Post by YONTEN on Jul 12, 2015 18:33:29 GMT -6
• LOCATION. Nibiru; borders of Shambala, along the main roads that connect the two metropolises.
• TIME. 10PM. It's spring, warm, and set during a trip she's taking. Yonten is finishing a errand she's running for her current employer, who trades between nations.
• TAGGED. Open to everyone!
The blown glass roofs open wide, a canopy hung above the desert sands, and they bend like petals above the walls of Nibiri's houses. Stone guideposts line the passage between their nations, guarded by sleepy statesmen and strange hired-hands. They tower above her, behemoths of architecture, and she tucks away the sewn leather bags again—rice, potions, salt, and silk brought from home. They lean against wood crates and wrapped basins, droopy as they crumbled in on one another, packaged too tightly. She gripped her knees, left alone for the evening as her overseer dozed lazily behind a sack of Shambala's finest, and shook tufts of black hair from her eyes.
Shambala's finest, or so he very much liked to claim at least, and she poked at the plush until the grains shuddered under her fingertips. A rough material, common for the cheapest providers of the Inner Kingdom, and Yonten sat straight—head too high like a beanpole, peering through a window hole—until she saw the moon begin to blink over the horizon. It glistened, a white pearl in a haze of shadow and soft starlight. People dotted the roadside, dressed in thick clothing, and a heavy scent of newly baked bread wafted from open-air doorways.
Their kitchens glow, oil and electric lamps beckoning; it reminded her of fae lights as they creep the catacombs that weave below the old kingdom. She murmured, voice low as to not wake the overseer, "I wonder if I should leave, perhaps, and look around . . ."
A sound broke the silence, echoing and hoarse like the rustle of leaves in summer. Her eyes snapped open, whites flashing, and her next words had no strength to them, "Who's there?"