Plastic Sea — What's Left, Page 6
By Inkroost · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1: Old Lahana's fish stall: blue crates, silver fish on a line, a faded pink umbrella. Biber has taken off her bottle-cap necklace and dangles it across the counter while big Kabak stands behind her. Biber: 'Two fish for this?' Lahana: 'For that junk? One fin.' Panel 2: Behind the stall, a hand with a red-taped bent fork lifts a fish off the drying line. Panel 3: Lahana whirls around with her three-pronged spear, her cloudy eye blazing. Lahana: 'ROKA! You little gull!'
Image description
Biber dangles her bottle-cap necklace to haggle with Old Lahana while a hand with a red-taped bent fork lifts a fish; Lahana spins around shouting.
About this chapter
In the dark at the bottom of the sea, something is counting. On Candyreef, a candy-coloured island of floating trash, Roka wakes to a water bag in the face from his street crew, lifts breakfast from the old woman who would have fed him anyway, and tells the kid who follows him that he doesn't owe anybody. Then the gulls lift all at once, and a Maw eats half the island. A day and a night alone at sea later, the Garden Ship fishes him out and orders him to walk its treadwheels for fish heads. Roka is nobody's slave, so he goes looking for something to steal instead, and breaks into a barnacled case dredged from the seabed. The silver dust inside climbs into his arm and says hello. It is polite. It is curious. It wants every human dead. And it has just started counting again.