Snippet #1806267

Civilian Tenny Merrick
Cargo Bay Slums, EDF Atlas

A young woman who looked and felt perhaps a decade beyond her twenty-five sat, slightly hunched, on a crate that served as a chair in the make-shift home that she shared with a family of four. Her shoulders were rounded, her torso bent over her lap as she pulled the uniform closer to her eyes, squinting in the dim light to inspect her stitching. With a sigh, she lowered her arms and straightened her spine. Rolling her head over her shoulders, she closed her eyes and let out a quiet sigh. The pay, when it was there, was awful. It didn't matter, really; it was more than most made. She did it because there was nothing else to do, in all honesty. She couldn't sit and think about...

She couldn't just sit and think.

Tenny had begun to hallucinate, she thought. She would hear voices - or rather, a voice. Peter's. Telling her to be strong, mostly. It happened when she was overly hungry or almost entirely exhausted; when she was straining beneath the weight of the life she now led.

Shaking her head, she curved her shoulders again and looked closely at the patchwork she had yet to finish. A few moments passed before the shadow of one of her living companions blocked her light. Suppressing a groan, she tilted her head back to look at the haggard form of the mother. The woman had obviously, once, been rather plump. With a lack of food, decent or otherwise, she had lost weight quickly. Her skin sagged in a particularly unflattering way, ruddy with lack of proper hygiene. Tenny imagined that her hair had, once, been beautiful. Now it was frizzy and pulled back, nothing of note at all. For a moment, the younger woman felt sorry for her housemate. Hovelmate. The shell of a woman that stood before her.

"Captain's here," Irena spoke flatly, nodding her head in the general direction of Out There. "Barely arrived. I heard hollerin' about it and thought I'd tell you."

Some people took the the slums like Irene and her children had; they, after a fashion, embraced the simplicity (and degradation) that the life offered. In this respect, Tenny found herself bonding with Irene's husband, Bryce. Neither of them felt they belonged, in any fashion. They existed, yes; but they had no life there.

"Must be about that rabble of the other day," Tenny spoke, mostly to herself, and stood. Her body screamed at her but she barely winced, turning to place the sewing she had been doing down upon the crate she had vacated. Tucking the needle safely in the pocket, she warned Irene to not let her children play with it for fear of sticking themselves.

Without a thought to her appearance, Tenny made her way towards what could only be described as the "path" through the slums. She did not know what she intended on doing, but she could only remember briefly glancing the captain previously. It would do her no harm to take a rest from her work.