Elegia -- Part 1

Just some random thing I've been working on. Set in the world I crafted for an older book I was working on and set down half-way through college, with the intent on picking back up on it later. Maybe I will, now that I've graduated. Either way, this has nothing to do with any of the characters of the book. It's just a place.

Because I didn't feel like describing the species contained wherein, a brief bit of information: 'Keshiir' are anthropomorphic cat people, effectively. Slender, flexible, and all-around small, they tend to be at least six inches shorter than humans of equivalent build. Their features tend toward a middle ground between "big cat" and "domestic cat".

'Niquon', in this story, are never named. The protagonist and her friend are niquon. Niquon may as well be humans, save for a few vestigial reptilian traits. They have bits of scale in places, lack body hair, and have sad little claws instead of traditional fingernails.

Anyway.

As is becoming trend, this is probably NSFW. Contains language and adult themes.

More will come later. Just wanted to post something now. It's been almost a month, after all.

            The sound had always soothed her. Rhythmic, predictable, each quiet ‘ba-bump’ accompanied by the slightest, softest jolt of her spine. The cold glass against her cheek and the seatbelt cutting into her neck were tied to nearly two decades of memory—to the quiet whispered adulations of her father to her mother, to her brother’s impish grin as the family car flew past yet another risqué billboard. Notches etched in the highway, ready to accommodate next winter’s freeze. The sound of travel. The sound of everything being right again.

            ‘Ba-bump’. ‘Ba-bump’.

            Her pale grey eyes shifted from the blur of trees beside her to the road just below her window. Thousands of tiny indiscernible features melted into an ever-shifting black wall, tiny specks and imperfections dancing about like the lines and dots that lent authenticity to old film. Her own visage in the side mirror sat on the periphery of her vision, watching along with, pale brow furrowed under the weight of reality. The weight of the phone call she’d received four evenings prior. The weight of—

            “Goddamnit.”

            The voice made her jump, though really it shouldn’t have. That Verci had gone this long without speaking was the only real surprise. Grey eyes panned to the left before the rest of her head followed. Slender fingers pushed raven hair away from her eyes.

            She felt the van begin to slow.