DragonInk (Eragon Writing Competition)

Round One: Entries

Dagny (impossible_colours)

Dagny shoved aside the folds of faded old fabric, hunching her shoulders to walk through the doorway. Her house, for want of a better word, was a ruined, abandoned shed with rotted wooden planks over the worse holes in the crumbling stonework. It had probably been the home of a rich merchant's servants, back when this was the wealthy quarter of the city. However, the area had long been given over to slums and the formerly luxurious homes of the upper class converted into tenements.

The whole place stank of dust and damp.

"Dagny?" A small, thin figure stood up from the floor when she came in. Brigitta blinked in the daylight streaming in through the gap in the ragged curtain over the doorway.

"It's me." She smiled reassuringly at her little sister. Brigitta's long, dark hair fell knotted and unkempt down her back and she shivered in her oversized, threadbare shirt and patched leggings. Her hungry eyes shone out of her pale, grimy face.

"Did you - " She asked eagerly. Dagny held up a fat loaf of bread, grinning when Brigitta's words cut off in a delighted gasp.

"A whole loaf." Awe suffused her sister's words. "How did you -"

Dagny set the loaf down on the rickety table, taking her knife from her belt. She wiped it on the torn edge of her shirt, then busied herself slicing the loaf.

"That pretty young thing Crimley's got an eye for showed up." She explained, grinning with unconcealed amusement. Brigitta sniggered. "He wasn't exactly keeping a close eye on his wares."

She passed Brigitta a thick slice and the tiny girl tore into it with all the savagery of a hungry wolf.

"Is she...?"

Mouth still full, Brigitta jerked her head towards the back end of the shed. "She's still asleep." She added, words muffled by bread.

Dagny left her to her breakfast, moving with the quietness of a born thief towards a frail, blanket-covered form lying huddled on the floor beside the far wall. She dropped to her knees beside it.

"Mama? Wake up." She brushed sweaty, matted hair tenderly from her mother's forehead. The sleeping woman stirred, eyelids fluttering.

"Mama, you need your breakfast." Gently, gently as possible, Dagny shook her mother awake. Disorientated and bleary-eyed, she sat up, blankets pooling around her waist.

"What is it...what..?" Her mother blinked sleepily at her.

"It's time for breakfast." Dagny said patiently, holding out the hunk of bread as evidence. Her mother stared blankly at her, a crinkle appearing between her brows.

"Mother?" Mama asked, her eyes clouded with confusion and worry. Dagny's chest tightened. Mama thought she was her own grandmother, who was more than twenty years dead.

"It's time for breakfast, Alivia." She repeated, expertly suppressing her upset and switching to her mother's given name.

"I..no, Mother. I'm not hungry, I just want..want to sleep." Mama made to lie back down on her crumpled nest of blankets and Dagny grabbed her skinny arm, careful not to hurt her.

"No, Alivia." She put more force behind the words this time. "You need to eat."

Her mother stared at her with blank eyes for a moment, like she was couldn't understand what she was hearing. Then, slowly and jerkily as a marionette, she reached for the bread. Dagny stood up noiselessly, watching to make sure she ate. Mama worried at the food, tearing it into tiny, fractured pieces before delicately placing them between her lips. But she ate.