: Prompting Needed_

Rat Royal

It was the season, she understood. This was the time of the year when the sky never let the weak light of Proxima through, and the rain fell in sheets of saturating depression. Rumor was that long ago, before her ancestors had landed on Hermes I, the sky was clear and Proxima was a force of great destructive power. The first settlers had had to live in these things called 'Fabs' that protected them while they started making a breathable atmosphere through a process long forgotten. All of these were facts Stacy had heard before in the bar and bedroom while her clients chatted before, during and after. All of it just meant that rain happened, sure as death, and the bands of clouds that spun 'round the planet and kept it from drying out would probably never stop. If it did, they would all die. That's what her clients said.

She hated working near the Atmos center where all those scientists came from.

She hated the rain more.

She stared at the lines of rain as they shot through the street's flood lights, their paths eaten up by the town's porous walkways. She could imagine each drop leeching the heat from the air and that her body was – drop by drop – beginning to freeze. The rain was going to the thing that ultimately killed her, she felt. That, and the pollution that was running off the buildings in the deluge.

Stacy liked that word, 'deluge'. It was one Pete had taught her a few years ago before her nights at the bar had started. Back then, she and he had been part of the wave of displaced folks that had been forced from their homes so the building materials could be repurposed for the emergency environmental hazard. The rains that year had forced a shift in the topsoil beneath the floors and walkways of their town and a better place to live had to be built, preferably on soil that still had integrity. That's how the entire town of Yeun had been moved miles north on top of a subterranean network of roots that spread from the nearby brush forest. Stacy smiled ruefully, thinking about the transition and how she and Pete had thought – at first – that the move meant they'd get the the chance to build a better house, maybe even get a better station. However, the owners of the original homes vetoed the idea to distribute material equally before the new construction so in a desperate movement to have somewhere to live, Pete had stolen a few panels of the plastic siding and some pipes. Those materials had become the lean-to Stacy was now huddling under, her robes-turned-rags tucked beneath her folded legs. Behind her was all that remained of Pete, including his obscure ancient Earth language texts, piled in the corner against the cement barricade and wrapped tightly in bright yellow plastic tape. Thinking about the old bookworm made her smile, a pale gesture against the constant pressure of the rain around her. She missed Pete. She looked back to his sealed-up pile of books and read the word that was repeated on the tape: 'caution'. Yet another word Pete had taught her.

Stacy brought her hand in closer and shook off the frigid water that had started to drip from the lean-to's flaps. She breathed out a tight-lipped breath to see if she could see the clouds come out but saw nothing. The chill had not set in yet, not in the air at least. As she wrung her hands together under her newly stolen knitted top, she figured it would be maybe an hour before the temperature dropped to match that of the rain. It did not matter what the Atmos idiots read on their fancy machines, the night never stood a chance against the perpetual downfall of Hermes' skies.

Something squeaked behind her, close to the other plastic wall. She turned her head to find it. Whatever it was squeaked again, and she stopped breathing. That was not just a squeak, it was something living. It had come from an animal. Only so many things squeaked anymore on the streets of Yeun: rats. She rolled onto her knees as quietly as she could, making sure to avoid the stacked newspapers and then pivoted on one foot. There she sat crouched with her breath coming out short and smooth. Now that she had moved, she could feel the cascading chill of the night. The crispness of it made her throat sting. "Come on out," she said in Starbright, the native language of Hermes I. The chances of it being a domesticated rat was high, and there was a similar chance that it understood simple common phrases. The creature rustled against the thin paper it was under and squeaked again. A small, pointed nose poked out. In the darkening light, Stacy couldn't note what color it was, but it did not look like one of the blighted white rats. That was promising. "Are you lost?" she asked. The nose twitched and then slid out another inch. Stacy could see the glint of an eye now looking at her. This was a smaller rat than she had hoped. Still, meat was meat.