"Corkboard wishes and young men's dreams"

[DoF Archive]

Date: 6/16/2000 11:59 PM Central Daylight Time
From: Beck Weller


Another moon had risen and set over the fractured Outback dome, another successful night of learning the art of fight had passed. Beck stumbled up to the wall, catching himself with one scarred hand against the corkboard. His breath was fitful at best, the rich gurgle at the bottom of his windpipe causing him a considerable amount of trouble just then.

He'd already completed four duels that night, each one a long and stretched out one. This in itself wouldn't have been a problem but for the speech required in between each. After the third, he could feel the chords in his throat tearing as he asked for another. The duels themselves did that injury no good, the air whistling through the airway only further damaged the tissue.

As he looked up at the messages tacked upon one another like so many layers of an onion, he once again regrets the fact that he cannot read. It was yet another of her Majesty's laws, a slave able to read could then learn, and learning was the beginning of the path to independence.

Flipping himself over, his back presses up against the board to watch the remaining duels play themselves out. Another hacking cough briefly clears out his breathing passage, he tastes blood on his tongue.

Once he gains the strength to move a short time later, his shoulders push him off the wall and message board. He pauses to cough again, a painful sensation not unfamiliar to him. It had just been a while since the bi-annual sentence had been carried out; his larynx hadn't been sliced open and seared useless for nearly a year. Every now and then, mostly those times when he was the most frustrated at his inablility to communicate, he wondered if his
crime so many years ago was worth the punishment Mistress Launna meted out for it.

Then he would think back on the severity of the crimes he now stood guilty of.

Then he would ask for another fight.