Someone Else's Kingdom, BOOK II - Scene XXXII

Having been unceremoniously cast from the palace gates the sea-swept woman was now free to take her message to the streets of Keneeshka. As the young Prince Seaspell lay in his half-sleep, inside the palace walls, she wandered without. The cloudy skies and the nip of cold a fitting cover for her prognostications. The roads were dark and busy, and the windy clime couldn't shift the feral children and stray dogs from the hardened earth. Passing one child she pulled her sprawling gown closer to her neck, as if to gain some respite from the cold. As if from a loosened purse silver coins then fell from her matted hair. Crashing like moons upon the loury ground. She ambled on, with seeming unconcern, the opportune children grabbing the starry droplets with their dirty hands.

An old man: bearded, bony, weak and ragged, noting her disregard, lent down to pick one up himself. His slow creaking back unable to match the pace of his greed. He looked up at the woman with large brown-green eyes, as if to offer the return of her fallen property, yet still with hope she wouldn't reach down to accept it.

"The shell is broken, the gods have spoken..," she whispered to him, ignoring the false-hearted offer. The charity adding a charm-like power to the garbled words as his hungry body listened.

She then stumbled on, maundering beyond his sight, before turning off into a more shaded avenue. The leaf-less trees barren and blackened to the branch. She tiptoed off the path, then through some hedgerows, before cutting through a fence. Finally coming to rest at the back of a small temple, the bushes and plants of the garth a semi-shelter by the stony backwall. She lay down on the hard ground and fell asleep. A sea green snake slithered forth from the herbs as she closed her eyelids. It came up beside her, licked her ear, then writhed off into the damp city. Rain then began to drop. As it soaked her hair and dress and feet and ankles she slept a dreamy sleep. Dreams of tempests, ships, and dark sea serpents.