I woke early, walked around the block, then celebrated the effort by getting breakfast from Braum’s. I probably have no excuse for not writing well too. Here goes…
I’ve never spent any time talking about Tritti; maybe I should. I’ve got a tendency to write innocents thinking they are powerful characters, but so far I’ve not completed writing anything with one nor have I accumulated any success-by-innocence scenes. What compels me here is the possibility that a character like Tritti could start innocent, learn more of the world of Shanty than she’d expected, grow because of it, and yet still retain the right sliver of that innocence to effect it as significantly as it effects her.
The character arc for Tritti then is one of maturation and annealing. That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. This means that I have to heap shit on her. It means that once she’s overcome one heaping she needs to anticipate the next. There are plenty of easy ways to heap shit on the new girl in town, but that wasn’t my originally intended plan.
Tritti pushed back the veil shielding her face to see the spec on the horizon with clear eyes. She turned her head side to side, but the spec remained. It must be real. She took a single swig of water from the hose at her chest and rinsed her tongue and teeth with the too-warm water. After swallowing, she eased a tube of lipwax out of an interior pocket in her robe and squeezed a bit on her finger to smooth on her lips. A second and third drop went into her nostrils. She pinched her nose several times to spread the balm evenly then shrugged the veil back in place.
There was no where to go to escape the heat, but the cloth across her face could tame the bright sand and calm the heat riffles. Before starting out again, Tritti picked an intervening rise of sand between her and the spec where she would sip from the hose again. The water had to last.
That rise of sand stretched into an indecipherable plain as Tritti approached making it much harder to decide when she’d reached the top. Her thirst for the next sip felt like agreeing to hold your breath for a minute and then being required to count out the seconds yourself instead of using a watch. Eventually she decided on ten more steps—not strides—before quenching her thirst and counted them out. By number ten, the spec had become the unmistakable t-shape of a sign post.
[some more stuff I don’t currently have the time for]
Tritti chuckled when she was close enough to read the sand battered words carved into the board: wait here. Another piece of wood jutted out from the rock cairn helping keep the post upright. It looked like someone might have embellished the message after the original one had been posted. She wondered what other information it might provide and quickened her pace to find out.
Reaching the sign, Tritti touched it like greeting an old friend; she was finally here. She knelt to turn over the other half of the carved message: for death. Together the sign read, “Wait here for death.”
543 words on day 759