Common saying and their meanings

Because the falling city is such a meeting place for different cultures and backgrounds, there's a lot of sayings that wouldn't make sense to an outsider, and quite a few have weird origin stories people have simply forgotten. One of the more recent sayings however is the phrase "You're a free bird now", usually used to congratulate someone who've gottent hemselves out of a bad situation. The phrase was coined by a painter who was comissioned to do a painting of a birdflying out of a cage. It was meant to symbolize the comissioner getting out of a bad situation in her past. When she got the paiting however, the cage wasn't there, and instead was flying by itself in a beutiful forest. When the commisioner asked the painter why he changed it, he explained that if she had gotten out of her past, why did she need the cage there? It would only remind her of the bad. According to the story he finished with the words "Congratulations, you're a free bird now, never bound by a cage again". The story got very popular and the saying started gaining popularity, if a bit shotened for ease of use. Another fairly common saying is "The mountains don't listen, but they echo", used for a person deemed untrustworthy with secrets. Its origin is unknown. It however refers to a saying that the mountains listen, accuratley saying that they don't, they only make sounds bounce back. The saying started being used about untrustworthy people, refering to how they don't actually listen to your problem or your secret, but they spread it by echoing it to others. Sometimes it's shortened to where someone just referes to someone as a mountain to imply this.