Solo A Dream Deferred

[Aislyn Leavold]

"A Dream Deferred"
59th of Fall / 516 AV
Third Bell

Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.

It had been the same all night.
Aislyn had no idea what was causing the sound, but something appeared to be softly tapping against the windowpane of her abode, making an incessant, repetitive noise that was very slowly driving the woman insane. Had it been chimes, or bells since the noise had begun? She had no idea. All she knew was that the noise had resulted in Aislyn lying in a fitful half-asleep state for what seemed like ages, futilely attempting to reach the promised land that was unconsciousness. She didn’t want to be awake. She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to move, to breathe, to do anything. She just wanted to sleep, and she definitely didn’t want to dream. That would be the only thing worse than remaining awake.

Tap.
Tap.
Tap.

Aislyn rolled over in the cramped bunk, pulling her feet up so her knees rested next to her chest. She didn’t want to open her eyes. She didn’t want to get up and investigate what was making the sound, nor did she want to remain there, half-asleep and half-awake. Maybe she’d get up and walk. That was her usual solution to situations such as these- walking. But that was what she had done for several nights prior, and it was beginning to show.

Opening her eyes slowly, she felt like bricks were tied to her eyelids. She wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to sleep. For a few more moments, she let herself lethargically blink between blurry and cross-eyed vision. Everything was black. Then, shapes began to emerge. Directly across the room, she could see the outline of her mother’s bed. Above the bed, she could see a stranger shape yet. A dark, cloaked figure standing above the bed. Sharp claws, reaching out…

Aislyn sat bolt upright, a single syllable already escaping her throat, "Mother!"
Pushing herself away from what she believed to be the bed, the woman, in reality, ended up pushing herself into a wall, hitting her head rather hard against the wood. Innocently, the drawing that had been plastered on the wall where Aislyn had struck herself floated down, landing on the pillow beside her. Dazed, the illusionist let her gaze rest on the parchment. It was an old image, one drawn when she was around nineteen years of age. Of her mother, smiling.

A few quiet, peaceful ticks passed.
It was such a nice picture.

There were few people Aislyn trusted in the cold, dark, forsaken world she lived in. Even fewer that actually held Aislyn’s faith. She trusted her mother enough to not care about her illusions in front of her, but that was because her mother was simply mad. Then there was Phobius, whom Aislyn trusted more with her company than with her life. And then there was Ionu.

Suddenly, the artist remembered why she’d gotten up in the first place, and snapped her head back up in the direction of her mother’s bed. The woman hadn’t even stirred, despite Aislyn’s outburst, and the ‘cloaked figure’ she had seen, upon closer inspection, appeared to be a chair. The woman had tossed a cloak on the piece of furniture before she had gone to sleep- or rather, attempted to go to sleep- resulting in a figure that, quite honestly, looked nothing like a person. All it looked like was a cloak, strewn across a chair with no care as to who or what moved it in the meantime. Resting one hand on her head and the other on the bed frame, Aislyn waited for the ringing in her ears to subside.

Ionu preserve her, sometimes Aislyn couldn’t even trust herself.

Pushing her hands into her eyes, Aislyn watched the swirls of colour swim about her closed-eye vision as her fingers put pressure on her eyelids. She could feel the beginning of a migraine poking its ugly head out of her mind. Slowly, she shoved the thin array of blankets that covered her to the side of the bunk, drawing her legs up to rest her head upon. When the pounding in her forehead lessened a bit, she craned her neck to rest upon the backboard of her bunk. She didn’t want to open her eyes. Opening her eyes meant having to focus on something. But keeping them closed meant attempting sleep once again, an idea that by this point quite clearly appeared to be fool’s work.

Aislyn dressed herself silently. Half her mind still asleep, she prepared to leave her abode as her eyes began to subtly adjust to the light and lack thereof. Her fingers languidly swept in front of her face in an empty motion as her mind brought her illusions to life. Invisible power dancing lightly across her features to make her someone else. Polluting the image of ‘Aislyn’ to the point where the picture was unrecognizable. Someone else, someone else. It was only when ‘Aislyn’ was a thing of the past did she step foot outdoors.

A walk. What a nice idea.

[855]

"Speech" - Thought

[Aislyn Leavold]

"A Dream Deferred"
59th of Fall / 516 AV
Third Bell

The night air was cool, the seeping chill of fall an overhanging concern far from her active mind. With her she brought little, not even her knapsack hung steadily over her shoulders. The absence of weight was strange, but not unwelcomed. She was far too tired to do anything productive, no matter how much she told herself she’d get some drawing done while she was out. Fooling herself never did anyone any good. All she carried with her was the knife she’d purchased during the winter, strapped to her leg by the matching sheath. Peace was nice, but safety was nicer.
And there could never be too much insurance.

