The Thousand Flower Throne loomed on the dais. The throne, though rendered in gold and fine enamels by masters of a bygone age, was not as striking as the dainty figure propped upon it. Sitting in her own personal storm cloud of black silk was an austere-looking, scrub-rose-faced woman. A scrub rose that had earned its place in this garden not by the merit of its particular splendor but on the cunning of its thorns. This rose queen with her tenacious tendrils and piecing gaze cast her eyes down from her high garden perch to me.
“Well, captain?” Her voice was like pruning shears. Precise and ruthless. “What have you learned of our visitor?”
Tag: City of a Thousand Flowers
The man with the sandwich
The cat squinted in irritation. The man had quite rudely invaded its alley. He had not even offered a bit of the sandwich he was gnawing on. It was a rather good-smelling sandwich too with some sort of fish spread on a hot loaf. The cat gave a disgruntled hrmph before beginning a half-hearted bath hoping the man would notice and toss him a tidbit. The man did not in fact notice the cat. He was too busy gazing across the busy market, watching a monstrous man draped in a boar skin haggle over some bangles.
Tempest
The sea was a wine-dark expanse, churning and gnawing. It mirrored her own tempestuous thoughts. Her normally immaculate tunic showed the damage of a day’s distress. Bits of firey hair escaped from the previously intricately sewen bird’s nest that crowned her head. The flyaway bits clung to her sweat-coated brow and neck. The southern winds were blowing but provided no relief from the smothering heat, just a fine dust that clung to everything making the world drab and gritty. It was summer and her thoughts churned dark and terrible like the sea before her. It was summer and revolution was imminent.