💾 Archived View for unix.dog › ~oaktal › brick.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:07:01. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-07-10)
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The snow stuck around today. Not a cloud in the sky but the damned stuff just didn't want to melt. Didn't help that it was cold as the pits of Untherin. I hate the cold too, honest. Really seems to get through my gloves and coat and everything. Makes me feel like my fingers are locking up, makes it so I can't hold the hammer so good.
That was the big problem today, my hammer. Was sitting at the top of the Portmouth south wall working same as every day, nailing another crossbeam into the supports for the lower hallways since the horseshits fixin' up the wall finally got their fingers out of their asses long enough to get a good section built up ahead of me. Anyway, I'm swinging wild at this nail, but the damn thing won't take. Woods all soaked and frozen through, trying to drive a nail in's just as hopeless as cuttin' timber with a dairy knife. I stop, give it a good adjustment, and well since my patience has darn near run out I just take the swing at it. Hands are cold, you know, my thumb doesn't really want to move, so it doesn't. Hammer comes right down on it with a good smack and I'm howling at the top of that beam trying for the life of me to hang on and not fall to my death. I drop the hammer of course, and it's only after my thumb quits its whinin' that I think to look down with a jolt to check no poor soul's beneath me.
Nobody was, but it wouldn't be my luck if I didn't elbow the one damn brick those shitsacks didn't mortar just right. Thing slides right off the wall and sails down the height of it. Landed with a sort of sickly crunch and squish that made my guts churn and bones itch. Poor halfling didn't make a sound but for the whump when he hit the frozen dirt. The way it sounded I woulda thought his head stuff spilled out all over the ice, but when I got it up in myself to scoot across the beam and look down I didn't see nothin' but a whole heap of red. It was kinda eerie, when you think about it. The way his blood just sorta steamed in the cold there.
Anyhow I sat up there just staring at that poor soul until somebody else got the thought into their head to cart him off. Not sure where they woulda took him to. Graveyards are all full up as of recent and I doubt the city would be all for an out-of-towner carpenter type to lay up next to their dead, what with the shortage and all. Mighta just tossed him in the river to float on down into the ocean, 'less he had any family nearby to object.
It was cold today. Cold and dreary and nasty and awful. Didn't get much work done, not after that shakeup. Not sure anyone else did neither. The cityfolk might be a little impatient to get their wall patched up all nice, but I really don't think they gotta ride us so much on that. It's not like them big Nightwalker beasts or whatever it was done took it upon itself to waltz into their little port town comes every other month.