Alvadas by night wasn’t really all that different than Alvadas by day, really. All that changed was the frantic attitude of the city in Syna’s light had calmed by the time Leth took over. Especially at the hour Aislyn chose to leave at, there was barely the whisper of a soul about. Of course, the lack of people in the night was probably the greatest facet of her nightly walks, the silence a close second. The third was the personality of the quiet Alvadas; the buildings watched the streets, the streets watched the sky, and the sky stared endlessly, the unblinking eyes of Zintilla’s stars complementing the prismatic rooftops of city’s current illusion, atop strange architectural masterpieces that had become of the buildings. Even Aislyn’s own abode was a small version of a strangely complex work of house art.

Now under the guise of “Thief”, Aislyn paused on the step of her abode, struck by a sudden hesitance. Softly closing the door behind her, she leaned against the aged wood. Sighing, she listened to the night. To the nothing, really. There was a peacefulness in nothingness, in a way that was leaps and bounds better than the somethingness Aislyn was unfortunately used to facing. Nothing good could come of nothing, but nothing bad could come either. Looking over, Aislyn caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrors she had set up, nestled discretely in the browning brush of her mother’s garden. They weren’t hard to find, but that was because she herself had set them up. No one else would think to look for the symptoms of paranoia in an otherwise seemingly normal household.

The mirrors served a simple purpose. It had become obvious when Aislyn had taken up work that she would need some way to know who was at her door at any given point in time. Then she could donn the right face, and not accidentally open a door meant for ‘Maya’ as ‘Thief’.
It was a hard explanation to make up on the spot.
The mirrors showed her who was outside without herself having to be seen, a virtue she’d come to appreciate. Now, however, one had fallen out of place, and laid lopsided against the cracking stem of some sort of bush. In it, a small “Thief” was reflected, oblong features and dark, dark hair. Her lips were set in a hardened nothingness, but her eyebrows were furrowed. There were bags under her eyes, and the colour around the hazel brown of her irises was more red than white. Aislyn had never bothered to hide such imperfections with “Thief”. It was “Maya” who was the morning, the bright light, and the one that was supposed to nod and smile when asked if alright. “Thief” wasn’t meant to care. And “Thief” didn’t.
Sometimes, neither did Aislyn.

Pulling her worn black cloak closer around her, Aislyn left her position by the door for a more lively motion. She never had any sort of real issue seeing in the dim light of night. Colours were less vibrant, details were less clear, but she wouldn’t trip over her feet in the night, and that was good enough for her. She had never felt all that afraid on the streets, either. She had grown up there, on the twisting sidewalks of Alvadas. She’d lived the days and nights of the city, lived the illusions, lived the highs and lows. More than anything, she’d lived Alvadas. Her life was nothing more and nothing less than the illusions and the city they resided within. Alvadas didn’t scare her. Alvadas was hers, almost personally so. No one could ever remove the Alvadas from her soul, considering how much of her personality was built upon it.

Pushing herself off the door, Aislyn took the steps down to the street in one move, her feet landing softly on the ground. Theoretically, she could use her time and energy to figure out what had been making the tapping sound, but that didn’t seem like all that useful of an option, really. A branch, most likely, blown loose from her mother’s garden to torment her in her sleep. Or perhaps the crazed killer that had been rumoured to be ravaging the Underground, come to the surface with a thirst for blood.
Either one worked, really.

But no matter the source of the sound, she was away from it now, and that was all that mattered. She could walk the streets of Alvadas until Syna came up and the city came alive. Aislyn would be lucky enough to find her abode, stumbling inside on sleepless legs. She’d return inside, Thief would be dismissed, and then she’d sit on her bed until her mother woke up. She’d be so tired, yet unable to sleep, and the bags under her eyes would grow darker still. Her mother would greet her with good morning and she would respond as cheerfully as she could manage. Then her mother left for work at her shop and Aislyn would finally lay down, staring at the backs of her eyelids until she found herself able to fall into a fitful sleep. Sometimes it took chimes, sometimes it took bells.
Sometimes sleep never came.

That was how it always went, and that was how it would go.

