(Page 1 of 2) Rainbirth by Steve Jones -B5
 (2 ratings)
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SUMMARY: For the flashback flash fiction contest Elak stood by the lake, the most magnificent jewel in the world, and the most beautiful woman in the world were gone, and it was raining. The day before he had been hiding in the high grass on a steep hillside overlooking a village, watching and waiting. He intended to steal a treasure.
"This is no place for a soldier of Chaim," he said to himself. Of course, he wouldn't have been in such a situation if not for what had happened one evening in the tavern.
They had been given leave. More than half the troop had turned out for a night of bad food, warm beer and the occasional drunken brawl.
"You are the prettiest woman I've ever seen," Elak said, standing to block the path of the serving wench. "Except maybe for Glem."
"Let me pass," the wench said, holding her pitcher high, both to keep it safe and prepare it should it be needed as a projectile.
"Hey!" Glem said, fumbling for his sword as he attempted to stand. He fell backwards, passing out in his broken down chair, his sword half-sheathed.
He stood aside for the wench, allowing his hand to pass over her side. Elak was not the first soldier to paw at the girl, but he was the one with his hand grasping her backside when the general arrived. It turned out the general had a daughter--a serving wench–that particular serving wench.
Elak fled for his life, or for the life of those body parts the general yelled he would take from him should he ever be caught.
"The sentence for sleeping in the town square is dismemberment," the judge said. Elak had joined a caravan crossing the northern edge of the desert. He watched the wagons and animals by night in exchange for a corner of a wagon to sleep in during the day, until the day he awoke in the dusty town square of a desert town. It seemed the caravan leaders thought unkindly of his efforts to test the quality of their wine.
"Unless, possibly you would take a venture on our behalf."
The judge had sent him three days ride to the south, to a green oasis surrounded by desert. There was a town there called Daloq. He was to find and steal their rain talisman.
At nightfall Elak watched from the grass as the villagers of Daloq turned out from their homes, cheering a tall, beautiful blue woman as she was led to the center of town to a huge ornate pedestal. She was the tallest, loveliest blue woman Elak had ever seen. She raised her arms upward and sang to the sky, her words could not be formed by mortal lips, her sounds could not be produced from any corner of the world.
Then it rained.
The night was at its darkest when he had tied his sword to his back and chanced to climb the tower where they had taken her after the rain.
In the topmost room he found her aslept in a round bed of pillows, her body wrapped in silk. At the foot of her bed, on a raised pedestal, lay a jewel as large as a man's fist, violet and polished to a smooth perfect sphere. In the dim tower light Elak could see her face for the first time, and the scars where her eyes had been crudely cut out.
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