Here is an entry for the contest. Although it is mostly about the Aratam obsession with rain.
It was raining, this was not news. It always rained, these days the people of Aratam had taken to creating whole new words describe the many types of rain they experienced. Sometimes when the sky was light it misted or drooled which is to say copiously dribbled. In spring it mostly fained (a type of foggy rain that looked like it could get worse at any moment), except of course when it drained (definitely rained, no one is ever in any doubt about that even when indoors). Summer brought the fluds (which don’t cause actual flooding of course, but you really feel that they should) and the rainbows. The traditional sky arch still put in the occasional appearance, but more common was the column (a slightly curved line disappearing into clouds) and the dwarf (an arch brought much closer to the ground by the impeding fog and smoke of industry). In autumn arrived the hain and prain (rain arriving in large droplets, large enough to hurt in prain’s case). Winter offered little respite when it didn’t slain (sleet that melts after it hits something), for the warm Aratam winter was rarely cool enough for proper sleet and snow, but still cool enough to depress-it-down (a type of cold rain that left everybody soaked in it utterly miserable).
As I was saying, it was raining, well more accurately it was faining with hints in the warm summer air that it might pervain (the less said about it the better) tomorrow. It was as good a night as any to visit the less well-patrolled part of the city and enjoy a nice drink at the dodgiest bar in Aratam. I liked the place, it always had the best collection of Cannalan expats and professional nightrunners in the city. Big business always needs nightrunners and nightrunners always need booze to talk themselves into the insane risks they need to take to dodge the Keepers. What are nightrunners? Well, it works like this; the people who run this city have friends and family and those people need to make a living, so they go into business. They form corporations and exploit their political backing to step on their competitors. No one likes that so naturally every corporation needs political backing. Long story short the corpses need deniable assets to sabotage their competition without risking their reputation. That’s the nightrunners, they take jobs from corpses to buy more time in the cold. Finest bunch of anarchists this side of the island.
I’ve lost track, I think I was saying it was faining, but honestly halfway there it started draining so much I thought it was a flud. Fortunately, it was cool enough that I took the coat, so it wasn’t a pervaining situation. Still, it took me a while to stash my coat just to get some of the water out. Some people like to let it dry on the rack, but if you're not going to go to the basic effort to get the worst off, you’ll still end up with a damp coat when you leave. Naturally, that is when the firefight started. Seems a meet and greet between runners went sour and some fool pulled an old Juraki special. Don’t know why he would be carrying one of those old things, imported back in the day in the back of the old privateers, don’t know who hoodwinked the government with that one. The ol’ Type 5 SMG that I hear tell still finds occasional favour with the Cannalans. The way I hear it you wouldn’t see one on the front lines on account of all the armour the Merethans like to sling around, more dangerous to our side than the enemy. All right on a run I guess, keeps the Keepers away while you run for it. The other guy saw it coming, managed to point it at the wall, so he only has wood splinters to dig out for his trouble. Didn’t do much for the mood of the bar though, no one wants to be the last man out when the Keepers arrive. Fair ruined my night.
