[1794] The Reincarnation Eaters, part 1 of 3

Hey. It's been a while, but here I am trying to follow up on my New Year's resolution to write more short-ish stories. This one follows Tilnin, a down-on-his-luck shaman trying to make his way in the struggling coastal small town of Askulaya.

The story takes place in a fictional world, but one with many similarities to the real one, as it could look in the mid to late 21st century. On the off-chance this story seems familiar, it's a very heavily reworked version of a piece I posted here a while back.

This is meant to be read as a single coherent short story/short novella, so splitting it in three for RDR will result in some awkward seams. Please don't mind those too much. I'm giving myself a hard cap of 6k words for this one, but might end up closer to 5k.

Thanks to u/jsran for taking a look at an earlier draft of this and for inspiring me to write something noir-based. :) (Also tagging since I thought you might want to see this)

Any and all feedback appreciated as always!

Submission: [removed]

Crits:

[1468] The Kookaburra's Mate [revised]

[1,172] The Squirrel

[588] OL' BARLEY