STILL, WHAT I WANT IN MY LIFE IS TO BE WILLING TO BE DAZZLED- to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.
I have never, ever seen a city – before now.
There are buildings, in the Gold, scattered sporadically among the trees. Temples, and the occasional barracks, and some houses, though they aren’t really necessary. They are never too tall, and they are never too large; we wouldn’t dare to interrupt the trees, so we are limited in where and how we can build. They are always modest and rarely beautiful, even the temples. (I have been told that the temples of outsiders tend to be grander – that they use them to pay tribute to things called “gods.” We have no gods, and our temples are nothing more than housing for the priestesses and sites for the rituals.) The most splendid temple in the very deepest part of the woods, which houses the high priestess and the royal family, is still modest.
Every building that composes Terrastella’s capitol seems to me a thousand times more fantastic than anything from my homeland.
I know that I am coming up on the city when the dirt path that I have been following gives way to cobbled grey stone. It reminds me, somehow, of the sea, or the dark grey clouds that gather before what I now know is a storm. (Today, the sun is blinding bright; it helps to keep the chill at bay, to my relief. Winter has barely begun, and I have been assured that it will get much, much colder. I am beginning to think that I am ill-prepared for it.) It is wet – everything in Terrastella seems to be wet, most of the time – and coated with moss, in places, and I find it somehow charming. The paths at home are simple dirt, kneaded down and kept kempt by constant travel.
I practically prance onto the path, exaggerating my movements just to hear the way that my hooves clatter against the stone. The click is pleasant and rhythmic, and it puts a perpetual spring – nearly a dance – in my step.
I cross a hill – and then I can see the polished spire in the distance, gleaming in the sunlight. To me, it seems to reach up impossibly high. The rest of the citadel stretches out around it, and the city. I cannot make out many of the details of it, from such a distance, but I can tell that it is beautiful; the faint outlines of ornate carvings and stained-glass windows stick out to me even where I stand. I have to stand there, for a moment, my hooves frozen (and not from the chill) to the grey stones and my jaw likely hanging open with such exuberance that it likely looks unhinged. I can’t bring myself to move, and I blink a sudden scald of hot tears – made hotter still by the weather – out of my eyes.
I had heard about cities, on occasion, but never much. Just enough to know that they were “a collection of buildings,” which I could, most certainly, not imagine. It is less shocking than the ocean because I expect it, and it is less shocking than the sky because I have seen a building before, but it is no less overwhelming.
All of the parts of me that are frozen come rushing out at once, and I spring into a run – racing, as it were, towards the city gates.
The moments that follow pass in a teeth-jittering blur. The city is so much bigger up close; everything is so much bigger up close, and, even if I crane my neck, once I have drawn close enough to the city walls, I cannot see the top of the tower. I somehow manage to stammer my way into the city – the guards grin at my expression, and they ask me where I’m from, and if I’ve ever been somewhere like this before, even though I’m sure that they can tell I haven’t. I answer, but, as soon as I’m past the gate, I find that I can’t recall what I said. (It must have been a nervous mess; I would likely blush to recall it.)
The streets are crowded with early morning bustle. I dart among the figures, weaving my way through crowds wide-eyed and trying not to stumble over anyone (or be stumbled over myself) in the process, even as I want to stop and stare at everything I pass. I smell perfume, flowers, pastries, sea salt, woodfire, and a hundred things, easily, that I don’t recognize. I pass buildings with balconies where people are out at work, and buildings with glass walls in the front that display various wares, from beautiful clothing to jewels to weapons and armor – there are so many shops here, and so many things for sale. Street vendors tempt me with offers, and I am mostly clever enough to avoid them, but I trade a few of my feathers and a strand of my hair for a few golden trinkets with intricate designs, which I wind around one of my horns.
A magician preforms tricks on a street-corner, pulling paper dolls that dance as though they’re alive out of a hat; and maybe they are alive, or maybe they are just “alive” in the way that I was alive as a sword. It is so hard to tell. He catches my eye as I pass, and he winks, and I grin, tossing my head; my chestnut curls cascade down my neck, across my shoulders, tangle loosely about my legs. Oh, I have so much to do - my people are counting on me to find the heir, who could well be here, but my head and my heart are so full of something massive and overwhelming and near-bloom that I can barely even force myself to think about that now. I want to turn the city over and look at it from every angle, to pick apart each unwelcoming alleyway and dazzling shopfront, to stare at every mural I see painted on a wall until I have burned the image into my eyes enough for fifty more lifetimes.
