Just a little vignette inspired by my partner’s whimsical writing style.
Tikal runs out of the doorway of his little airstone abode, and takes a sharp turn down the street. He’s late, and he’s very upset with himself. He knew he needed to be there before the time tower tolled, and he knew the neighbor’s turtle-rooster croaked a street’s stroll before the time tower tolled. He remembered hearing the croak, but sky above knows what he did right afterwards. What he did wasn’t a street’s stroll. Instead the time towers toll transported him from his task-trance back into his room, and then his street-run began. As he flew, he was careful to watch the cobble-airstones, careful to watch his foot fall on each one, square in the middle, lest he stumble. He knew from personal experience that a fall is more bother than the extra running is worth.
As he ran, the airstone houses on each side of the street ticked on by. The houses on Wyael street (or on every street really) were all squished together, like little palm-cakes, packed too tight in a baker’s tray. The people of Westmining liked them that way, you see, nice and cozy, all holding each other up. If they’re all so similar though, how to tell them apart? That would be a problem (or might still be a problem for those not so good with hues) if it wasn’t for every plot being of a different colored sort. The airstone, you see, came in a great range of sights.
None of the sights were strong, not like the green of a field, the sky-above blue, nor anything approaching the crimson of a knee after a fall onto the cobble-airstone. No, they were all light-hearted sights, just a shift away from the grey that were all stones at heart. (Greystone is the purest stone, you see; good for not moving, and nothing else. And yes, I know what you’re thinking; blackstone is not the purest stone, it’s pure black alright, but someone had to add something to get there from grey, and it wasn’t more stone, that’s for sure. Don’t ask me about whitestone, we’ll get there when we get there.) So the airstone is quite light-hearted you see, being from above and all. So in its lightness it meanders away from just grey, and toward whichever hue it favors at its moment of shifting. North is red (or maybe you’d call it pink, since it’s light), south is green like the grass, east is blue, etc etc. So when a new citizen of Westmining builds an abode, they choose the hue of their liking, and up goes the abode.
But not too up, hopefully. The airstones need to be well-anchored of course, lest they seek to rejoin their kin in the Petracumulus mines. Tikal had never been to the mines. They were Very Dangerous, for adults only. And, you had to work your way up to handling the thinness up there. Tikal could only handle the normal air. The valley folk called the mountain folk “the up-dwellers”, but that was silly. The miners were the up-dwellers. The mountains were the bridge. The valley folk were down-dwellers, swimming in their thick air and marshy villages.
Tikal wasn’t sure he wanted to be a miner, but he was sure that the wanted to listen to what the miners had to say. Maybe he would be a pilot, sailing from tower to tower, learning all the lands from the above. Or maybe he would be a bridge builder, connecting rocky spires and islands of the Petracumulus. Despite what most of his friends thought, the mines weren’t for mining airstone; no, it couldn’t be used down below, it was much too light. (Besides, you don’t mine stone, you quarry it.) The airstone was a boon that the mountain people collected for their own cities while they cleared the way to the veins of other substances. Which others, Tikal wasn’t sure. Maybe he would learn that from the miners today, if he listened carefully (and if he could get there on time).
The Nameless Virtue 