Post by Beelzebibble on Aug 30, 2016 6:26:55 GMT -5
Mezorgha, in the Kingdom of Raiixia
This side of the bridge was all right. If she kept to this side, looking inward to the town, she could nearly imagine herself comfortably at sea level, so that the pit of her stomach and the nerves in her thin legs would relax. Facing this way, and, perhaps, ignoring the rush of water sweeping too quickly beneath her feet, and the beating of wings overhead – yes, well, more or less ignoring all sound, and facing only this way – the scene before her was almost restful. This was a beautiful old city, in its way; the buildings were boxy and colorless yet laid with elaborately patterned bricks and set with harmonious grids of circular windows and arching doorways. They stacked upon each other like a child's blocks, each story taller than the one below, rising up a dozen stories or more altogether, into the open sky. For all the history etched into the clay and stone around her, Galendina had to confess some surprise that she could not see more apparent wealth in the city today. But Mezorgha was a more barren thing than most islands in the Kingdom of Raiixia: a pretty pile of rocks and little more, or at least so it had been for some centuries. Its ancestral dwellers must have felt little hesitation about depleting their own resources in the building of this city, since they could so easily pluck and harvest from the other islands to sustain themselves. They never guessed that another of these island nations would later amass such economic clout as to squeeze them into destitution atop their pretty pile. Galendina called that an embarrassing failure of foresight. One's first responsibility was to see to the preservation of one's own affairs, before meddling in other domains. At least the Altarics of Mezorgha had toiled enough to give the world this treasure of architecture before sliding into geopolitical irrelevance.
Only she did wish they'd built this bridge wider.
It was not a city buried in tourists, and she knew full well that to betray too much discomfort would be to announce herself, and so with an effort Galendina crossed to the bridge's other side, looking outward to the ocean. Grasping the stone wall of the bridge with her arms spread wide for balance, she forced herself to lean forward and peer over the wall's edge, where the water crashed some impossible ways down, tapering into a terrifyingly thin line before reaching the sea below. Flanking that white column of water on either side, for hundreds of feet beneath her, were still more tiers of circular windows and arching doors, scantly intertwined with precarious thin staircases, all carved into the mossy face of the cliff itself. The buildings atop the cliff were no more than the icing on the cake.
She pulled herself back to the bridge's other side, to give her swimming head relief. Her hands were very white. No bridge would have been wide enough to offer comfort as she passed over this waterfall, but by the pureland, she did wish they'd built it wider... Still, there was no use asking for consideration. She could hardly imagine the bridge had been designed as a major civic artery. In fact it was quite little more than a courteous afterthought.
The native dwellers of Mezorgha, flying above and around her on great birdlike wings, diving at heart-stopping angles into their homes within the cliff face, or fluttering above the rooftops to chat and compare goods, or merely circling in the sky for an afternoon exercise, had not much need for bridges.
When she reached the other side, she had a merciful opportunity to make her way slightly inward from the cliff's face before beginning up a staircase to her destination, which she knew to be at the top. The stairs were steep, and only increased in number between one flight and the next. Rooftops became streets as she passed, and each story appeared slightly more modern than the last; though electric fixtures had been nowhere in evidence on the clifftop level, up here she could count rudimentary utility poles as she climbed. (They stood strangely close in front of the buildings, she thought, until it occurred to her that a flying society would want to keep the open air as free of cables as possible.)
Six or seven stories up, she had to pause and rest on the clay, gazing out over the identical wall of architecture on the other side and the stream running between them. She was sweating more than she had in years, and her knees were weak. After she'd clapped a paper napkin over her eyes and allowed it to wipe across her face, a flapping of wings and a soft thump nearby told her that someone had approached. She let the napkin drop.
The winged woman was young and muscular, with short-cropped hair of bright vermilion, and sat with her legs crossed on the parapet dividing the roof-street at this level from the sky. She smiled at Galendina. "You can't be meaning to walk all the way to the top," she said.
Galendina sighed, and smiled in return. "I'm afraid I am."
The woman stood and spread her arms. "Let me see you up, traveller. You've climbed enough already..."
She was the fourth to make this same offer. The first time, Galendina had been taken aback by the nonchalant way in which that Altaric had suggested it, as though there were nothing conspicuous or embarrassing about the prospect. By now she'd had ample practice to hone her answer. "Your forebears gave time and effort in making this accommodation for my kind," she said, patting the staircase. "The least I can give in return is an afternoon's pains. Thank you, friend, but I'd rather walk."
