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[Gulle]

Winter 60, 515
Gulle Speaks
Others Speak

The sun was just rising as Gulle found himself out wandering the streets of Nyka. He had been here almost an entire season and he still hadn't found anything super amazing. Just regular amazing. And that was unacceptable. He had kept hearing about the mysteries of Nyka, and how mystical things kept happening, and yet so far he had seen lots of things but nothing that he would classify as 'Super Amazing'. He was determined to find something that fit under that classification by the end of the season or he was leaving, after all the rumors would have been a lie and that would mean the secret of flight was definitely not here.

Even this early, the streets were starting to get busy. He had found out early on, that on the fourth-day market the streets in the celestial district could become quite frantic and dangerous for a small guy like him. Avoiding careless boots, and scuffling feet, the Pycon made his way through the crowd not quiet sure where he was going, just knowing that it better end in an adventure or there'd be consequences. As that thought passed through his head, he stopped briefly to consider who the consequences would be for and that momentary distraction caused him to be kicked by another careless pedestrian who wasn't looking down, sending Gulle flying through the air and into an allyway.

As he landed, he felt a flare of pain for a moment as he flattened out, the impact causing him to squish against the ground. Taking a moment to gether himself, he rose up and reformed himself with a quick shake at the end. "Geez, big people can be so rude!" Dusting himself off, he twisted back and forth to make sure all of his parts were still arranged correctly and to his liking before he started walking down the alley.

As he continued down the alley he started hearing shouts from what sounded like a bunch of pre-teen boys. As he rounded a corner he saw that's exactly what it was, a group of eight or nine boys were forming a semi-circle around a part of the wall of the alley speaking loudly. "Hey I told you it appeared here, now knock it or are you chicken?!" one boy proclaimed to another, smaller boy, shoving him towards the wall. "Hey I ain't scared, I just uh. . . Forgot my mom needs me to help her clean the shop today!" The small boy replied to his tormentor.

Gulle wasn't sure what the problem was with knocking on the wall, but he did know it was wrong for the bigger boys to pick on the smaller one. After all, if the kid needed to help his mother than he should go help. Putting his hands on his hips, he looked around the alley trying to get an idea of what he could do to help the boy out of his predicament, and a spot where he could get a better view of what was going on from.

[Faradae]

Faradae Today, she was viewing the city from above. She had caught glimpses of people’s heads before on a few earlier occasions, during all of which she had had precious little time to dwell on the sights or investigate in detail. One time, she had been carrying extremely important letters and nothing had interested her less than the city layout below. The second time, she had barely spent three seconds in the air before crushing into a couple of harbour monks. There had been enough roaming the city on foot. There had been enough flying in the dangerous wilderness. It was time to connect both fields of expertise: the exploration and the flying. She was sailing over the Celestial District in lazy circles, marvelling at rosy roofs and the outstanding silhouette of the Celestial Seat, dominant in size and shape. She admired its perfect symmetry, and the evenness of the smooth stone it had been built from long ago, by the hands of the Celestials themselves, as stories told. She had seen the large building many times when leaving her quarter at the Safehaven Inn, but had not yet dared venture inside. Today was the first time she consciously saw it from above, and only now did she realize all four wings were exactly the same, to avoid more conflict than there already was between the city’s rulers. She swooped a little lower now, until she could see individual people down below, turning the streets into an anthill of business. Almost none of them walked in a straight line, something she likely would not have noticed while walking among them. It was funny. They were desperately trying to be faster than everyone else, but lengthening and slowing their own way in the process. It was market day, so the streets surrounding the neutral district were more busy than usual. Amongst the people shopping for various goods and trying to reach different destinations by taking an unlucky shortcut through the city centre, were children, playing despite the coldness of winter and the buzz of people. Their houses did not have enough room to contain them, nor did the patience of their parents, and the wilderness outside Nyka was too daunting even for the bravest to venture into, so the streets were their only option. She saw a merchant curse when a boy’s cloak got caught with a rough edge of his stand, causing it to trip precariously and almost knocking it over entirely. The kid only stuck out his tongue at the gesticulating man, grinned and rushed on. Faradae turned her sharp eyes elsewhere. She spotted a group of children talking agitatedly and gesturing towards what appeared to be the wall of a common mansion. It sparked her curiosity, and since her ears were regrettably not quite as sharp as her sight was, she swiftly landed on an intricate gable sheltering a second-floor window of the house whose wall was under the boys’ intensive observation. A few small pebbles crumbled down where her talons met the stone and she fluttered a little to keep her balance, but she managed. Peeking down from her lookout, she listened in on their conversation. One of the boys was currently being held beg from fleeing the scene by three others, who were holding him back by his coat and arms. Another few had started to giggle at his attempted escape. “Oh come on,” one of them said, taunting the smaller one. “Knock already. Or do you want me to tell your brother about your lack of guts?” That apparently was something the smaller boy would have preferred not to happen. He stepped forward hesitantly, as if the wall was something bad. Wait, ‘knock’? Faradae craned her neck down to see what exactly the boys were talking about. She spotted a doorknob below, a little above the smaller boys’ shoulders, and could make out its shape, as well. It looked like a lion stylized with a sun for a mane, carrying what reminded her of a handle. How strange. There was no door to explain its existence. ‘Knock….knock….’ She was remembering something about a knocker, but she could not remember where she’d heard it, or what it had been about.