The Knight watched countless steps pass beneath his spurs. He climbed a winding stair, head bowed to shining marble. Rainbow flecks, shed by ascending, stained windows, played over his long and curling hair. His lips shifted, parted in a breathless chant: "Laudate Avetha, Deus in terra, Avetha, gratia plena, Avetha, potesta plena Ave, Ave, Dominosa, […]
The hulk of a greenish, barnacle-crusted cog hung under Saint Pierro Bridge. Strange folk crept up creaky scaffolds nailed to the crossing's piers, swaggered through a pair of saloon doors set in the hull to join a ruckus of voices and excitedly strummed six-strings. In the windows, cobbled from daub and ends of bottles, figures […]
From the palazzo's high windows, a grey woman watched the glittering azure bay. There, hundreds of fat, laden carracks sat at harbor, trapped by a line of tallships which gripped the circular inlet's narrow neck, patrolling. Specks of folk milled about the port city's boardwalks, watching the stagnant blockade. The woman sighed, flared her nostrils. […]
A cigarette wobbled under the clerk's scrubby mustache. "Next," he said, bored. A young woman stumbled to the counter, shoved by the queue. Mousy brown bangs curtained her face, brushed in an attempt to conceal the veiny, wine-red blotch around her left eye. The clerk fixed her with a rheumy stare. "Have you worked with […]