Feb 7- Roll Dem Bones

Day Seven, more re-writing, less on the count on another short day. Writing comics goes so much faster.

Skittlebones- 1523 words

Here is a sample of the work on the new novella...

Skittlebones had rolled back and forth in the back of a wagon as it crossed the busy streets and turned to the narrow twisting alleys of the lower part of Haliford. Her dry eyes looked up without seeing anything but the back and forth of the rough canvas covering the cargo area of the wagon as it swayed from one side to the other. She was oblivious to the stench that came from her open wounds and putrefying limbs and nether regions. Skittlebones mostly existed in a state of oblivion, her senses dead to the world.

The wagon stopped with a lurch at her destination and the canvas rolled back. She was grabbed by her dry ankles and dragged feet first to the edge of the wagon bed. She was given the command to sit up and she did so. Life was all around her, so close that it seemed stifling with its energy assaulting her to the core. She wished to still the noise so that her life could be as it was on the ride over, blissfully silent.

On command, Skittlebones slid from the wagon to the filthy cobblestones where she stood on unsteady legs. Drying muscles strained in protest, her tendons popping in her knees as she moved forward. Her Master had pointed her at a little store, some sort of arrow shop, and she understood what he wanted. Pulling a damaged left leg behind her, Skittlebones made her way to the front door to the store. She pitched a shoulder into it and ignored the cracking sound in her shoulder. Skittlebones drew back again and again and drove her shoulder into the heavy door. No one was around to see her draw back a leathery fist and smash it into the small window in the front door of the store. She ignored the damage to the arm and scraped her arm around inside the door, searching for the bar that held the door fast. Her arm was lacerated and hard to get back out of the window frame. Skittlebones noticed that her master was gone. When she pulled, she left bits of rotting muscle and ocher. The door did not budge, so she pulled back and hit it again and again. In some distant part of herself, she found comfort in the rhythm of the pounding on the barred door. When the center plank of the door cracked, she punched a hand through and removed the bar holding the door in place. Stopping dead in the door frame, she saw a man in the darkness of the desolate store holding a blacksmith's hammer. She rasped out the one word she could remember, her name, "Skittlebones".