(no subject)
This tiny ficlet was written in response to a challenge from deesarrachi who asked for Famine/Pollution and Discworld. My first go at the pairing so any concrit would be much appreciated.
Nobody really noticed Raven Sable as he walked through The Shades. This in itself was a noteworthy event. Strangers venturing into this most lively of districts were likely to attract the sort of attention that would lead to them becoming yet another statistic on the Ankh Morpork suicide list. Sable however was not impressed. There was hunger here, certainly. Underweight, unshod children playing in the street, whilst thin, tired looking women stood in the doorways. But there was very little in the way of genuine, bona fide starvation. People didn’t know where there next meal was coming from, but chances were that it would turn up sooner or later. It was, in Sable’s opinion at least, horrendously disorganised. His counterpart on this world quite obviously had no real sense of craftsmanship. One really couldn’t just leave it all to the humans.
He, or rather they, had been on the Disc for over a week now. And were still no closer to finding what - or more accurately whom - they were looking for. Klatch had yielded no clues, nor had Uberwald, XXXX or The Counterweight Continent. Though they had decided that, on balance, Lancre and The Ramtops were best left uninvestigated. In the end the old saying All Roads Lead Away From Ankh Morpork had led them to ponder what was could be so terrible about the sprawling city state. The wide festering river had looked promising, as had the cramped, crowded, badly drained streets and rat infested housing. But whilst his signature was everywhere, Pestilence himself was nowhere to be found.
After several maddeningly futile hours of searching Sable gave up. An entity of slim, structured lines and perfect, artificial angles, he disliked the twisting alleyways and thoroughly organic chaos that seemed to the very foundations of the city.
He found White where he’d left him: the alchemical waste dump behind The Unseen University. The beautiful, filthy creature was staring rapturously at a metal drum from which some variety of dangerously luminous substance was seeping.
“You didn’t find him then?” White said, caressing his face with a pale, dusty hand.
Sable shook his head.
Arms glistening with thirteen types of petrochemical wrapped around Sable’s waist
When he kissed him, he tasted of the same oil and factory smoke that he always did. This time however there was something else there, something fizzling insidiously beneath the surface. It took him a while to realise what it was.
“You taste like magic,” Sable murmured, as he buried his face in hair bleached bright white by a lethal concoction of industrial strength dyes. And he did. Raw thaumic radiation; dangerous, unpredictable and liable to explode at any moment.
Things could have continued in this vein for some time were it not for a scandalised voice piping up fifty yards away.
“Ere Fred, look at what them two men are doing.”
Sable jumped ever so slightly, before quickly regaining his composure. Humans weren’t supposed to be able to notice them unless they wanted them to. But this was a human unlike any he’d ever seen before.
As Nobby Nobbs attempted to berate him for public indecency Sable realised that he’d seen a collection of boils, rashes and miscellaneous skin ailment like that before.
Pestilence had clearly been keeping himself busy in retirement.
Nobody really noticed Raven Sable as he walked through The Shades. This in itself was a noteworthy event. Strangers venturing into this most lively of districts were likely to attract the sort of attention that would lead to them becoming yet another statistic on the Ankh Morpork suicide list. Sable however was not impressed. There was hunger here, certainly. Underweight, unshod children playing in the street, whilst thin, tired looking women stood in the doorways. But there was very little in the way of genuine, bona fide starvation. People didn’t know where there next meal was coming from, but chances were that it would turn up sooner or later. It was, in Sable’s opinion at least, horrendously disorganised. His counterpart on this world quite obviously had no real sense of craftsmanship. One really couldn’t just leave it all to the humans.
He, or rather they, had been on the Disc for over a week now. And were still no closer to finding what - or more accurately whom - they were looking for. Klatch had yielded no clues, nor had Uberwald, XXXX or The Counterweight Continent. Though they had decided that, on balance, Lancre and The Ramtops were best left uninvestigated. In the end the old saying All Roads Lead Away From Ankh Morpork had led them to ponder what was could be so terrible about the sprawling city state. The wide festering river had looked promising, as had the cramped, crowded, badly drained streets and rat infested housing. But whilst his signature was everywhere, Pestilence himself was nowhere to be found.
After several maddeningly futile hours of searching Sable gave up. An entity of slim, structured lines and perfect, artificial angles, he disliked the twisting alleyways and thoroughly organic chaos that seemed to the very foundations of the city.
He found White where he’d left him: the alchemical waste dump behind The Unseen University. The beautiful, filthy creature was staring rapturously at a metal drum from which some variety of dangerously luminous substance was seeping.
“You didn’t find him then?” White said, caressing his face with a pale, dusty hand.
Sable shook his head.
Arms glistening with thirteen types of petrochemical wrapped around Sable’s waist
When he kissed him, he tasted of the same oil and factory smoke that he always did. This time however there was something else there, something fizzling insidiously beneath the surface. It took him a while to realise what it was.
“You taste like magic,” Sable murmured, as he buried his face in hair bleached bright white by a lethal concoction of industrial strength dyes. And he did. Raw thaumic radiation; dangerous, unpredictable and liable to explode at any moment.
Things could have continued in this vein for some time were it not for a scandalised voice piping up fifty yards away.
“Ere Fred, look at what them two men are doing.”
Sable jumped ever so slightly, before quickly regaining his composure. Humans weren’t supposed to be able to notice them unless they wanted them to. But this was a human unlike any he’d ever seen before.
As Nobby Nobbs attempted to berate him for public indecency Sable realised that he’d seen a collection of boils, rashes and miscellaneous skin ailment like that before.
Pestilence had clearly been keeping himself busy in retirement.