Ninety Degrees of Fortune

This is a series of six-sentence stories (from http://sixsentences.ning.com/ -- highly recommended social network for writers), more to come shortly.


Part 1: Ninety Degrees
“What’s atcha got there, lil’ fella?” Raverus asked, trying not to sound or look as anxious as he was.

The little boy turned around holding the hourglass sideways in front of his face, its fluorescent aqua inhabitant shining his glow onto the young man’s broad, toothy swoop and revealing to Raverus and the crowd that he was one of those filthy, poor, unruly miscreants from the Outerlands.

“Won'cha go on an’ give that over t’me, kid?” he said, not working nearly as hard to soften his words now.

“No, I found him!” the boy shouted, taking a step back as he shook his head and turned the hourglass vertical. The genie swirled down slowly, granting the boy’s silent wish. Raverus was angry, probably the angriest of all those in attendance, but he knew better than to insult the Emporer.


Part 2: Penance
“It’s quite a long fall, is it not Raverus?” asked the High Witch, whose chuckle-laced words might have been mistaken for frog croaks--particularly given the gangrenous forest green hue of her rotting skin--were Raverus not already familiar with the sound from previous encounters he had wished to forget.

“A boy, one of the Outerlanders, found one of the Three Genies,” he said, sliding his jaw from side to side, grinding his molars in disgust at the humbling act of imploring a Witch, no matter how “High” the reprobate may have esteemed that kind of magic.

She croaked through another slimy rattle of laughter, “They’re Inlanders now, Outlander.”

Raverus’s chest slowly inflated with an indignant sip of the squalid Outerland air as he stood at the foot of the mountain separating the two lands. “I need you to change things back before my people suffer these conditions any longer,” he hissed tempestuously, though careful not to offend her.

She faced him, her natural eyes replaced by empty sockets that peered deeper into him than their former residents would have been capable, and said slowly “Nothing has changed for me to undo.”

Pts 3-5