Verity hung the charms, little icons woven from mud and straw, from the lintel of her hut. She plucked hairs from her head, wincing each time; and she wound them around the metal hooks hammered into the wood. The little things spun in the breeze.
She shivered. It was getting dark.
She didn't have much firewood: a handful of dry twigs that she'd found in the grey forest, three logs. Enough for a night. Well, it would do. She knew what she had to do.
The wind that whipped from the north was sharp and cold.
Her hut had wooden bones, mud walls and a straw roof; it enclosed a single room. At the heart of that was a brick fireplace blackened from countless fires, with a brick chimney that peeked through the centre of the roof. Set on the floor around the walls were her belongings: a rough straw bed, her tools, her clothes. Now that the sun was setting behind the western mountains, casting sharp shadows across the clearing, it was hard to see in the dim hut.
She took her flint, pushed dry leaves under a pile of dry kindling, and began striking the stone and blowing, trying to spark a fire. It was slow going, but she forced herself to be patient.
Outside, all the birds took off at once in a flurry of wing beats, cawing in fear.
YOU ARE READING
Devils on Starfall Isle
Fantasy'Death is coming in the Autumn.' That's what Tira tells Verity. But Verity is stuck in her life, and doesn't understand just what's at stake, until it's much too late... A novella written for ONC23. Guidance: mild horror, sex references.
