Today's Word: Dwindling


The money stopped flowing and the prison ran defunct. For well on a year the warden kept his guards working for food, cutting prisoner rations down to 800 calories a day, killing not a few by slow starvation. But, when it came down to the add-lines on the warden's dwindling prison assets manager, such losses were beneficial -- more food for the rest, more time to push off the inevitable.

The warden killed himself in the early summer of 326 A.L. once the food was gone and most of the guards with it. Chaos reigned for some time before a king emerged. Through his noble leadership, the prison population, which had been dwindling under the warden and during the insanity after that one's death, began to grow. As a community, they ventured forth as if from the cradle, seeking arable land. The planet Resoq bloomed and gave forth crop under the former prisoners' coaxing hands. Likewise, did the first true settlers of that famed and tranquil world bear fruit and multiply their numbers, for the king encouraged marriage among the men and women who had once been deemed incorrigible by a far away society on a forgotten planet called Earth.