Roan swept the heavy oar through the river in total silence, standing straight and tall, his stone face tidally locked to the shore. Sanis sat on her haunches behind him, torquing her neck to watch the ancient skyscrapers pass on either side of their approach. She peeked over the side, rocking the rusty rowboat, and glimpsed a derelict traffic signal slide beneath them ten meters straight down. Her dirty face peeked back up at her through the rainbow refractions of the oily river.
Roan kept his nose and mouth covered with the front of his shirt pulled up, but Sanis liked the smell. It smelled like industry, and machinery, and forward motion. That was what she craved, and what she hoped to find in the Vaultbreaker’s garrison up ahead.
Forward motion.
Roan looked disapprovingly, as if he knew her thoughts. No one alive knew her thoughts.
The sun dipped behind the westernmost block of buildings, and a bat roost erupted from the executive suite of an old financial building. She giggled, and the sound bounced off of steel and concrete and broken glass so it sounded like a thousand Sanises. The boat moved forward.
Notes: I used an image as a writing prompt for this piece. You may be able to find the image on the artist’s ArtStation page.
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