The Altaric woman nodded, took a step off the parapet, and landed on a breeze, waving back to Galendina as she flew away. The answer seemed to have gone over acceptably. No doubt more so than would have the honest answer, which was that if Galendina's feet both left the ground at this moment, she would likely vomit.
At last she reached the top level, and the most contemporary-looking, where neon signs flickered over storefronts and the traditional arching entrances had been all but replaced by sliding warehouse doors and steel gates. All the way up here, she found Altaric pedestrians in higher numbers, resting their wings by taking a stroll among the shops, although it would still take a more generous soul than Galendina to call this place a metropolitan paradise: Many of the businesses looked to be abandoned, the roof-streets were unkempt, and elements of modern infrastructure like streetlamps had been deployed at strange, asymmetrical intervals, reinforcing her private impression that this was a society which had not entirely finished disputing with itself whether and how much to integrate the outside world.
After buying a fresh water bottle from a street vendor, she made her way further inland, away from the waterfall, along the city's towering vertical face. In some time she found the establishment she'd been looking for: a small shop, set slightly back from the main line of buildings in a narrow alley. The sign bore the image of a crimson bird with beams of light beneath, and a name in three alphabets, one of them Roman: LUCKY PHOENIX. The door was propped open, yet to judge from the darkness inside, the power was out.
So Galendina stood at the entrance to the alley for perhaps ten minutes, appearing to consult a map, and only when the lights inside the Lucky Phoenix blinked back on did she stroll in.
It was the most muted pawn shop she had ever seen. Rather than the expected visual assault of bric-a-brac strewn over every available surface, she found rows of plain metal display cases, undecorated, spaced wide enough apart that she might have been in a home supply store. Each of these cases did prove to be full of typical trinkets – lamps, locks, shakers, candlestick holders, rolling pins, wrenches, and dishes of every size and function – yet they were pushed strangely far back onto the shelves. Only the ceiling was densely packed, with hangings of boots, brooms, pans, and clocks. Galendina had never set foot in a pawn shop arranged so contrary to the normal principle of maximizing the visibility and availability of every last useless knick-knack. At some point it occurred to her that a culture of humans with massive wings protruding from their shoulder blades might, perhaps, lend itself to a conservative philosophy of interior design.
Of the two men standing in this shop, though, only one – evidently the owner – was an Altaric citizen. Wearing thick glasses perched on a hooked nose that rather awkwardly magnified his resemblance to a bird, he stood with wings folded behind his back at the glass counter up front, listening to the other man. This was an outsider like herself, a tall, wingless man in a blue uniform with a toolbag over the hip. On the breast of the uniform was printed another phoenix design, bright yellow, stylized and angular, with six feathers at the crest and nine feathers in each of its wings. Galendina knew the meaning: this was the insignia of the Raiixian majority's government. The feathers of the crest represented the country's six main inhabited islands, the feathers of the wings a further eighteen islets, smaller and mostly unsettled. The insignia announced the man to be a public employee. Galendina supposed that most of Mezorgha's civic works were maintained by the lowlanders. He scuffed the floor with one rubber boot and then the other as he spoke.
"Okay, I replaced the fuse, but listen, this won't be the last time this happens. That old fuse box in there is gonna blow if you let it." He pointed to a door at the back of the shop, marked EMPLOYEES ONLY in the same three alphabets, where Galendina let her eyes linger. "What you want is a proper circuit breaker panel, but that'd take rewirin' the whole place and I'd need a couple of guys and the right equipment."
"But you can do it?" the owner asked, also glancing toward the door.
"Wish I could come back right away, but I'm pretty booked up. Here's what I think you do. You put in a request through Construction & Engineering. You... maybe go ahead and tell 'em you're worried about public safety, here, because seriously that wiring is way below standard. Could get you a leg up in priority. You do that, I can come back and make a real job of it. Might have to close shop for a few days, but believe me, you'll be glad you did. All right?"
The owner nodded, and took a black wallet from his pocket, but the electrician waved it off – "Oh, hey, don't worry about that. Your tax dollars at work, right?"
"Well, I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Nick."
"Not a problem. Hey, take it easy, I'll see you again. 'Scuse me," he added under his breath to Galendina, who was still standing near the door. Hoisting a heavy plastic box alongside him, he moved past her and out into the alley.
This left Galendina as the only person in the shop apart from the owner. It was imprudent of her to have let that conversation play out without busying herself examining the items on sale more thoroughly. She set herself to the task at once. This faded chest of drawers had once been a very appealing shade of cyan.
