#dusty1

Mudhouse was as clean as the venue’s name implied and Priscilla had already decided to quit the job on her first day at it, but since she’d hauled her pregnant ass all the way down here today she was at least going to get her eight hours worth. Otherwise it wasn’t worth the bus fare.

“Are you with the band?” she asked from behind a clipboard. The clipboard was purely for show. There were papers on it, maybe important ones, but Priscilla couldn’t read and also didn’t care. “I’m supposed to show you to your dressing room if you’re with the band.”

Not that Priscilla had bothered to check them out, but given the general dinginess of the front of house, she could imagine ‘dressing room’ was a far stretch of the truth. Gutted bathroom stall maybe? A mirror taped to the back of a door that doesn’t lock in a room where the lightbulbs have all been smoked out? “You just, you know, you look like you’d be with the band.” It was hard to say whether she meant it as a compliment, an insult, or a neutral and mostly thoughtless observation.

“Fuck you and your shitty products,” Courtney boomed as he stalked off from the fisherman’s stall. A hundred-and-fifty for some fishing line! They were having a laugh. Last year he was sure he’d paid no more than fifty for it. Alright, maybe seventy-five. Whatever, the point was the markup was extortionate when he could get his usual line at the shop in Carynthia for a fraction of the price. 

Roughly, he released a huff. People would pay anything in there was a spectacle around it. His redcap nature stirred inside him, urging Courtney turn around and take a fist to that fishy fuck’s face, but logic warned him against it. Sure, the floating market was without law, but it wasn’t the law Courtney feared. It was himself; it was the bloodlust that, if fed like this, would only grow worse. He could satiate it later, when he was getting paid for it. 

So he sucked it up, pushed through the crowd, and—boom, oof, thud ran the wall of himself straight into Dusty Marsh, a name he knew only as it related to her brother. Woods Marsh was an old friend of Courtney’s from the mines. A friend he hadn’t heard much from lately. In fact, a friend he was now recalling there had been some rumors surrounding. Rumors that Courtney hoped were just that: rumors.

“Marsh.” His voice showed his surprise, even if his features didn’t. “Hell. Long time no see.” Courtney’s eyes caught a nearby wave. “Or sea, I should say.” Fucking dad jokes. How could a man that delighted so in watching the life drain from someone’s eyes find genuine humor in such simple quips?