(no subject)
Title: The Family Trade
Fandom: Discworld
Characters: Carcer Dun
Prompt: 001. Beginnings
Word Count: 233
Rating: PG-13 for implied fratricide
Summary: Young Carcer's father decides it's time to teach his sons the family trade.
Author's Notes: This is a retool of a fic I wrote last year -- I've since changed some aspects of my account of Carcer's family, and his older brother now has a name! :D Carcer and general Discworld concepts are (C) Terry Pratchett, but the rest of the family is (C) TMOH.
Mamertine Dun watched his sons nervously and wondered why he’d ever listened to his wife. The boys were now ten and twelve, and, yes, that was old enough to start learning a trade, but…
And Eileen had said, but what?
And he’d said, a little unsurely, that a butcher’s shop wasn’t really the safest place in the world for a young child.
And she’d said that the streets weren’t either, and at least they’d be bringing in some money this way, and anyway Carcer would be thirteen soon enough, and no one could argue that that was too young for any trade, and he hadn’t known what to say.
So he’d brought them to the shop. And, despite his uneasiness, they’d actually taken quite well to the work. He was showing them how to carve up a pig when Sullivan called him in from the yard.
He was only halfway to the counter when he heard the scream.
Carcer looked up at the men as they entered the yard. There was blood on his face; his hands; his shirt.
“I tried to stop him,” he said, “but he wouldn’t listen.” For a moment, Mamertine thought he saw him grin.
He never went to work with his father after that, but later, when the Watchmen started showing up on his doorstep, Mamertine wondered if his son hadn’t taken up the family trade after all.
Fandom: Discworld
Characters: Carcer Dun
Prompt: 001. Beginnings
Word Count: 233
Rating: PG-13 for implied fratricide
Summary: Young Carcer's father decides it's time to teach his sons the family trade.
Author's Notes: This is a retool of a fic I wrote last year -- I've since changed some aspects of my account of Carcer's family, and his older brother now has a name! :D Carcer and general Discworld concepts are (C) Terry Pratchett, but the rest of the family is (C) TMOH.
Mamertine Dun watched his sons nervously and wondered why he’d ever listened to his wife. The boys were now ten and twelve, and, yes, that was old enough to start learning a trade, but…
And Eileen had said, but what?
And he’d said, a little unsurely, that a butcher’s shop wasn’t really the safest place in the world for a young child.
And she’d said that the streets weren’t either, and at least they’d be bringing in some money this way, and anyway Carcer would be thirteen soon enough, and no one could argue that that was too young for any trade, and he hadn’t known what to say.
So he’d brought them to the shop. And, despite his uneasiness, they’d actually taken quite well to the work. He was showing them how to carve up a pig when Sullivan called him in from the yard.
He was only halfway to the counter when he heard the scream.
Carcer looked up at the men as they entered the yard. There was blood on his face; his hands; his shirt.
“I tried to stop him,” he said, “but he wouldn’t listen.” For a moment, Mamertine thought he saw him grin.
He never went to work with his father after that, but later, when the Watchmen started showing up on his doorstep, Mamertine wondered if his son hadn’t taken up the family trade after all.