The buildings were shells of their former selves. Towering relics of a bygone time, dangerous eyesores that could collapse at any moment on a distracted passerby. That's how it seemed to everyone else, at least. The Dead City. So long dead that the oldest humans alive had only secondhand tales of what it looked like before the World Ender.
Lorraine didn't care about those silly stories, though. Grown-ups had a tendency to exaggerate and weren't much use in her life. To her, the city was alive. It smiled at her through the jagged, sooty glass of the broken windows. It let her play on the rooftops of the buildings that still stood. It listened to her side of ever dispute with her peers. And it hid her from the scavenger robots when they came, as they always did, scouring the habitable corners of the planet for extra human parts.
It even spoke in its own way, telling her where to tread lightly, where caches of unspoilable food could be found and where she under no circumstances should ever, ever go. Where life would have descended into insurmountable unfairness, the city was the silent referee tilting the scales ever so slightly back into balance.
I've known for some time that I like writing dialogue but my weakness is developing backgrounds for my characters and their conversations to exist. I was looking at the Worldbuilding Community the other day and I realized that might be what I need to start filling in my voids, so I'll be combining prompts to challenge myself from time to time.
But anyway you can head on over here for the Freewrite details and prompt and if you'd like to try the Worldbuilding prompt, you can find that over here. Write one or both, separately or together.
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