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Ruling Corruption AKA Thief
Jun. 8th, 2006 11:37 amWhew! Finally finished cleaning this up to a reasonable "will let others critique now" level. And am now looking for others to critique! Note: this one does have a deadline, so I'd need the critique back in about a week. Oh, and it's a straight-up high fantasy story about a thief who gets a bit more than she bargains for. But whether or not you're interested in critiquing, here's a nice excerpt for your reading pleasure:
Even as a little girl, Vole had been different than the others. It didn't matter if she hid her toes from sight. It didn't matter that her skin was the same dusty brown and her hair the same dark brown as everybody else in the village. The difference was on the inside. She didn't see things the same way as everyone else. If she was hungry, she saw no reason that she should not steal another child's dinner, no matter how much they cried. She never felt guilty, no matter what she did.
As she grew older, Vole watched others and developed a set of rules to keep herself out of trouble: not stealing when others could catch her; not hurting people or animals in the same place that she lived; smiling; saying hello; apologizing and looking sad when she upset somebody; remembering the names and details of those people that she saw often; memorizing and abiding by the rules of politeness in each place that she lived; and keeping herself as respectable-looking as she could. Small children and animals still shied away from her, but she could fool most people...even if she had not been able to fool the Nameless God.
Now she had followers of another god to contend with. The clatter of the monks' sandals was growing louder behind her. She sped her run up to a sprint, going for speed instead of distance. As Vole ran through the maze of alleys and footpaths and meditative walks that stitched together the temples of Horol's Holy District, her eyes flicked over her surroundings.
She hadn't expected such quick and vigorous pursuit. It was just her luck that the monks were of the "training the body as a tool to train the mind" sort instead of the "sit around illuminating manuscripts all day" sort.
It wasn't even as if she'd stolen an idol of their god; she couldn't have lifted the pony-sized carving of the jade frog if she'd tried. When she'd slipped into the Sheng-tsai temple with worshippers attending for the afternoon prayers, she'd been relieved that the client had only wanted the small, squat black idol hidden behind a jumble of incense, dried flowers, and dangling prayer flags. She'd slipped it into the bag tied to her belt and hoped that its loss wouldn't be noticed until long after she'd left. It hadn't worked out that way.