A girl at a well is attacked by a boy she knows. Written while thinking about power and how fragile our water supply really is.

That means some triggering issues are going to exist – so be warned, in the post below is a scene of a woman being assaulted. If you are offended by her standing up for herself, then avoid it too.

It’s not the start of a novel. It’s not even a short story. It’s just something I needed to get written down to prime the writing pump for the stuff I do need to be writing.

The Well 

“Pump’s broke,” were the first words Mayla heard as she set her family’s bottle down in the dust.

She straightened, sweeping the loose fringe of her dark hair back from her eyes and regarding the well with a sullen expression. A’Dan, apprentice to the mechanic, Kyle, smiled at her with teeth as yellow as his hair, from where he leaned against the well-side hitching post.

“When will it be fixed?”

A’Dan shrugged, “Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.”

“We need water today,” Mayla scowled from under her fringe.

“You can have water, if you pay for it,” A’Dan didn’t move, he just smiled at Mayla’s grimace.

“Forget it,” she said and lifted the empty water bottle. The walk home would be easier without the weight of a day’s water in it, but she was already thirsty and the sun had barely risen.

A’Dan followed her, stepping quickly in his heavy boots, the whisper of his dusty leather jeans alerting Mayla to his approach. She spun around, the bottle ready to club him across the head. A’Dan laughed, and shied to one side. Mayla stepped backwards, bottle against her chest, afraid of what he might try and do.

With the sun at her back, Mayla had an advantage. A’Dan stood a foot taller and he had the strength of a man, though they were both only sixteen.

He lunged at her and lifted the girl off her feet, sending her crashing into the dust.

“Get off me!” Mayla tried to cry out, but the fall had winded her and she could barely whisper. She lashed out with her feet and fists. Once, A’Dan might have wrestled with her like this as a game, they were no longer children and his breathing had an eager raggedness to it.

Mayla yelped as fabric tore. Her shirt had been carefully mended by her mother and handed down from her father. Finding another shirt would be difficult and expensive when she did.

With a desperate punch she knocked A’Dan’s head to one side and twisted under him. Scrambling in the dust she tried to crawl away. A’Dan growled and threw himself on her back. She went down again and clenched everything in terror as she felt his hand pulling at her belted trousers.

A black boot, worn and faded from years of dust, marked with a tarnished buckle of shining metal, filled her vision.

A’Dan’s weight on her back vanished with his shout of alarm. Mayla twisted into a sitting position and scuttled away on her butt. Pulling her torn shirt over her chest again.

The man in the black boots had tossed A’Dan aside. He was a stranger to Mayla, his dusty clothes, ragged hair, and sun-torn face telling her he had been out in the wild for a long time.

“Are you his?” the stranger asked.

Mayla shook her head, she would never be A’Dan’s.

“You shouldn’t have attacked me,” A’Dan said, standing and spitting blood into the dust.

“Stand down,” the man said. Mayla could see A’Dan’s hand hovering over the hilt of his knife. He loved that blade and kept it sharp enough to harvest the pale hair from his forearms.

“I didn’t attack you, I pulled you off the girl.”

The man stood with a casual stance that reminded Mayla of the way her father would appear, right before he exploded and killed someone.

“You had no right to,” A’Dan said.

“You had no right!” Mayla shouted.

She stood up, her fury fueled by her disgust. She ran at A’Dan, fists clenching as tight as rocks. Her punch caught the boy in the gut with the wet slapping sound of knuckles against bare flesh. A’Dan grunted and doubled over. Mayla lashed out again, this time her boot struck the back of A’Dan’s knee, sending him to the ground.

“Never touch me again,” Mayla snarled.

A’Dan laughed through the pain, his face half-masked by the dust pressed into it. “Or what? You’ll kill me?”

“I will cut bits off you until you have no hands and nothing to hold at night,” Mayla said.

The energy of her anger and fear left her shaking. She stumbled away, snatching up the empty water bottle and running through the mud huts of town towards the place her mother waited.