One of the countless others, forgotten by people too absorbed in their own suffering to look after someone else.
Down here, life and death are like two sides of the same damn coin. What Aloetta wouldn't give for some change.
"Suppose we should get started," Mermot mumbles.
Aloetta nods. She reaches into Mermot's backpack and takes out a telescopic rod; fully extended, it just about reaches to her waist.
The two move on. And although the dangerous part of the journey's done, the trek at ground level isn't exactly easy: their every step sinks them just over ankle-deep into the mud. Each time they drag their boots up, mud and something glowy is dragged along with it. Then their boots sink back into the earth, their every step a battle against the hungry earth, eager to swallow them whole.
Aloetta taps her rod against the ground every so often. Behind her, Mermot follows along with a small booklet where he scribbles something every now and again. It almost feels like a personal insult--here she is, risking her everything on this venture, while Mermot tags along, whistling to himself like it's some science experiment.
She wishes she could just march up to him, take that damn booklet, and hurl it into the mud. His youthful strength lets him traverse the Wastes with ease, while here she is, begging every part of her body to press onward, even as it protests and demands a rest, to just let herself fall into the mud and be dragged down to join the other forgotten hopefuls.
Just as she's about to turn around and yell at Mermot, a shrill chime pierces the silence. Aloetta looks down at the rod, once lifeless, now chiming softly and slowly.
Mermot looks up from his book. His face--for once bereft of his stupid grin--plastered with...surprise? Hope?
"What gives?" He could not sound more annoyed if he tried. "Malfunction?"
When Aloetta doesn't answer, Mermot scrambles to catch up to her.
"What's wrong?" he tries again. "Is that damn thing broken?"
Aloetta can't speak. She points at the rod, fingers trembling. When she moves the rod, the chiming becomes louder, faster, faster, faster, until the rhythm matches the drumming of her own heartbeat. Fifty-three journeys and not a peep, and now the rod was producing a freaking symphony.
There, straight ahead from where the rod is pointing, there covered by a thin layer of mud, a sliver of defiance.
A tiny streak of colour. A string of green, barely the size of her pinky finger, struggling skyward. Weak, spindly, but undeniably alive, and here, and real.
A tear streaks down Aloetta's face, carving out a path through the grime and muck.
This isn't hope, or the promise of a better life. Not yet. This is a tiny miracle clawing its way out of the Underworld's rot-filled belly.
Mermot approaches the plant with measured steps. When he's just over it, he squats down, fingers softly brushing the mud from the plant. He leans in closer, until his face is so close, he could kiss it. He whispers.
"What are you doing?" she asks. It surprises her how hoarse her voice is.
Mermot straightens back up, grin back on his face. No. This time, it reaches across his entire face and up to his eyes. He's smiling. "It's a finger, grandmother."
Aloetta laughs despite herself. The sound has an eerie echo out here in the Wastes. "A finger," she repeats. It's true: a tiny middle finger, jutting out from the earth to flip off the Overlords, their decadence and rot, the hopelessness of their existence.
There, in the bleak Wastes, where nothing ever lives and everything ever dies, she, no, they've finally found the tiniest spark of hope.
After five hundred years, the Underworld has produced its first sprout. NEW PROMPT:
FirstThird Kiss
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last edit on Apr 26, 2024 14:15:48 GMT by traveller "Once upon a time I was a baker and everybody was impressed. But I didn’t need approval because I already knew I was the best. Everything I made was a masterpiece - it all taste like heaven! But then unfortunately I turned seven."
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