#galatea 01

She was on her way to the stands to watch the Parade from the crowd. She would head back down toward the loading docks once the chariots started to make their way back down the lane. She knew most of the seats would be picked over by the time she got up there, but there was one spot next to a woman in the crowd. "Is this spot taken?" she asked her, pointing toward the empty seat.

The fun thing about time loops is that it’s never quite clear when you’re caught in them.

There was something familiar about the cramp in his leg from sitting wedged into this tree, and the glint off the drool of the angry dog underneath. The tears of his face had dried over other, older tears that he’d already cried, only to uncry and then cry again.  Had this really happened before?  His head hurt whenever he tried to think about it.  All he wanted was to get down and go home.

“Please, someone!!  Help!” That was an unfortunate octave for his voice to hit, but he was beyond caring.

She was a beautiful woman, doubtless the sort that many would fawn over without a second thought, but Kouen had grown with men and women of equal allure being placed at his feet. It was not her looks, then, that drew his attention to her, but the scar that ran in a jagged line across her eyes. An injury like that would’ve blinded even the most fortunate of warriors, and he couldn’t help but wonder, if only for a passing moment, how she would fight with the wooden weapon granted to her by the scientists.

...But he wasn’t here to do battle, nor had he reason to challenge her to any sort of unreasonable duel when he knew next to nothing else about her. This was a curiosity he could easily lay to rest without a definite answer, and so it drew increasingly further away from his attention as he approached--not necessarily to speak with her, but as a matter of course in his walk back to the abode assigned to him.