[1,004]

"Speech" - Thought

[Aislyn Leavold]

"A Dream Deferred"
59th of Fall / 516 AV
Third Bell

Aislyn had only been walking for a few chimes when she ran into her first hurdle. Or rather, wall.
She saw it from a good many paces away, but kept walking towards it like her approach would somehow change the dead end she faced. Her home had been deposited just a few turns away from the interior walls of Alvadas, this particular section taking the form alike to a series of cubd rocks held together by a webbing of rope. The walls, though patchwork, had always seemed so impenetrably strong in Aislyn’s childhood. She had run along the inside, her hand dragging along the wood, stone, and brick, trailing behind her as she travelled until something got in her way. She’d never been outside those walls, never seen what lay beyond. Alvadas had been her world, and in many ways, it still was. The walls had never failed her. Or, at least, they had only failed once.

Aislyn remembered the days the walls failed. In the middle of her greatest depression she’d hidden herself away, and it was her hiding had most likely saved her life. She was in bed, not asleep but not doing anything garnering the label of awakeness either. There had been a rumble, like the thunder before lightning, and then the blast had hit.
Aislyn’s home had two windows, both facing the front of the building. One was positioned above the washbasin, and the other was positioned above Aislyn’s small bunk, in which she slept. Both had immediately been blown out, shattering with a screeching cry of breaking glass. There had been a shower of shards down upon the girl, cutting her face, her arms, her neck. The last thing she heard was a scream. A terrible scream. Her scream.
After that, there had been silence.

It had almost been enough to force Aislyn outside. She’d almost left her abode for the first time in a year, ended her slump right then and there. But she hadn’t been strong enough then. Instead, she’d shrunk away, picking shards of glass out of her skin and bed as tattered curtains blew in the opened windows. Alvadas had not been warned. Aislyn had not been warned. From that point on she had an even greater reason never to leave the house. The silence had lasted for what felt like forever, another tool in her madness. She’d been confused, she’d been scared, and she’d been cowardly. The night before the storm, her mother had gone to sleep, and it wasn’t until the storm had passed that she woke up. So Aislyn had sat in her home, cold, hungry, and very, very afraid, spending much of her time willing her mother to wake up. Sometimes she’d looked out the windows, seen the strange shadows creeping on the sides of the street. They’d made no sound, but nothing at the time did. Then her house had been deposited beside the Gaping Maw and Aislyn had truly witnessed what destruction the storm had wrought.
The walls had fallen.
It was something Aislyn had only seen once; the outside of Alvadas, completely and utterly thrown into chaos. The illusions- something entwined with the city’s very being- had warped the hills and mountains Aislyn had glanced whenever she passed an opening in the wall. Then, an approaching darkness. A darkness that had hit Alvadas like another wave of the storm.

Placing a hand on the cold stone, Aislyn began to walk along the barrier, her mind retelling the events like an encored play. And a tragedy, at that. The monsters that crawled out of the illusions set free had attacked the city at its weakest. They had mauled the streets, picking apart the Alvads that had been left with nowhere to go, their houses demolished in the first wave. Aislyn had channeled her fear into barricading her home, boarding the shattered windows with what she could find. Her home had become her hideaway, her prison, and her asylum, all in one night. They’d pounded on the door, left claw marks on the soft wood. She’d hid under her bunk, hating herself but hating the world more. She’d left bloodstains from her untreated wounds on her bedsheets, unable to find the will to nurse them. She’d done nothing but confine herself within not only a physical prison but within her mind as well. She hadn’t been strong enough, then.

In hindsight, the Djed Storm had been much like the Winter War.

Four years apart, the storm and the war had their similarities and differences. The storm had come hard and fast, no warning or request regarded in its wake. The war had been brewing for seasons, the evidence of its coming if only one put together the pieces. Both events had ravished Alvadas until there was nothing left to take, crushing it from the inside out. Yet the war, in a way, had been kind. It had asked with a door in the square for volunteers, to face the mission it laid out ahead. The storm had asked no questions, taken no prisons, simply compressing the city into its most vulnerable form until the weak were dead and the strong terrified. The monsters were the same, too. Creatures not quite real, but certainly not Ionu’s illusions, either. Creatures moulded of featureless amalgamations. Creatures that were plucked straight from the nightmares of children to be given flesh and blood. Perhaps that was what the monsters of the winter had been; nightmares. Nightmares that had stowed themselves into the minds of those that had survived the storm, slowly leeching their way back to the land of the living. Perhaps those creatures had never really left, instead hiding away until the time came again to lay siege to Alvadas.

