STONE IS THE FACE OF PATIENCE
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story / and you are somewhere in it / and it will never end until it all ends.
Fortunately for me, the golden man does not seem to be offended by my thoughtless wandering. In fact, when he speaks, I have a feeling that he really understands my awe, and I find myself glad again that the outsiders in this place seem kinder than the ones at home.
“It really is brilliant,” I say, in a voice that is still utterly wonderstruck, tossing him an easy grin. “I can barely believe that it exists.” I’ve heard stories, of course, and occasionally we’d get a book about the world outside, but the trees would have swallowed whole any buildings that even attempted to rise to the height of the ones in this city, and they would have been just as likely to stagnate and fragment any attempts to develop the space between them so profoundly. Most people, at home, lived spread-out – as much as they could, anyways, given the size of our forest. (Not including the depths. No one but the wild things lived there.)
The man introduces himself as Elliot de Clare. I pick up on his last name immediately, and I wonder at it briefly; it seems a bit like a title, the way that he says it. “Ser de Clare,” I say, dipping immediately into easy formalities – and then down into some semblance of a bow, though there is not enough room on the crowded streets to outstretch the expanse of my wings. I straighten, then finish, “it’s a pleasure. My name is Nicnevin.” He asks me, then, if it’s possible that I’ve only just arrived in this place, and I nod, almost before I have time to think about his words. “I have – I only arrived in this land a few days ago.” I’m not surprised that he noticed; I imagine that my shock (and awe) is obvious, no matter where I look, and that is without mentioning the way that I was stumbling through the streets without paying the slightest mind to where I was going. “I’ve never seen anything like this…city…” My tongue stumbles over the word, as though it is not quite accustomed to it, “…before. Do you live here?”
(The first local that I met was from another nation – it would be nice to speak with someone who lives here.)
I know where I am, at least, though I still don’t understand any of it at all. I know that this is the realm of Dusk, which I only truly understood a few days ago, the first time that I saw the sky, and I know that it is called Terrastella.
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"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
