Alive At Crepusculum ✓ [TPL Book One]

VII EDITING

editing...

A slave ship from the north on due course to U.A. was making a two-day stop at Lwendolen. This ship was not the Florence, but a ship that went by the name of Princess Rosella after the shipmaker's wife's loyal poodle.

It carried a dozen or so slaves in its cargo hold and a dozen or so passengers. Many passengers got off at Lwendolen to stretch their legs, but in truth they were tickled with morbid curiosity to see the destitute country and the shadows of its once grand days. Some well-to-do patrons from U.A. took an unhealthy liking in urchin boys, enticing them with money and candy to bring them home to their plantations to work them, but not just in the fields.

Others who had heard of the fall of an elite family called the Quads, road the train—which they had never seen before and 'my, how lovely!'—and went all the way to Nimrod City to take a gander at the old Quad mansion now deserted and constantly trespassed into. It was a ghost of any former glory with an overrun garden out front. Still the shattered glass where bullets were said to have shot the patriarch of the house in the chest—a rumor much embellished—were still there and visible. Photographs were taken to commemorate the experience and, of course, the U.A. tourists had to visit every single location involved in the 'Quad Incident' as it was now called.

The city of Mourning—which was pretty much abandoned save for a few middle-aged street musicians who refused to leave. Leftover Restaurant—now transformed into a tavern where the poor could get a pint to drink for less than a copker which was the equivalent to a lanny in U.A. Then there was the place commonly referred to as the 'Black Mansion' because it was painted all black—U.A. tourists went there to see the name plaque that read "Sorientto" and shook their heads. There had been potential in the young businessman called Fernando Sorientto thirty years ago until greed got the best of him and he began to perish at his own hands.

Fernando Sorientto now lived in his home country of Sensland alone with no wife as she divorced him two years after giving birth to their daughter. Wife and child went to live in Parajan while Fernando went from high to low. U.A. tourists who had businesses of their own knew they could have saved him from his demise because they knew better, or so they thought. Though neither of them could see past their own egos as it were.

And so, the U.A. tourists hurried about to get all their morbid curiosity satisfied in two days before Princess Rosella would leave Lwendolen and make her way home to less gloomy grounds.

But not everyone was as enthusiastic as the U.A. tourists. There were a few passengers who were on study tour from Koltsland and this was not all fun and games. They were on their way to U.A. for the first time and they didn't want to mess around.

One of these serious folks was Allen Steel. Anyone who met Allen would have been intimidated by his broad shoulders and huge stature. He was a big man to say the least and even at the age of fifty-five, he retained the fitness of his younger days. His bushy black mustache, light brown skin, and shaggy black hair gave the impression of a countryman.

He was standing on the docks, still wanting to stretch his legs on non-moving land, but staying close to the ship. Being in Lwendolen made him anxious. He had a past here he didn't like revisiting. Lwennen police made him nervous even though he knew they wouldn't recognize him. No one had since the day he "died".

Although he did give off the impression of man who didn't want company, if anyone were to talk to him, they would soon realize he was a true friendly Kolt that drawled out all his vowels and took his leisurely time to answer questions even in the most immediate of situations.

Allen gazed out at the docks of Featherly, the coast of Nimrod, but still an hour's worth of train ride from the main part of the city. It was a cloudy, brooding day and he had always known Nimrod to be this way. He didn't like that he could remember it. But forgetting a past that was engrained in his very existence here, today, was not an easy task. Even though thirty years had passed since his "death", Allen was still captured in Nimrod's talons.