Perhaps, one day, they would return.

[980]

"Speech" - Thought

[Aislyn Leavold]

"A Dream Deferred"
59th of Fall / 516 AV
Third Bell, quarter-past

Aislyn remembered the aftermath of the storm. She had spent her empty days waiting for the silence to end, to hear something- anything- good or bad. Soon she had filled the void with drawings, of the creatures and the monsters and everything she feared to be outside. She felt the vibrations of her house shuddering in the winds of the physical storm, as well as feeling the effects of the storm within her mind. She covered the drafty windows in drawings that fluttered in the air that made its way inside the house. The storm had ended quite like the war had, quietly, with a dull whisper like the ringing that could be heard after a loud noise attacked the ears. There had been no announcement that came door to door, informing the cowardly child hiding under her bed that it was safe to out in the world again. All there had been was a morning where Syna rose and sound returned to her ears, softly, like it was being heard through a wall of glass. A shift, in not only shape but in tone. The melody changed, the song ended. Suddenly, it was over.
It had been like that in the winter, too.
Aislyn had not been the cowering child she had during the storm that winter. She had fought, alongside many other Alvads. The battles had raged on like they never would cease, but they had. There had been the same shift, where clarity finally came upon the city. The enemy turned, the Alvads won. The city to which many had dedicated their lives returned to what could be deemed “normal”. No explanation was ever given.
That was another similarity.

When the storm ended, there was no announcement to apologize for the wreckage of the city. There was no culprit or person unto which blame could be put. The war ended similarly. The Speakers, no matter how involved they had been in the conflict, offered no funerals to those that had given their lives, no apology to what scars had been left. There had been no explanation at all, really, no matter how many seasons Aislyn spent looking for one. There were no rumours in the Underground that Thief could overhear, no speech from the Speakers shedding light upon the situation for Maya to understand. Anjani and the Sheathewhisps fought blindly for a cause they never fully understood. They were all fools, living in the wake of a blow to the city that would never truly heal as long as it remained unexplained. But there was nothing else they could do.

Aislyn’s fingertips skipped along the uneven surface of the wall, catching on loose stones and welded cracks that connected sections that never fit together quite right. The wall was a quilt that was passed down from generation to generation, a new patch added on by the youth of the time. Aislyn had never been quite sure how the wall worked, only that it kept Mizahar out and Alvadas in. The illusions were contained like Ionu’s blessing was a hushed club meeting for selected members only; members that just happened to be Alvads, and Alvads alone. The wall was a tall and imposing force in some places, a crumbling relic in others. But no matter the apparent strength, the effect was all the same. It was as unique as Alvadas itself.

One section of the fell shorter than the others, no taller than the nearest building. For a moment, Aislyn was struck with an idea. She’d gazed out the entrance of the Gaping Maw, stood within its arch. She’d sat atop tall buildings and gazed over the reaches of the city, but to scale the boundary between insanity and normalcy was a new concept entirely.
Rubbing at her eyes, Aislyn from the building to the wall before making her decision, pulling herself up to a ledge displaying rows of potted plants on the side of the building. From there she could easily reach the rooftop, it was just more of a question of whether or not she’d be able to pull herself up. After all, she enjoyed daring escapades plenty much, but the question laid more in her limited climbing ability than her determination to pull off such a feat. Balancing precariously on the ledge, Aislyn did her best to avoid knocking any of the sprouting plant life to the ground. She was, after all, somewhat infiltrating someone’s property, and it would help to leave no trace of her existence. Reaching upwards, Aislyn curled her fingertips around the edge of the rooftop.

The stone was cold and hard, unkind to her grasp. She made a note to invest in some sort of gloves, sooner rather than later. Thief could do well with something to protect her hands, perhaps even Maya could as well. Gloves were useful things, after all.
Heaving herself up onto the rooftop with a jump up off the ledge, Aislyn pulled herself up to where she’d be facing the next hurdle. The wall was close, but it was still a good meter from the edge of the building. It would be a rather daring- not to mention foolish- attempt to jump across. It also occurred to her that the section of wall was possibly unstable, but her curiosity prevailed. If she were to fall to her death, so be it. She wouldn't exactly be missed.

