Prompt: The List | Word count: 1500 | Genre: Semi-fantasy fiction
The ship was swaying too much to read without getting a headache and Klytie Dunthair had fallen asleep on top of her dolly. She was too much of a scaredy-kitten to be much fun anyhow, so when I was stuffed full of the ship’s crumbly cupcakes, I snuck up under Aunty’s table. She was still munching away on the biscuits, though her newly-acquired to-be-dumped-as-soon-as-we-docked friend Mrs Dunthair contented herself with punctuating sips of tea with soulful sighs.
“They should not let Ilken on passenger ships,” Aunty Merinantha was saying, in that flushed squeaky way she has when she is annoyed. “I spoke to the Captain and he is most unhappy about it. They have a list, of course, but it still isn’t safe. In Enalton I heard there was a boy they let in last month who …” The Ilken-Knilde, the fang-blooded clans of the Ryokoi … Their voices sank to low whispers, as people’s voices always did when they talked about them, and I could not hear them however close I drew. So I decided to try naïve curiosity instead.