Cutting Edge

- 6:00 -

This is traffic warden and adventurer accountant-in-training Lapis Beast Junior and today is the most terrible day of his life. Yet he, like many others before him, did not know of the life changing events that were to come.

The forthcoming terrible day should have been obvious to Lapis from the moment he opened his eyes. People who awaken to a familiar ceiling and the usual sound of a bustling street know that the day to come will likely follow the ebb and flow of every other day before. Lapis Beast awoke to an unfamiliar ceiling and dead silence.

Lapis stared up into the gloom. The frescos stared uncomfortably back at him. Usually, he woke to magpies warbling atop gum trees and golden rays streaming through the curtains on a soft breeze. The heavy canvas that covered the room's windows blocked all but the most persistent of light.

One more month and I'm free from this place.

Not wanting the melancholy of the morn to dampen his mood, he rose from his cot. A sudden stiffness caught him by surprise and his spine bulked at his efforts to straighten. The cot, and recent workbench, had been the only horizontal surface not covered in jars of paint or brushes. With any luck, he would be sleeping in his own room tonight.

His mother had been explicitly clear that he would not be sleeping in the guest room. That was reserved for potential boarders. Lapis had pointed out there had not been any boarders for the last decade, but his mother like a stripped screw.

Swiftly, he pushed the thoughts from his mind. A negative mind leads to a evil heart. Words spoken by Master Laoren, the greatest fighter this side of the Purple Ocean.

Positive. Positive. Positive. Stay it. Or was it say it?

Regardless. Lapis stretched, ignoring the cracks of his joints, ran his hands through his dark long hair and drew the curtains to take in the morning light only to have the brief glimpse of the sunrise robbed from him by a street vendor parking his cart right in front of the window.

Positive! Just one more month till freedom.

Lapis turned his back on the window. In the dim light, he could just make out the broad brushstrokes of the artwork that dominated all four walls and ceiling of what was once his childhood bedroom but now his mother's idea room.

Despite spending the night here, Lapis still had no idea what the swirling patterns and hideous attempts at facial expressions represented. His mother had said the work presented an argument for the question of sobriety. Lapis didn't know what the word sobriety meant, and he doubted his mother did either, but if it had anything to do with bad mental health, she had successfully captured the spirit of the debate.

He shuffled out of room, avoiding jars of paint along the way, and made his way into the kitchen where he found his father seated at the table reading the Daily Dump. The bold headline on the front page read, 'Unlicensed Muggings Down', Enforcers say.

"Good morning, junior," said his father from behind the paper. "Did you manage to sleep?"

"I think the paint fumes left me no choice," said Lapis as he prepared breakfast. "The cot did a number on my back though."

"You'll get used to it," said his father. "During the war, the boys and I slept on every surface you can imagine at every angle you can imagine. Horizontal. Vertical. Diagonal. Transversal."

"Yes, you told me last night and I'm pretty sure you've told me before that," said Lapis joining his father at the table. "So, when will I be back to my room upstairs?"

"Not too sure on that. We have to establish where all the water came from first."

"I'm fairly certain you'll find it was the sky. It has been raining for the past three days."