Reaching the Meeraz
Year 568, era of the Movement
Seeing it for the first time with the adventurer twins
Close to the heart of this world, on the floating island of Meeraz, bustling harbours welcome wandering souls passing by or looking for a new start. Or so say the rumours. It took us months to reach this place so it better live up to the rumours.
After rubbing my eyes and giving myself a couple slaps on my cheeks to wake me up, I stared at my sister who was still trying to shake me awake while looking at the distance with her mouth open in surprise. Behind me, towards where we were moving, many islands drifted in unison while chained to a much larger island covered in an impressive city.
The sight is spectacular but I only realized how much it surprised me when my sister raised my jaw to cover my mouth, caring not that she was still open-mouthed. How much people must be living in that place? It feels overwhelming, our town is barely the size of the smallest of the islands attached to the main one. After a few moments, I shook my head and encouraged Ledi, our mount, to approach the city faster.
We've been travelling for so long, let's us hope that the rumours stay true and we can start a new life over there. There's no way back home anymore...
As soon as we reached one of the harbours, my sister jumped off Ledi and started running around looking at everything that moved, even bothering some workers who told her to leave them alone. I leashed Ledi a barn close to the island's edge, a bit pissed off that my sister left me behind. I asked the stable hand about how much it would cost for them to take care of Ledi; I couldn't believe it when they said I only had to pay for Ledi's food, but I gladly left Ledi in their hands and paid for a week's worth of food before running to find my sister.
I walked around the harbour, getting distracted with every moving machine around me and trying not to crash into people. I've never seen so many people before in a single place, and this is only the harbour. Kinda don't wanna go deeper into the city if I'm already seeing so many people everywhere.
Trying to call out my sister's name felt a bit useless with all the voices of everyone speaking around me, a constant static scratching in a bad way the back of my head, but I couldn't find her and I was getting worried. It's not a good day for being short. The every so often sounds of animals didn't help my hears not being overwhelmed.
While walking around, doing instant decisions to avoid the moving people without crashing into them, a strong metal sound resonated around the harbour. I looked around, confused, yet no-one else seemed preoccupied about the sound. As I looked up, I realise I'm next to one of these giant chains that mantain together the different islands, it's impressibly big and probably the origin of the sound. Someone crashed into me and sent me a couple insults as they kept walking. This doesn't look like its going to be a nice place to live. I'm starting to regret being convinced to come here...
Trying to get away from the noise of everyone's speaking, I started walking towards the inside of the city, or at least, the first row of buildings. I sat agains one of the building's wall and focused on feeling my surroundings with my touch. The roughness of the wall against my back. The small blades of grass growin at the edge of the wall with the occassional small pebble. The smell of warm bread and stew. The sound of a growling stomach... I didn't even realised I was hungry until now... I took a couple deep breaths admitting that I could think of nothing else except the bread and stew and stood up to follow the smell.
The smell quickly lead me to an inn named "The blessed bat". The establishment was more rustic, compared to the surrounding buildings, and was open. The entrance had no doors, the windows had no glass, no walls divided the interior into smaller rooms but there were some curtains that could be opened to give some privacity to the tables next to the walls. A woman with a skin like the starred sky was floating behind the bar of the place, grabbing bottles from high shelves to fill up glasses before floating gracefully back to the floor. Next to the bar, was a small open kitchen, where I could see the stew bubbling in the cooking pot and the warm bread resting on a table, making my mouth drol.
I started approaching the woman and the stew when in front of me appeared my sister, with a smile on her face and a paper on her hands. I grabbed her by the shoulders as she started explaining something that I didn't really payed attention to. "Nalea! Where WERE you?! I've been searching for you! Though I had already lost you!" I cried. "I... I was just around exploring the harbour when I found this place which has a quest board! This is what I came here for!" she raised the paper to my face while her smile grew even bigger.
I tried finding words to reply but quickly desisted and sighed, which was hilariously timed right before my stomach growled again. Naela seemed to hear the growling since she grabbed me by an arm and dragged me to the open kitchen, where the starred skinned woman was awaiting us with a soft smile.
She offered us a warm bowl of stew as soon as we were close enough and presented herself as Azura, the owner of this local. She asked us what brought us to Meeraz and my sister started explaining almost all her life in a disorganized way, but she didn't seem to care and payed plenty of attention, even brought me once or twice to the conversation if I stayed quiet for too long.
After a couple distractions wher Azura had to do a bit of her job and a long story from my sister, I asked how much it would cost to stay on her inn. She explained that we could either pay, or do some jobs from the inn's board and stay for free. My sister's eyes shined in happiness and was about to run back to the board before I stopped her.
As I paid for tonight's room and agree with her a price for the room for the time we took to take a job, a Maned Bat with strange eyes that resembled the Creator's day state instead of the common monochromatic colour. Azura presented the bat as "Fluffy", her closest friend. After I petted Fluffy, I said goodbye and left our room with my sister.
Fluffy! <3 I kind of already want to yeet Naela off the dock into the harbour. She sounds a bit like chaos incarnate. I'm intrigued to see where the story goes.
She do seem like chaos incarnate xD I also want to see where the story goes! :D Also, Fluffy is finally official in the lore (aka WA)! Had this little guy created for a one-shot I made about a year or two ago.