triedunture | Day One of asskicking complete! (Reply)

2056 / 50000 words. 4% done!

Here's a snippet from Day One:

"What do you think will happen now?" Jane mumbled around her lipstick-stained filter. "The monk didn't say for certain last night, did he?"

"No." Leon crept closer to the window, his hands stuffed in the back pockets of his worn cutoff shorts. "The monk didn't say much of anything."

The plume curled in the wind, swirling majestically before dissipating into the blue sky. Another, larger plume rose up, closer to the town.

"It's awful, not knowing what's to come," Jane said. She shifted on the windowsill, now leaning back against the window frame and bracing her dirty bare feet on the opposite side. She tucked herself there in the window, her head tilted back to gaze upwards, the cigarette now dangling from her fingers and dropping its ash on the floor. "Take a look at my hand, won't you, Leon?"

Leon stuck his head out the window, ignoring her request, ignoring her precarious balance on the sill. It was one he'd already ignored dozens of times, and it was nothing to his ears any longer, passing in and out of his head as if it were nothing more than a child's pleas to touch the moon.

"They're coming," he said quietly. The dust cloud was growing, getting larger and nearer. The noise was now audible even to Jane; she turned her head to follow Leon's gaze.

They watched the cloud of dust draw closer until it finally broke through the canopy of trees in the distance. The roar of the vehicles on the road became even louder as one, two, three, four, yes, four military vehicles, old Jeeps by the look of them, rumbled into view. The Jeeps were all painted Communist olive green, with the Laotian flag stamped in faded red, white, and blue paint on the doors.

The official flag of Laos, which has the same colors as the Australian flag, is a simple rectangle of blue with two smaller rectangles of red on the top and bottom. In the middle is an empty white circle, as if some insignia or royal seal has been removed with a hole puncher. This was not just Leon's artistic imagination; the kings and queens of Laos were gone, replaced by the Communists, never to return. Though Leon had seen miniatures of their royal portraits for sale in the markets along the river, little golden charms sitting beside Snickers bars and packets of Chinese snack crackers.

Jane tossed her finished cigarette into the mud outside and clutched at Leon's arm. "Come on, take a look at my hand. Just a quick peek. Anything you can tell me is fine. I just hate not knowing."

Leon shook her off and bent to rummage in his rucksack. "You know I can only do it after I've had a few," he muttered. "And you're wrong. It's worse knowing. When you know, and you still can't do anything to stop it, then it's much worse." He dumped his soiled clothing out of his bag and sorted through the bits and pieces scattered on the floor. Pieces of paper, his little sketchpad, a thin box of pencils. Where the hell was it?

"Is this what you're scrambling for?" Jane asked, fishing the passport out of the pocket of a pair of shorts on the floor. She waggled the little navy blue booklet in her hand, causing the official kangaroo and emo stamp to glint in the sunlight.