Cricket

Oh the work is heavy and load is hard and there's a thing about effort for a just reward, and they say that if you love it then it isn't that hard, but they lied You put in your effort and you say your say and you're spitting wind at the end of the day and the work begins to splinter, the patience to fray but you do it. And somehow it's finished, somehow it's done yet it feels like the effort has only begun and your share of the load was by someone who might not be you It's never as you wanted and it's never as you've seen and they say there's something there about a dream but oh the work is light when you love what you do... but they lied.

Cricket was spared a chance to blush in embarrassment. Embarrassment at being so dirty, at being caught and dirty, at talking and being offered friendship and people her own age. A million responses flowed through her mind to all these questions and people and things. How does a fish swim in the air, what's Minta like, don't drop the cup when ya sip from it, dummy, you lose a summer when the black clouds come with the ash and everything goes hazy and the trees die, how do you become a picture? She pressed her lips silent on them all, and instead looked with wide eyes as the man in the dark robes walked in. He frightened her, enough to hold her still like some sort of small creature, and his title only confirmed that instinct. Yet she held her breath as she leaned forward. The picture-man, Zool... was it? had said something about dragons and abductions, and she hung there, waiting for his next word...

Cricket sat down with a heavy plonk in the proffered chair, a nervous twist to her legs as they swung into place under the table. "'m Cricket," she introduced herself, adding, "I'm not a kid neither, I've got..." Her insistence was paused for a count. "I've got nine summers what I remember, an' one that I lost, and maybe more, at least that's what Sendra told me." Her age displayed proudly, like a badge won, she beamed at the people who gave her a seat and a cup filled with something that wasn't stale and murky. And then the beam is dropped to her grimy hands. Her foot is rubbed against a pair of stained trousers, as if the act would eliminate the months of filth. Was she rude? She looked up sidelong once more at Rydia and Zool, before reaching and taking her first sip from the glass. Oh, that's nice. She almost choked on it, unprepared for the taste. The cup was carefully placed down again, and she looked at Rydia, with her earrings and her prettiness and she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "How do you lose a fish?"

Cricket tugged at her kerchief, scruffed her hair, stalled. "You're... not going to toss me to the junker?" Another moment of silent contemplation went by. The noises weren't alarms, weren't the half-wired klaxons going off over some tripped trap. The feet weren't in boots that kick. The portrait was talking to her. The risk-benefit analysis running through her head was quick, hastened by the rumbling of her stomach. When the portrait reiterated his invitation, she wobbled onto her knees. Her hands lifted the table cloth and she shuffled out from beneath. Her dirty, half-gloved hands gripped the table and she cautiously lifted herself to look at the portrait more closely, one hand passing at her nose with a sniff. "...Good spread," she said, shuffling.

She sat under the table. The fine linens were softer than anything salvaged or spun back home and provided her some comfort against the noise and light and strange otherness she found herself in. There had been a cave, tucked into the mountains and curving away from the hot winds and skin-flaying sands. The cave had led to a tunnel, which had... gone places. Eventually there had been a different sort of cave, paved smooth with filthy water running through it. There had been a grate, and in a move practiced a million times in a million places she wasn't supposed to go, she had slipped through it. There had been a kitchen, luring her in with the aroma of sumptuous meals and rich food that she hadn't known to exist in the history of ever. There had been loud people and lots of movement, people with knives and pans and creatures and breads too large to be real. Afraid, she had ducked under a cart, and held on in silent terror as it moved. When it stopped, she had hidden under a table instead, waiting for the moment she could find her way out again, caught between opportunity at the most mouthwatering place she had ever dreamed of (scratch that, who could ever dream of this?) and safety. Home. Then there had been feet and voices above here. She sat under the table, frozen.