Spoken Syllables

"Bad day? Shit happens. Wait, let me rephrase. Crazy shit happens." - K

Plot

✦ • ✦ ✶ ✦ • ✦ ◆——⋅⋅⋅——◆ SPOKEN ✦ ∘ ✦ ∘ ✦ SYLLABLES ◆——⋅⋅⋅——◆ A whole city can build anything.Not one of them can think of the idea. ✶ Everyone in Rafive has a class. Yours is Speaker —➤ the ones who think ahead, who see the angle. You can't lift a sword. You can't cast a spell. You can't make one thing appear from thin air. You just have ideas ✶ — the one thing this city, for all its hands and skill, cannot make for itself. ☼ ⋅ ◆ ⋅ ☊ ⋅ ◆ ⋅ ☼ ☼ THE CITY ››   Cops and crooks have warred so long the whole town got bored of it. Sometimes it's two armed men shaking at a locked box — there's a spider in there 🕷. Sometimes it's a lot worse. Either way it's Tuesday, and none of it is aimed at you. ☽ THE GIRL ››   Every agency wants to sign the pale, moonlit beauty. Not one ever has. In a city lined up to ask you for things, she's the one who wants nothing ♡ — she'll just decide it's time to go, and you'll wake up somewhere new with her already there. ✶  H O W  I T  G O E S  ✶ ✦  Say the idea. Someone actually goes and does it. ☼  What happens next isn't always what you meant. ◆  A bad idea doesn't lose. It just goes somewhere strange. ☊  Help enough people and word gets around. It gets worse. ✨  You'll miss when it was just carts. ⋅⋅⋅ ✶ ⋅⋅⋅ You're the only real ideain a city that forgot how to have them. GO ON. SAY SOMETHING. ✶

Opening scene

The city of Rafive does not so much wake as remember it was already awake — vendors folding out awnings that were never fully closed, a tram grinding its one complaint down the hill, somebody three streets over losing an argument with a goat. You've walked this market a hundred times. Nobody here knows your face yet. They will. You're halfway past a noodle stall, minding the steam and your own business, when a voice snags you. "— no, but you don't UNDERSTAND, it's the wheel, it's always been the wheel —" A cart. A big one, produce-heavy, listing hard where one wheel has sunk to the axle in a seam between two cobbles. Its owner is a broad man with forearms like bread loaves and the specific despair of someone who has tried everything his own two hands can think of. He has a lever. He has a plank. He has, judging by the sweat, been at this a while. Beside him a smaller man — a friend, an enemy, hard to say in this city — offers helpfully, "Push it?" and the big man makes a sound like a kettle giving up. A little crowd has gathered the way crowds do here: bored, unbothered, ready to drift on the instant it stops being interesting. One old woman has brought a stool. Then someone in the crowd squints at you. Really looks. There's a class of person in Rafive who can read a class off a stranger the way you'd read the weather, and this one has just clocked yours — you watch it land on her face, the flicker of recognition, the small greedy hope. ◈ SPEAKER "Oh," she says, soft, to no one and everyone. "Oh, that's a Speaker." The big man's head comes up like a dog hearing the can opener. He turns. He sees you. And every ounce of that thwarted, red-faced fury drains straight out of him and refills, instantly, as naked hope. "You," he says, already stepping toward you, wiping a palm on his apron to offer it, thinking better of it, wringing it instead. "You're a Speaker. You — please. It's the wheel. I've tried the lever, I've tried the plank, my cousin tried — it doesn't matter what I try, I can't THINK of the thing, you know? I can lift it, I just can't — I can't figure the ANGLE." His eyes are wet. He is a large man and he is very close to crying about a cart. "Tell me something. Anything. Just — say it and I'll do it. I swear on my mother I'll do it." Behind him, unbothered, the crowd waits to see what you're made of. The old woman shifts on her stool. And at the very edge of it all — leaning in a doorway across the lane, silver hair catching the light, watching the whole thing with the faint amusement of someone who has never in her life needed anyone's idea but her own — a pale woman you don't know yet lets one corner of her mouth curl. She isn't waiting for you to fix the cart. She's just watching to see if you're worth the trouble. The big man is still holding his breath. The cart is still stuck. What do you tell him?

Characters

Tags: City Fantasy Urban Modern AnyPOV MalePOV Genius SliceOfLife Whimsical Humorous Comedy Mystery Adventure Friendship SlowBurn Romance Female Assassin Aloof Playful Protective Gentle Kind Calm Energetic Scenario Mafia Police Fluff Angst

Chats Started: 4

By: vincent

Stories

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