Rainbow Snippets: A once prosperous land…

Someone Else’s Shoes, my retelling of Cinderella set in the spellster universe has been out for a few weeks now and this’ll be the last snippet for a while as, next week, I’ll be returning to Tracking Trouble.

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This snippet is a little longer than the rest and continues on from last week, where Alla had left the building’s interior to make her way up to the attic…

The midday air, with its north-eastern breeze coming fresh off the desert, would help towards drying the threadbare fabric on her way up the mansion. It wouldn’t make the dress suitable to wear by the time she reached the attic, but spreading it out on the rooftop would see it usable by tomorrow.

Alla hastened around the side of the mansion to where a stone tub full of water sat near the back door. Hopping onto the tub’s rim, she scampered her way up the wall as nimbly as a mountain goat.

The path she took wasn’t a well-worn one—she tried her best to not abuse this knowledge lest she got caught—but she had taken this route so many times over the years that she hardly needed to think on her next move. Her fingers just knew where they needed to be—a hand tucked into a hole in the stonework here, a foot placed on the thin ledge of a window there. As long as she didn’t stop or slow for any reason, she always made it.

Up here, the farmland seemed to stretch on into the hazy, yellow horizon of the nearby desert. To her left lay the shaded pasture where the camels spent their nights. It used to house her stepmother’s horses, but they had long since gone from this world. As many beings seemed to do around here.

The pasture was currently empty, the camels out in the field with the serfs who tended to the rows upon rows of crops. To some, the fields seemed endless, but Alla remembered there being so much more.

The estate had once been prosperous, home of the finest and sweetest dates in all of the Niholian Empire. She had vague memories of men and women scampering up the huge trees during harvest time to lower massive sacks of dates onto the carts. The world had smelt wet and earthy.

Now, that same dusty land didn’t quite produce enough to feed those living here. Without proper care to the irrigation systems that had kept this land rich for generations, the trees had died. Only the one in the courtyard remained and even that was a sickly shadow of itself.

Alla will be having a bit of a break with Tracker returning for the weekends. In the meantime, check out these other snippets.

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