[915]

"Speech" - Thought

[Aislyn Leavold]

"A Dream Deferred"
59th of Fall / 516 AV
Third Bell, quarter-past

Moving to the edge of the roof, Aislyn teetered on one leg until her foot almost brushed the stone of the wall. She could almost step across, but not quite. It was just slightly out of reach, just slightly too far. Grasping the sides of her cloak, she decided- success or failure- jumping across would most certainly make for a more interesting night. And if anything could keep sleep at bay, it was the prospect of an interesting night.
Her movement was quick, only the soft sound of footsteps and a sharp intake of breath marking her jump. With a start she landed on the wall, stumbling forward as she pulled back the momentum. For a slick moment the woman felt as if the wall would fall beneath her weight. It almost seemed to groan and shift, a small cloud of dust tossed up in the wake of her boots. But the wall most certainly didn’t fall, and Aislyn was left standing atop the barrier between all that she’d even known and what lay beyond.

Brushing the lingering dust off her her pant legs, Aislyn looked up slowly. The night air blew wispy strands of blackened hair into her frame of vision, held back just behind her ears. It was strange to see her own illusions. It was like looking at an optical illusion once the reality of the image had been found out. It was hard to see it the way it had originally been seen- the way others would see it- once the truth was known. There was no way to go back. After all, things could never be unseen.
Aislyn could always see through her own illusions. It was not something she did often, but it was certainly something. It made her uncomfortable, in a way. She had to trust that what she could glimpse was not what others could see, and trust was not a thing that came easily. So, most of the time, she chose not to scrutinize herself. If she told herself her hair was black enough times, she’d come to believe it.

Pulling the illusioned hair back from her face, Aislyn took a look over the side of the wall. By now she was rather high up, and the drop was concerning. Nonetheless, it was quite a view.

Even at night, Leth’s light and the glow of the stars illuminated the landscape in just the slightest way. The tops of the mountains were always visible from Alvad streets, but the valleys were something viewed only from above. The chirp of some insect came from beyond the wall, and somewhere off in the distance echoed the howl of a wolf. Inhaling slowly, Aislyn turned away from the edge, dragging her heel along the stone until she was walking. Walking, along the wall that split the city and the land. The same wall that entrapped the illusions of the city, protecting the strangeness of Alvadas from the normalcy of Kalea and vice-versa. She wasn’t quite sure what, exactly, was doing the protecting, considering walls didn’t typical deter the illusions from their illusionary escapades, but it did its job well.

There was nothing but purely, disgustingly, perfectly normalcy beyond the walls of Alvadas.

Turning as she moved, Aislyn walked backwards for a few paces. Then she faced inwards, towards the city she knew. She could see above most of the houses, from where she was. Everytime she looked away, the streets changed, a sight that brought a rare smile to her face. It was magical, to see Ionu’s hand at work with her own eyes. Not implied, not spoken about, but seen. The shuffling cards of Alvad streets, never the same combination twice. Taking care not to blink, Aislyn watched one section grow and blossom as vines that were just barely visible over the rooftops crawled up the buildings, flowering in buds that illuminated the street like tiny stars. Even at night, the city was alive, just in the off chance that someone was awake to see it. To appreciate it.
Lucky for Alvadas, Aislyn was both.

She blinked, and the vines were gone, rearranged on the other side of the city. Birds, as if startled by the routine change, flew up from behind one of the closer buildings. As they circled around, their wings turned to more colour than flesh, their eyes alight with tiny bursts of light. Soon the flock was nothing more than an undulating movement of silent fireworks, making shapes in the sky. The sights of Alvadas; the feeling of Alvadas was so strong from so far up. There were no people to gawk or stare, there was only the cool breeze and a feeling of freedom. That was why Aislyn went for walks, away from the chaos of people and into the chaos of the city. It didn’t happen often, but every once in awhile she felt a certain connection to her deity that didn’t happen when there were so many others around. Even in the peace of her deity’s temple, nothing ever connected the way it did when she found that frame of mind. The frame of mind that felt indescribable, in a beautiful way. She, the one made of illusions, crafted by them, raised by them, living them, breathing them, every day of her two-decade life.

She didn’t feel tired anymore.

It was a feeling she didn’t get often, of being so alive she couldn’t touch sleep with a ten foot pole. The flock of fireworks grew closer, until she could almost reach out and touch them. She did, just slightly, leaning just a tad bit over the edge of her very long drop to see if the living colours were as tangible as they seemed. But she didn’t fall; not yet. She just reached.