I can never bring myself to stay still for long enough to do that, of course. I tell myself that I will have time for it later, even though I know that I won’t.
I duck – finally – into a relatively large building that I am told is a library. I don’t want to, although I am excited to see the collection; the temples held scrolls, but never many. I trot up the stairs and through the doors, and a smiling woman greets me at the desk. (I very nearly forget my manners and don’t greet her back, because I can see the books and scrolls behind her – and there are so many, more than I knew existed in the whole entire world. How could any one place hold so many tomes?)
The woman informs me that there are several more floors, and a basement. I can barely fathom it.
I step past the entryway, and into the shelves – and almost immediately I stop, my knees going weak, and I stare out at the rows upon rows of them, and all the treasures they hold within. “Oh,” I say, softly, mostly to myself; and I don’t even know where to start. (Probably, anything would work. I need to know if I can read the language, first, but I am hardly thinking of that now-)
@Liatris|| she'll have to see Dawn's library, sometime; her head will probably explode || "nocturne," cesare pavese "Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
He remembered the first time he had seen the dawn court. In Elysium, there were no cities. No building, no structure... In Lyrus it was just towers of red rock and cloudless skies. They lived under the watch of the firstborns, and nothing else. In Novus things were different. People lived in stone buildings and walked on cobblestone paths. The first time he had seen it, he wondered how anyone could live in such a closed space. How they could sleep without feeling the night wind on their pelt, or see the glow of the moon through closed eyes. He grew to understand it though. There was something peaceful about the quiet that came from living within walls. Some nights though, he still wandered out, outside the city walls, to lay underneath the stars.
Dusk court was different in a way. While the dawn court had ivy-covered walls and sharp-pointed towers, dusk had barren walls, with blunt square cutoffs. A tall tower stood over the rest of the city, casting a looming shadow over everything beneath it. While part of him wanted to explore and see everything dusk had to offer, he was only here for one thing. The library. While considerably smaller than that of dawn, they did supposedly have some tomes they were missing (He had become rather interested in researching the history of novus, and while the dawn library was plentiful, it had some clear bias towards their patron god).
He moved through the streets quietly, murmuring brief "no thank yous" to the merchants who tried to steal his attention to their wares. Most of them sold little trinkets that would be of little use to him. Even if they were, he had nothing to offer in return. He stopped once to ask for directions, having forgotten which turn he was supposed to take. Finally, he made it to the wooden double doors that guarded the trove of books.
It was much less impressive then dawn courts library. Dust gathered on the shelves, some of which sat empty, and there were very few others. An old man stood reading a manuscript in a corner, grumbling every few minutes about the unreadable writing. he gave a quiet nod to the librarian, before heading into the shelves. He stopped halfway to his destination, his attention drawn to a filly who stood alone, looking rather confused.
"Are you looking for something in particular?" he asked, keeping his voice low as he approached her. Librarians were frightful creatures, their wrath activated by loud noises he had found. "It can be hard to find things if you don't know the system"
STILL, WHAT I WANT IN MY LIFE IS TO BE WILLING TO BE DAZZLED- to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.
Oh, goodness.
Oh, goodness - there are so many shelves, and so many books, and so many scrolls, and I barely even know where to start looking. I’m so frazzled by the sheer newness of everything that surrounds me that it takes several moments for me to realize that I can almost certainly read the language, because I read the signs on the way in. It isn’t our language, though. I wonder if the priestesses did something to me before I left, but I don’t dwell on it-
Mostly because I am knocked out of my wide-eyed, confused staring by the appearance of a strange man. I turn my head to stare – up, slightly (he is just taller than me) – at him, and I find him blue-grey and charcoal and faintly dappled, in a way that somehow reminds me of this world’s changing skies. (I am only just getting used to them; it makes me want to compare them to everything.) He asks me if I am looking for anything in particular, then adds that it can be difficult to find things if one doesn’t know the system; I certainly don’t know the system. “Oh – thank you,” I say, earnestly, hushing my voice just as he hushed his. I am always a bit surprised when strangers are so kind to me, but, so far, this strange, new world has been full of them. I thought that most outsiders were frightening; after all, most of the time, when I met them, it was in battle, smeared with ash and blood. I suppose that things are different now. Maybe they have never been awful, all this time, and I only saw a few of them – or maybe they just don’t know enough about me or about the Gold to want to be awful, yet.
