Ralph and the Pixie

Never mind. It would pass in an hour or so, as it always did.

Stubbornly picking up his pace in an effort to get the day moving one more, Mraan began making his way towards the Street of Scribes, just a few short city blocks from the Library, towards the north end of Nith. When he rounded the final corner, however, the street was ominously quiet and still, seemingly made more so by his having just walked through the Street of Coopers, where the sounds of iron bands being hammered and forged, and the fire-hardening of barrels, was very loud.

He stopped, noticing in the same instant that nothing moved. Instinctively he froze, his senses becoming razor sharp. There was a watchfulness about the stillness which made him consider going back the way he’d come. But no; testing his senses, he felt the presence of something dangerous, and that the danger, whatever it was, was worse behind him. But something had happened before him, too: something bad. For a moment, he felt trapped between fear and fear. Whatever had happened was something he didn’t want to face. Whatever was coming didn’t bear thinking about. Taking a breath, bracing himself, he decided to return to his home on the Street of Scribes.

As he set foot once again upon the smooth-worn granite flagstones of the Street of Scribes, it seemed as though he came suddenly to an invisible wall or membrane; on one side the air was comfortably warm, on the other it was gelid. His mind went blank, but for a single thought which screamed in his mind, The Street of Scribes is empty! There was no familiar sound of children’s voices, no background murmur of families talking, no one walking about carrying laundry or food, no scribes walking about bearing backpacks and saddlebags in which they delivered scrolls. There was nothing but the empty street, criss-crossed overhead by laden clotheslines. These seemed to sag with drab-coloured garments which hung lifeless in the still air like the ragged pennants of some defeated army.