Week One – The Dialogue Prompt

To Change the World, by Ava Murbarger

P.S.- sorry I missed the meeting, we were out of town. I hope to be at the next one!!

The sky was bleeding again.
Rust-colored clouds hung over the City like bruises, pulsing faintly. Rael kept her eyes fixed on them, one hand on the rail of the Watchers’ Tower. Her gloves were too thin. The steel was cold enough to bite.
Behind her, a door creaked open.
“You’re late,” she said without turning.
Boots scraped against the stone. A new recruit, probably. They sent one every week now. Fresh eyes, fresh loyalty.
“I got lost,” the boy said. He sounded too young to carry the badge. Too soft to hold a blade. “Sorry.”
She turned and looked at him.
Dust-colored coat, too long in the sleeves. Wide eyes. Not from the City, then. One of the Outer Rings. Maybe even farther. She sighed.
“If you know something bad is going to happen,” she said, “do you have to try and stop it?”
The boy blinked. “I just got here.”
“Well, obviously.” She crossed her arms.
He shifted nervously on his feet.
Rael turned back to the cityscape. “The answer is yes, by the way. At least, if you’re cursed with a conscience.”
He joined her at the rail. Together they watched the distant flicker of drones weaving patterns in the smog. A red warning rune glowed briefly on the horizon, then faded. Rael knew what it meant. The Reclamation Agents were moving again. Soon, another neighborhood would vanish.
“Why do you do this?” the boy asked.
She laughed without humor. “Because no one else will. Because the High Council stopped caring two winters ago. Because someone has to.”
A long pause. Then, “Is it true the Watchers can see the future?”
“We read the signs,” she said. “Patterns in weather. Seismic anomalies. Political shifts. The Council says it’s superstition.” She paused. “But when the streets burn exactly seven hours after the rats vanish, over and over again, you stop calling it chance.”
He was silent. Good. Maybe he was listening.
“You said you got lost. But you still came up here. Why?”
“I heard the bells.” He hesitated. “They said you can’t hear them unless you’re meant to.”
Rael glanced at him. The brass bell on the tower hadn’t rung in years. She narrowed her eyes.
“Name?”
“Wren.”
“That’s not your real name.”
“It is now.”
She smirked. “Fine, Wren. Welcome to Watcher’s Hill. Welcome to the losing side.”
Another alarm rune lit the smog. Closer this time.
Rael pulled her scope from her belt and scanned the eastern edge of the city. “Sector Four. They’re burning the food lines again.”
“That’s the second time this week,” Wren said quietly.
She lowered the scope. “Third.”
He didn’t speak for a long time. Then he said, “My sister was there.”
Rael’s fingers tightened around the rail. She didn’t ask if the girl had survived. That wasn’t the kind of world they lived in anymore.
Instead, she reached into her coat and handed Wren a folded map, inked with lines and red X’s.
“There’s a storm tunnel under the old trainyard,” she said. “It’s not on any schematics, and it’ll get you to Sector Four faster than any street. But it’s dark. And crawling.”
Wren took the map with trembling fingers. “Why are you helping me?”
Rael looked at him, really looked. The wide eyes weren’t wide with fear, not completely. It was fire. Just hidden under the ash.
“Because sometimes the only thing worse than seeing the future,” she said softly, “is doing nothing to change it.”
Wren nodded. His jaw set. “Then I’ll go.”
Rael watched as he turned, vanishing back into the tower’s dark. When the door slammed shut behind him, the bell gave a soft chime. Just once.
And far below, the wind began to shift.