This side of the bridge was all right. If she kept to this side, looking inward to the town, she could nearly imagine herself comfortably at sea level, so that the pit of her stomach and the nerves in her thin legs would relax. Facing this way, and, perhaps, ignoring the rush of water sweeping too quickly beneath her feet, and the beating of wings overhead – yes, well, more or less ignoring all sound, and facing only this way – the scene before her was almost restful. This was a beautiful old city, in its way; the buildings were boxy and colorless yet laid with elaborately patterned bricks and set with harmonious grids of circular windows and arching doorways. They stacked upon each other like a child's blocks, each story taller than the one below, rising up a dozen stories or more altogether, into the open sky. For all the history etched into the clay and stone around her, Galendina had to confess some surprise that she could not see more apparent wealth in the city today. But Mezorgha was a more barren thing than most islands in the Kingdom of Raiixia: a pretty pile of rocks and little more, or at least so it had been for some centuries. Its ancestral dwellers must have felt little hesitation about depleting their own resources in the building of this city, since they could so easily pluck and harvest from the other islands to sustain themselves. They never guessed that another of these island nations would later amass such economic clout as to squeeze them into destitution atop their pretty pile. Galendina called that an embarrassing failure of foresight. One's first responsibility was to see to the preservation of one's own affairs, before meddling in other domains. At least the Altarics of Mezorgha had toiled enough to give the world this treasure of architecture before sliding into geopolitical irrelevance.
Only she did wish they'd built this bridge wider.
It was not a city buried in tourists, and she knew full well that to betray too much discomfort would be to announce herself, and so with an effort Galendina crossed to the bridge's other side, looking outward to the ocean. Grasping the stone wall of the bridge with her arms spread wide for balance, she forced herself to lean forward and peer over the wall's edge, where the water crashed some impossible ways down, tapering into a terrifyingly thin line before reaching the sea below. Flanking that white column of water on either side, for hundreds of feet beneath her, were still more tiers of circular windows and arching doors, scantly intertwined with precarious thin staircases, all carved into the mossy face of the cliff itself. The buildings atop the cliff were no more than the icing on the cake.
She pulled herself back to the bridge's other side, to give her swimming head relief. Her hands were very white. No bridge would have been wide enough to offer comfort as she passed over this waterfall, but by the pureland, she did wish they'd built it wider... Still, there was no use asking for consideration. She could hardly imagine the bridge had been designed as a major civic artery. In fact it was quite little more than a courteous afterthought.
The native dwellers of Mezorgha, flying above and around her on great birdlike wings, diving at heart-stopping angles into their homes within the cliff face, or fluttering above the rooftops to chat and compare goods, or merely circling in the sky for an afternoon exercise, had not much need for bridges.
When she reached the other side, she had a merciful opportunity to make her way slightly inward from the cliff's face before beginning up a staircase to her destination, which she knew to be at the top. The stairs were steep, and only increased in number between one flight and the next. Rooftops became streets as she passed, and each story appeared slightly more modern than the last; though electric fixtures had been nowhere in evidence on the clifftop level, up here she could count rudimentary utility poles as she climbed. (They stood strangely close in front of the buildings, she thought, until it occurred to her that a flying society would want to keep the open air as free of cables as possible.)
Six or seven stories up, she had to pause and rest on the clay, gazing out over the identical wall of architecture on the other side and the stream running between them. She was sweating more than she had in years, and her knees were weak. After she'd clapped a paper napkin over her eyes and allowed it to wipe across her face, a flapping of wings and a soft thump nearby told her that someone had approached. She let the napkin drop.
The winged woman was young and muscular, with short-cropped hair of bright vermilion, and sat with her legs crossed on the parapet dividing the roof-street at this level from the sky. She smiled at Galendina. "You can't be meaning to walk all the way to the top," she said.
Galendina sighed, and smiled in return. "I'm afraid I am."
The woman stood and spread her arms. "Let me see you up, traveller. You've climbed enough already..."
She was the fourth to make this same offer. The first time, Galendina had been taken aback by the nonchalant way in which that Altaric had suggested it, as though there were nothing conspicuous or embarrassing about the prospect. By now she'd had ample practice to hone her answer. "Your forebears gave time and effort in making this accommodation for my kind," she said, patting the staircase. "The least I can give in return is an afternoon's pains. Thank you, friend, but I'd rather walk."
The Altaric woman nodded, took a step off the parapet, and landed on a breeze, waving back to Galendina as she flew away. The answer seemed to have gone over acceptably. No doubt more so than would have the honest answer, which was that if Galendina's feet both left the ground at this moment, she would likely vomit.