It doesn’t much matter. For now, the stranger is kind, and he has offered to help me. (And I am in rather desperate need of help.) “Do you know where they might have…maps?” I incline my head at him curiously, tugging at my chestnut bangs to keep the gesture from knocking them into my eyes. “I’m rather new to Novus, and I’d like to know more about the landscape.” Before I start searching for the heir, I mean, but I don’t bother saying that – it isn’t as though he’d know what I was talking about anyways.
(I am trying very hard not to think about how nobody in this entire world would know about it, if I told them, and how the heir might not even know who they are – how impossible it seems to find them. I am trying very hard not to think about it, but the part of me that was a knight keeps knocking at the back of my mind, eyes narrowed in disapproval, and telling me to hurry.)
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
She was strange. Granted, Liatris hadn’t met very many people, or spoken to very many in his lifetime. His life as a child had revolved around his mothers. He didn’t know much, just what he had caught in hushed whispers. How mama Lu and mama Cav had been on the run from...a wolf? He still didn’t quite understand, supposed he never would. Regardless, his life had revolved around them. And they both stuck around near the oasis. They spoke to a few individuals who came ‘round. Kodarki, Syrilth, but that was about it. He had still been young when the land… crumbled. Sometimes he still wondered how he’d managed to escape.
But he could still tell, that she was odd somehow. She was young, clearly only half his age. A child. And yet her words seemed… confident. Not typical of foals. She seemed poised, as if she was ready to take on the world. He wondered who she was, inevitably she had to be someone important. Somewhere else if not here. He realized he’d waited far to long to answer her.
“Down a floor” he replied awkwardly with a small shake of his head. “Come on” he moved carefully towards the staircase. (whose idea had it been to make the floors wooden anyways? They all had hooves, and the sound echoed loudly against the stone walls and tall cases) checking to make sure she was following he carefully picked his way through the aisles of shelves, until he came to one that had four large gilded tomes sat upon them. One for each court. They had maps of each court, and each area within the court lands.
“Do you…” he trailed off. She was young. “Do you know how to read a map?”
STILL, WHAT I WANT IN MY LIFE IS TO BE WILLING TO BE DAZZLED- to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.
His response is slightly awkward, as though he doesn’t quite know what to make of me. I’m too focused on the bookshelves and the building, which is unlike anything I’ve ever seen, to pay much mind to his reaction; I hear him say that the maps are on the next floor down, but I don’t really process his words until he is already walking. I halfway-startle, and whirl to follow him so quickly that I stumble over my own hooves.
(Like a child. This body is nearly frustrating, sometimes.) “Oh, okay – thank you,” I say, and then I realize that I’ve repeated myself, almost word-for-word. “Uhm. Again.”
I trail after him, still gaping at the vaulted ceilings and the ornate floors; even the stairs are somewhat mind-boggling. There were barely any, at home, and never so many, and they were certainly never wooden. (I realize that there might have been more than one reason for it, when they creak obnoxiously beneath our shared weight.)
I follow him through rows and rows of shelves, and, when he stops, I am so distracted by looking at everyone around us that I very nearly run into him. There are four massive tomes on pedestals in front of us; one for each of the courts, I assume.
I am about to start towards them when he asks me if I know how to read; the question stops me short. For a moment, I am nearly offended, but that is before I remember my own, (young) age. Worse, it makes me consider something that might be more problematic than my youth. Do I even speak the language of these people? I can certainly understand some of their words - but who’s to say that the ones in the map books are in a language that I am familiar with. “I do, but-“ I pause, a bit embarrassed at the admission I am about to make, “-but I’m not so sure that I understand this land’s writing, to be honest. I’m not sure that the language of my homeland is the same as the one they use here.”
I eye the tomes apprehensively, as though I am a little bit afraid of approaching them to find out. I can probably read them, even if I don’t know the language - maps are more pictures than words, diagrams than dialogue, in my experience, but that is beside the point. (Who is to say that outsiders even use the same kinds of maps as we do?)
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
