Dulhans

Pelk dropped a ball, and they watched it roll towards the eastern wall of his living room.

He looked up to Wimeril and silently gestured, scowling, to where the ball had come to rest against the peeling plaster. Other objects lay touching the same wall, whose shapes had let them roll with the slope: a bottle, his youngest daughter’s marbles and a few other spherical or rounded nick-knacks.

Wimeril was silent for a few seconds, but eventually spoke.

“Could just be your house, or some kind of magnetic anomaly,” he paused, “just saying.”

Pelk gave him a scornful look, muttered “magnetic anomaly…”, went to the window and unlatched it. It swung outwards on its own. He beckoned his cousin closer.

“See that rock on the other side of the gulch? Used to be hidden by Ergil’s chimney, right there…”

Wimeril looked uncomfortable, reluctant to articulate what had been on everyone’s minds since the new house had been built at the end of the branch, but evidence was mounting. Their village, and indeed the whole branch it rested on, was slowly tilting down. Some, especially Pelk, had warned Lomhun beforehand, and even suggested a decent alternate spot on a stronger ledge, but he had been adamant. He had gone on about the view, and “being at the forefront of life”, whatever that meant, and then just built his house at the very tip.

Their only consolation now was that his would probably be the first house to go down.