At last she reached the top level, and the most contemporary-looking, where neon signs flickered over storefronts and the traditional arching entrances had been all but replaced by sliding warehouse doors and steel gates. All the way up here, she found Altaric pedestrians in higher numbers, resting their wings by taking a stroll among the shops, although it would still take a more generous soul than Galendina to call this place a metropolitan paradise: Many of the businesses looked to be abandoned, the roof-streets were unkempt, and elements of modern infrastructure like streetlamps had been deployed at strange, asymmetrical intervals, reinforcing her private impression that this was a society which had not entirely finished disputing with itself whether and how much to integrate the outside world.
After buying a fresh water bottle from a street vendor, she made her way further inland, away from the waterfall, along the city's towering vertical face. In some time she found the establishment she'd been looking for: a small shop, set slightly back from the main line of buildings in a narrow alley. The sign bore the image of a crimson bird with beams of light beneath, and a name in three alphabets, one of them Roman: LUCKY PHOENIX. The door was propped open, yet to judge from the darkness inside, the power was out.
So Galendina stood at the entrance to the alley for perhaps ten minutes, appearing to consult a map, and only when the lights inside the Lucky Phoenix blinked back on did she stroll in.
It was the most muted pawn shop she had ever seen. Rather than the expected visual assault of bric-a-brac strewn over every available surface, she found rows of plain metal display cases, undecorated, spaced wide enough apart that she might have been in a home supply store. Each of these cases did prove to be full of typical trinkets – lamps, locks, shakers, candlestick holders, rolling pins, wrenches, and dishes of every size and function – yet they were pushed strangely far back onto the shelves. Only the ceiling was densely packed, with hangings of boots, brooms, pans, and clocks. Galendina had never set foot in a pawn shop arranged so contrary to the normal principle of maximizing the visibility and availability of every last useless knick-knack. At some point it occurred to her that a culture of humans with massive wings protruding from their shoulder blades might, perhaps, lend itself to a conservative philosophy of interior design.
Of the two men standing in this shop, though, only one – evidently the owner – was an Altaric citizen. Wearing thick glasses perched on a hooked nose that rather awkwardly magnified his resemblance to a bird, he stood with wings folded behind his back at the glass counter up front, listening to the other man. This was an outsider like herself, a tall, wingless man in a blue uniform with a toolbag over the hip. On the breast of the uniform was printed another phoenix design, bright yellow, stylized and angular, with six feathers at the crest and nine feathers in each of its wings. Galendina knew the meaning: this was the insignia of the Raiixian majority's government. The feathers of the crest represented the country's six main inhabited islands, the feathers of the wings a further eighteen islets, smaller and mostly unsettled. The insignia announced the man to be a public employee. Galendina supposed that most of Mezorgha's civic works were maintained by the lowlanders. He scuffed the floor with one rubber boot and then the other as he spoke.
"Okay, I replaced the fuse, but listen, this won't be the last time this happens. That old fuse box in there is gonna blow if you let it." He pointed to a door at the back of the shop, marked EMPLOYEES ONLY in the same three alphabets, where Galendina let her eyes linger. "What you want is a proper circuit breaker panel, but that'd take rewirin' the whole place and I'd need a couple of guys and the right equipment."
"But you can do it?" the owner asked, also glancing toward the door.
"Wish I could come back right away, but I'm pretty booked up. Here's what I think you do. You put in a request through Construction & Engineering. You... maybe go ahead and tell 'em you're worried about public safety, here, because seriously that wiring is way below standard. Could get you a leg up in priority. You do that, I can come back and make a real job of it. Might have to close shop for a few days, but believe me, you'll be glad you did. All right?"
The owner nodded, and took a black wallet from his pocket, but the electrician waved it off – "Oh, hey, don't worry about that. Your tax dollars at work, right?"
"Well, I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Nick."
"Not a problem. Hey, take it easy, I'll see you again. 'Scuse me," he added under his breath to Galendina, who was still standing near the door. Hoisting a heavy plastic box alongside him, he moved past her and out into the alley.
This left Galendina as the only person in the shop apart from the owner. It was imprudent of her to have let that conversation play out without busying herself examining the items on sale more thoroughly. She set herself to the task at once. This faded chest of drawers had once been a very appealing shade of cyan.
With Lugiasian's okay, I tried to depict Mezorgha as essentially a cross of Ronda, Spain with Al Hajjarah, Yemen.