[981]

"Speech" - Thought

[Aislyn Leavold]

"A Dream Deferred"
59th of Fall / 516 AV
Third Bell, half-past

If Aislyn had fallen to her death right then and there, she probably wouldn’t have minded. Surrounded by illusions, a night crafted by Ionu’s design. And Thief, Thief felt almost content with the situation, almost happy. ‘Happy’ was a thing that Thief never was, always angry, or morbid, or at best alone. Thief was paranoid, antisocial, aggressive in a justified way. It was almost never Thief that felt connected to Ionu. That was something Aislyn did, or perhaps Anjani or Maya. Worship was not something for ‘Thief’.

Lucky it was, then, that Alvadas was full of exceptions.

Aislyn’s illusions had always reached a sort of harmony when she was alone. Like circles, overlapping where the center was what they shared. Her illusions, after all, were something made to fool others. She had never fooled herself, though whether or not she’d tried was another matter. The lines had blurred when there had been no one on the enemy team, only herself and Ionu and the night sky.
Retracting her arm, Aislyn brushed her hair out of her face as the firework birds swirled away, a soft crackling chirp as a farewell before they went about exploring the streets again. From there, she kept walking, dipping her foot over the inner edge of the wall to scrape against the stone as she went. After a bit she stopped that, instead just making her way along. From somewhere outside the wall a bird of some kind erupted from a tree, making itself known in the night. She passed a tavern, made obvious by its lit, swinging lanterns as unsteady as the patrons drunkenly singing within. She came to a crack in the wall, a space between sections. The next part was a few feet higher, like a stepping stool to the next place up. Pushing her palms into the stone, Aislyn pulled herself up to continue onwards.

There was a lot to think about, so high up. The weather, the future, perhaps the inevitability of death. Everything seemed clear and concise when there was nothing but open sky and her thoughts to bother her. Perhaps that was why she seemed to have so many issues in her life. There was simply too many people. Nothing ever bad came of being alone, generally speaking. People asked too many questions, had too many problems, and there were far too many of them. They were bothersome, they were loud, and they were uncomfortable. When she was alone, she thrived. She had control, alone. It was certainly no great feat, to control the situation when there was no one around, but it was certainly something. It was a place to start.

Her exhilaration began to fade as the wall grew steeper, until it was an inconvenient uphill battle. At some point, she just gave up with the moving forward, instead sitting down and letting her legs hang off the outer edge. She’d scraped her hand somewhere along the lines, the skin of her right palm stinging when it was touched. As she sat, she pulled her knife from the sheath on her leg, turning it her hands. The edge was shining and unnecessarily sharp, unserrated and smooth. It was rarely used and obviously so, the blade without the rust of older metal. It was clean of marks and scratches, unstained and clear. She carried it an awful lot for having barely used it, but it was comforting; comforting in a strange, pointed way.

Pulling her legs up from the edge, Aislyn turned to lean back against the wall’s incline. One foot lagged off the wall still, swinging quietly. She probably wouldn’t die if she fell- not if she landed on her feet, at least- but she would most definitely land with more than a few broken bones. She was light, her bones fragile. As little as she thought about it, or as little as she acknowledged it, her body was meant for a life different from the one she was leading. Or, at least, half her body. Her fragile bones were light to allow the flight she’d never achieve. Her teeth were sharp for a life of hunting she didn’t pursue. Her back was rigid with bones that stuck out of the skin, covered in scars from rocks and knives, as a symbol of what she could have become.
It was a strange thing, flight. It seemed so gorgeous, something to be longed for from the ground. But Aislyn knew of few things that could fly, and those things were birds, insects, and Zith. Two of three weren’t popular with the general populace.
That was the problem with people; they were hypocritical.

A gust of wind tugged at the woman’s cloak, the frayed edges dancing off the side of the wall. For a moment, she just watched the fabric sway with the wind, threatening to pull free of the ribbon that tied it together at the hood. The stone was cold beneath her, even through her clothes. It was for a long moment that she simply sat, enjoying what silence the city had to offer. The sound of the night was never dampered, of course; crickets and owls and all things privy to the quiet darkness. The far-off sound of merriment within the city itself, carrying wide through Alvadas in the moonlit hours. Then sitting didn’t seem justifiable enough anymore, so she began to walk once again. This time away from the higher wall she’d been leaning upon, back the way she’d gone before. Of course, it wasn’t exactly the path she’d previously taken- the shifting of Alvadas had taken hold as much in its walls as on its streets- though it probably didn’t matter either way. No matter what she did, the wall would still just be a wall at the end of the day. Alvadas would still be Alvadas. All that mattered was how she was looking at it.

It seemed so far that the best perspective was from high, high above.

[1,012]

"Speech" - Thought