A dead silence enveloped the group as the man hit the water with a splash. If it were a kid’s first day, they would have been given the most demanding jobs and treated poorly, but if they made it through the day, they’d get their pay and come back brighter the next day. This man, however, had been given an opportunity few of them would ever receive, wasted it, and now tried to take their jobs. No one moved to help him, even as he splashed and gurgled, yelling for help and that he couldn't swim. They stood still, listening to the waves he created break against the stone pier. A minute later, he lost his battle and slowly slipped under the water, never to draw breath again. All that remained was a string of slowly dissipating bubbles.
Corpses such as this would wash up eventually, but the authorities would just search the bodies for any authority and dump them in mass graves. Such was life for those living on the broken continent, which was short and full of misery. The constant wars fought over it forced the people living there to crowd together by the sea, where the Delentheim military could quickly provide support. This population influx led to overcrowding of the port cities and food shortages due to the lack of protected farmland outside them. To help with the food shortages, merchants from the southern continent imported mass amounts of food, leading to the territories’ slow economic decline as cash kept leaving for the southern continent.
In the dead silence that followed the drowning man's death, the crew leader dropped his act and sneered at the rest of them. “Anyone else? Then get a move on; we have a quota to make.” The group began to walk over to the ship gangplank, boarded it, and cracked open the third cargo hold. Sky sighed in relief when he saw the cargo. Some kind of bales wrapped in a rope; if they were crates, the crew would need to carry them off carefully, but they could throw these, speeding up the process. As a line formed, Sky reached into his right pocket and grabbed some cloth strips, wrapping them around his hands to avoid rope burn. Just as he finished, they got to work tossing the bales along the line and into a pile on the dock.
Twenty minutes later, they emptied the hold and began loading the old wooden carts drawn by horses, piling the bales as high as possible. After the carts had filled up, there were still a few bales left over. Splitting them up to carry amongst themselves, they set off down the dock. As the team followed the carts, they passed the other work groups, busy with tasks. One was cleaning the ship's hulls; another was helping to carry worn sails away and replace them with new ones. As they neared the end of the dock, they passed by another transport crew; this one had their wagons full of fresh water and supplies. The crew would load these supplies onto the ships for their next voyage back to the southern continent.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Exiting the dock and turning onto the main road, the group surrounded the two wagons, watching the cargo closely. If anyone got too close, a light shove and a glare made them back off. Luckily for the group, it was still early in the day, and many hadn't given up on trying to get into the factories yet, the lines outside still long under the now blazing sun. It got much worse after the lunch hour when many workers standing outside all day with nothing to eat and nothing to show for their efforts would try less legitimate ways to earn dinner.
An hour later, the work team made it down the main street, turned onto a side street, and arrived at Warehouse 17. They then begin unloading the carts, storing the bales, and loading them onto the high metal shelves by first having someone climb up to the top, then throwing them up and having that person stack them. When they had finished, the group once again surrounded the wagons and headed back towards the dock.
The atmosphere became more relaxed as the group, and the wagons turned onto the side road. Without a heavy load to carry, it was just a brisk walk. Still, no one talked, and the only time the silence was broken was when they heard the crew leader yelling at those in the back to hurry up.
Upon the group's arrival at the dock, the sun reached its highest point in the sky, and they were allowed a 30-minute break for lunch. A few better-off workers returned to the check-in desk to grab lunch pails with packed food, leaving the group without a second glance. The others, Sky included, walked down to the end of the dock where, discarded by long-gone ships a pile of damaged crates had been haphazardly discarded across the pier. Once they arrived, the group grabbed empty crates and flipped them over to make a circular seating area, stomping on them to see if they would hold. They then dragged over another crate; by the effort it took the two men, Sky could tell that this one was full of something; the men tilted it on its side. One pulled out a metal wedge, and another produced a small wooden mallet with a broken handle from his pockets.
The man with the mallet held it up and said to the gathered men as they took their seats, “Let's see what we got today, boys.” Then, swinging the mallet down on the wedge, the crate lid popped off and rolled a pile of slightly rotten fruit out. Upon seeing this, many pulled out knives, while others had shards of glass or twisted metal appear in tightly clenched hands. The two who had opened the crate also returned to the seating crates, pulling out their makeshift knives. Then the men stood ne, brandishing their weapons, and rushed towards the food.