WeWriWa #13: 13 December 2015

More Lan goodness! His POV is a little different from Eirika’s mainly because she’s my action girl, and Lan is the type of guy who thinks his feelings through. Here, we see a bit of what drives Lan emotionally–or at least, we get a bit of background to his melancholy.

Previous excerpt can be found HERE.

One of the shorter women managed to worm her way in, cursing slightly at Lan’s height. Indifferent, Lan let her through, and the short woman signed up for one of the empty Salamander jobs. For a moment, Lan had the urge to dissuade the woman from going for a commission at Salamander. Avoiding the factories would probably wind up saving her life, her lungs, or the use of her arm. He put his hand on the woman’s shoulder. When she shoved him back, he relaxed his hold and let her go.

You can’t help everybody, Lan. That’s what Barb told him whenever he brought it on himself to warn people from endangering themselves. The moment of apprehension passed, and he drew in a breath. The woman disappeared behind him, covered by workers still vying for a position on the employment roster.

Story Notes: Amber and Tourmalines (working title, definitely not the final one) is a story of a black market dealer and her investigation into the untimely deaths of important colleagues. It is also a story of a man down on his luck and resorting to thievery to make ends meet. Only the man’s pretty bad at petty theft, but a rather decent clockmaker. The black market dealer has no problem pointing this out–and involuntarily recruiting him to a life of crime.