Timestamp: 59th Day of Winter, 512 A.V. The clouds above Lhavit were fat and louring, bloated and stuffed almost to bursting with a great cargo of snow, just starting to shed gently on the celestial city. The wintry smell of it was everywhere, hanging in the air, a harbinger of the heavier falls would undoubtedly come in a few chimes' time. For now, though, the sun still shone, striking brilliant fire from the vanguard and the puffy barges of snowflakes and vapour simply circled in holding patterns above the shining streets and merry, red-nosed citizens, buffeted hither and yon by the mountain winds high above even the tallest spires. Alses was on another morning constitutional; she was trying to build up her stamina for all the running about her couriering tasks had her doing. The steady stream of work over Summer and Autumn had toughened her (or so she thought), but Lhavit had thrown another obstacle in her path; the cold winter air was like knives in her throat after a little while, and she found herself frequently stopping to wheeze and cough and catch her breath. She was taking the long way round from the Towers' Respite, rather than using the private bridge that would deposit her right at the Dusk Tower's doors in short order. That meant devising a rather more circuitous route from the Respite's location on Zintia peak to the Dusk Tower's imposing presence, bulking as it did on the topmost tier of the Shinyama. The easiest and simplest way (if not using the private bridge) was to simply head due west from the Respite gates; the positions of the Tower and the main bridge were such that you'd run more or less straight into the Dusk Tower's doors. However, the purpose of Alses setting off at the crack of dawn (since she only had to report to the Tower secretary by the tenth bell) was to strengthen her muscles and build up her lungs to deal with the stresses and strains of winter; a simple and easy straight run simply would not do. No, there needed to be crowds, and curving streets, and sudden jinking twists and turns - which did sterling jobs at disrupting the mountain winds before they could build up too much force in the celestial city, true, but were a nightmare to a courier in a hurry. Couple that with some stairs between the tiers - guaranteed to make an out-of-shape courier’s legs burn, and carrying with them the exciting possibilities of longer-than-expected falls and multiple broken legs - and perhaps an impromptu obstacle course of the sorts generally occasioned by the smaller back-alley streets: a tangle of temporary rubbish dumps, machinery and stockpiles of bulk goods, well, then you had the makings of a training course of sorts. Adding in a bit of distance by taking her course through the Alheas Park could only help matters, but this was something she’d resolved to build up to - there would be no end of embarrassment if she turned up at the Dusk Tower’s doors sweaty, panting, exhausted and therefore completely useless for the purposes of her employment there. Nobody bothered her as she slipped out onto the shining, frost-encrusted streets - and why would they? She was no person of great substance, beyond the usual gravitas afforded to any Ethaefal in Lhavit, but even as she started to accelerate up from a steady, unhurried walk and into the gracefully loping gait that served her as a run, the gentle bubble of silence and genuflection that surrounded her seemed to be even wider than usual, as though she had some sort of invisible retinue pushing and shoving at people to make them keep their distance. Unsettling, that - but Alses pushed it to the very back of her mind as she focused more on the run itself, the route unspooling through her head even as her boots rang on the skyglass, sending frost and snow flying. So…from the Respite’s wintry grounds, out onto the grand procession of monumental squares, plazas and boulevards which characterised Zintia peak, curving across and up through the crowds which were a permanent fixture of the Surya Plaza, then clattering down the tiers once more to join the Cloudward Pathway as it wended its way around the base of the city's peaks, littered with courting couples and the occasional philosopher trying to find his thoughts amid the amorous activity all around. There was something in the motion of sprinting, the fluid bunching of the muscles of her lower legs, a rising wave that coiled her flesh and propelled her forward in an easy, loping gait that was entirely instinctual. It was a natural rhythm her body responded to, her brain processing a million variables and adjusting her tread on the fly, tensing some muscles, relaxing others, reducing the bone-jarring jolt of each strike against the skyglass to a muted impact, there and gone in an instant as the work of her bunching sinews flashed into physical force and pushed her onwards, ever onwards. The wind did its level best to slow and hinder her, sending whistling shards of ice to bite at her exposed face and arms, pushing clouds of smoke down her throat and irritating her nose with its acrid, pervasive stink, but by now she was used to many of its tricks. Indeed, this time it was the people that were giving her pause, rather than any demanding tickle in her throat or the feeling of ice-lacerated lungs. She was used to stares, of course, any Ethaefal who'd been on Mizahar for more than a few days was, but these were not appraising, awed, appreciative, delighting, honoured or any of the manifold other feelings an Ethaefal's glorious celestial form tended to inspire in the masses – even the masses of a city so fair and fortunate as Lhavit. Instead, wherever she went there was a wider-than-normal bubble of space around her and she was skewered from all sides by glances and sidelong looks, unnerving and positively alien on a Lhavitian street. A cloaking susurrus of whispers accompanied her every move, too, and wherever her gaze landed amongst the throngs of people for more than a fraction of a second the good citizens of Lhavit looked away, not willing to meet her eyes, shuffling aside to leave an open path for her, getting out from under whatever unnatural pressure her gaze seemed to have acquired. No use dwelling on it; Alses fed the energy being uselessly consumed in perplexity back into the immediacy of running, arms down at her sides and not scything through the air as she'd seen others do – it seemed a terrible waste of energy, pumping the arms up and down when everyone knew it was the legs doing all the work. It stood to reason, and Alses was nothing if not logical and reasonable when she actually sat down and considered a problem. Mizaharians were a very strange lot, sometimes. Perhaps it was a tradition; that sort of thing seldom had relevant reasons behind it other than 'it's traditional'. From behind her, as she loped up the long staircases from the Cloudward Pathway and back to the main tiers, there was an almost-palpable sigh of relief; some buck had been passed, some terrible event averted, or at least avoided. Even the Shinya – and there had been rather more of them than usual down on Cloudward, now that she came to think of it, and bulking in full skyglass plate at that – had seemed hesitant and uneasy at her presence. Had something terrible happened? Had some great calamity befallen the city? Surely, though, if such a thing had occurred there would be some more visible signs than 'everyone's looking a bit shifty'. Her train of thought entered a long, dark tunnel as she ran up through the twisting alleyways that ran parallel to the Surya Plaza, feet aching from the continual battering, unyielding press of skyglass through her boots, each step sending a lance of discomfort up from the soles of her feet. 'Has something terrible happened to me?' She winced as a further thought occurred. 'Or, even worse, is something about to?' Operating on the basis that forewarned is forearmed, and also because of the fact that her abused feet felt as though they were about to catch fire, she slowed from her steady sprint to a gentle jog and then to a placid, meandering walk as the skyglass gave out to dirt by the entrance to Alheas Park, a shimmering and secretive expanse of greenery right in the centre of the city. |