Fall 5, 514 AV
morning
Dust loved her map book. It was a pretty book, with brown leather cover, the title stamped and gilt, its pages all the color of eggshells... or of Dust's own hair. Brown and white made a good combination. It was a bit more worn now than when Dust had received it, having survived a sea journey and the repeated application of fingerprints -- for if the outside of the book was pretty, its contents were downright cool.
Over past seasons, Dust had traced and retraced every one of her own journeys across the map. Traversing southern Taldera. Bouncing back and forth across Sylira. Passing down through Cyphrus to Ahnatep, and back again by ship to Riverfall. And then, most recently, crossing the sea to Kalea. Why, the only region she hadn't visited yet was Falyndar!
It all seemed like so great a distance for one little Kelvic to have traveled, when she looked at it that way. Though, Dust hadn't figured out exactly how far, yet. Maybe she would do that today, she thought, as she paged through the book yet again.
She took her book outside onto the terrace, sitting down on the low stone retaining wall and turning to the region map of Sylira. Of all the regions, it had the most detailed map by far. Dust guessed the bookmaker must have been from Syliras, or maybe Zeltiva -- he definitely had the most to say about those cities and their region. Quite unlike Falyndar and Kalea, which were almost empty aside from the dots of cities and notations of what she had inferred to be surrounding terrain.
Maybe she would map those herself, sometime.
But in the meantime, she was using, not making, and somewhere on these maps there had to be a way to tell how far she'd traveled. The map of Sylira had a great big symbol in the lower corner, a circle with elaborate decoration and eight points radiating out. The same symbol could be found somewhere on every map, whether region or city. But the round thing didn't suggest distance to Dust's mind. She did notice, though, that four of its points were labeled with letters. Dust spared a moment to puzzle over those, jumbling them around in her head -- did they spell out a word? No, at least not a word in any language she knew... but as she looked to other pages, she realized the letters always pointed the same ways on every copy of the symbol. Like directions -- north, east, south, and west... which, now that she thought about it in terms of writing, started with those same letters!
That made sense. It wasn't like you could use the sun for direction, or landmarks, or anything else, when looking at lines on a piece of paper. Just because the paper was right-side-up didn't mean it corresponded to the rest of the world. The symbol made all the difference, there.
morning
Dust loved her map book. It was a pretty book, with brown leather cover, the title stamped and gilt, its pages all the color of eggshells... or of Dust's own hair. Brown and white made a good combination. It was a bit more worn now than when Dust had received it, having survived a sea journey and the repeated application of fingerprints -- for if the outside of the book was pretty, its contents were downright cool.
Over past seasons, Dust had traced and retraced every one of her own journeys across the map. Traversing southern Taldera. Bouncing back and forth across Sylira. Passing down through Cyphrus to Ahnatep, and back again by ship to Riverfall. And then, most recently, crossing the sea to Kalea. Why, the only region she hadn't visited yet was Falyndar!
It all seemed like so great a distance for one little Kelvic to have traveled, when she looked at it that way. Though, Dust hadn't figured out exactly how far, yet. Maybe she would do that today, she thought, as she paged through the book yet again.
She took her book outside onto the terrace, sitting down on the low stone retaining wall and turning to the region map of Sylira. Of all the regions, it had the most detailed map by far. Dust guessed the bookmaker must have been from Syliras, or maybe Zeltiva -- he definitely had the most to say about those cities and their region. Quite unlike Falyndar and Kalea, which were almost empty aside from the dots of cities and notations of what she had inferred to be surrounding terrain.
Maybe she would map those herself, sometime.
But in the meantime, she was using, not making, and somewhere on these maps there had to be a way to tell how far she'd traveled. The map of Sylira had a great big symbol in the lower corner, a circle with elaborate decoration and eight points radiating out. The same symbol could be found somewhere on every map, whether region or city. But the round thing didn't suggest distance to Dust's mind. She did notice, though, that four of its points were labeled with letters. Dust spared a moment to puzzle over those, jumbling them around in her head -- did they spell out a word? No, at least not a word in any language she knew... but as she looked to other pages, she realized the letters always pointed the same ways on every copy of the symbol. Like directions -- north, east, south, and west... which, now that she thought about it in terms of writing, started with those same letters!
That made sense. It wasn't like you could use the sun for direction, or landmarks, or anything else, when looking at lines on a piece of paper. Just because the paper was right-side-up didn't mean it corresponded to the rest of the world. The symbol made all the difference, there.
Common | Pavi | someone else
