51st Fall, 514
There were many insufferable, intolerable things about Amoros' job - the fact that he had to do it at all, and the appalling lack of access to alcohol for example - but today it was the lack of sleep that was most prominently grating on the dock worker's mind. In the last twenty days he had worked night shifts, swing shifts, late shifts, double shifts; all in random patterns, all without the regularity required for his body to adapt to when sleep was expected to transpire. He'd complained to his supervisor, but the response had been brutally simple:
If you don't like it, become a reimancer. That way people'll have to cover for you while you do something useful for the city for a change.
It was the truth of course, but one Amoros wasn't pleased about admitting. It stung that Black Sun had laid the perfect opportunity to prove himself by asking the citizenry for volunteers, and here he was without the skill required to participate. Disheartening didn't even begin to cover it, and with the lack of sleep it was all beginning to leave him feeling run down and ragged, like a thing that was being, something -
He unleashed a grunt of frustration; he couldn't even manage to think straight, that was how dire things had become. It was all this petching fish's fault, though at least his coworkers had shut up about that. Alas, that was only because a new conspiracy had taken it's place: apparently the Dhani were secretly planning the city's downfall, or some other ridiculous nonsense. Okay, so there were certainly more of them around - though you could usually only notice them from the hissed accents of overheard conversations from otherwise indistinguishably human-looking people; but of course he was noticing more, because he was actively paying attention. So what if there were more of them here? Maybe shapeshifting snake people would turn out to be incredibly good at hunting giant mystery murder fish. Why everyone had to take the scantest clue and explode it into an elaborate conspiracy was beyond him.
Stooping slightly, he snagged the loose end of a well-used and weathered rope, and began to coil it around his arm. With travel across the lake so dangerous of late, ships were arriving in Ravok only every three days; today being one of them. It was a relief in a way, he supposed: with so many people stepping up to help Black Sun, they hardly had enough workers left to deal with arrivals more often. Unfortunately, that lack of pressure had allowed those workers still on the job - frustratingly the less competent and intelligent ones, for the most part - to become somewhat lax, and the quay at which the ship had just arrived had been littered with abandoned ropes, tools, and other debris that would trip unwary passengers and witless load-carrying workers alike.
Amoros watched as he wound the rope into a tidy bundle, idly surveying the passengers as they disembarked, wondering what madness brought them to Ravok at a time like this. Some were citizens he presumed, and merchants had little alternative but to go wherever the customers and the money was; but there were people descending from the ship with luggage. People, visitors, were choosing to be here. Take this one for example: what business did she have in Ravok? Pretty girl, long brown -
His mind froze completely. His eyes stared. He must be hallucinating. It was the only explanation: he'd missed too much sleep, and his eyes were deceiving him. There was no way that flash of recognition was real; no way that she was here. He stood transfixed, his insides copying the rope in his hands and coiling into a tight bundle. It couldn't possibly be her.
Could it?
