concertigrossi

Title: Caveat Empire
Author:

concertigrossi
Rating: G
Word count: exactly 100 words
Characters: Cutler Beckett
Challenge: The Childhood Challenge on

potc100

     He sat under the attic window, with his father’s atlas, and pored over its painted pages.   Technically, he didn’t need this bolt-hole anymore: his brothers would never torment him again, after his latest revenge, but he enjoyed this sequestration.
      His fingers traced the boundaries off to places exotic and unknown. France and Spain. The Habsburg Dominions. The Ottoman Empire. Africa. The Mughal Empire and China. The empty, underutilized Americas. He hated the voids; there must be something there, after all! And sometimes, he felt, the borders were lacking in symmetry.
      No matter. Once he grew up, he would redraw them.