sugar berry

[imeanforever]

Near a stream that pours off a high cliff and then snakes away is a garden, carefully tended, and a house, built of wood and stone and transmuted pearl. Fairies weed the plants. One is fixing the roof. A berrybush, hair atangle with spidery branches, is painting gold stripes onto her purple arms.

Comments

[infinitely_stranger]

"Mercury. Kills most of the plants all the way down to the shore every time, but the interval is usually long enough for things to grow back, and some of them thrive on it."

[imeanforever]

"That sounds gorgeous."

[infinitely_stranger]

"Yes."

[imeanforever]

"The library I used to go to was built into a cliffside. There was nothing naturally interesting about the place but they'd done a lot of art around the entryways."

[infinitely_stranger]

"I am extremely fond of libraries. Pretty libraries, so much the better."

[imeanforever]

"The inside was nice too. Mosaics in the floors. The shelves were carved. They'd take art as membership payment."

[infinitely_stranger]

"Before the Queenscourt, almost all the time I spent interacting with other fairies was in or on the way to libraries."

[imeanforever]

"Do you happen to know where the one nearest the forest we're going to is?"

[infinitely_stranger]

"I didn't stop at any on this trip, but I know of one a few miles north and another one to the southwest near the edge of the desert, and I don't know of any reason why either of them might have collapsed in the last twenty years. They weren't being maintained by the breeders who left the forest recently. If you settle all the way in the southwestern corner of the forest, they'll be about the same distance away; otherwise the one to the north will be closer."

[imeanforever]

"Thank you."

[infinitely_stranger]

[imeanforever]

"Are there other useful facilities within - non-accelerated flying distance?"

[infinitely_stranger]

"Are art galleries useful? There was one of those. I can't promise it hasn't collapsed in the last twenty years, but if it has not, it will be somewhat further north than the northern library."

[imeanforever]

"They're nice. I don't know about useful, but nice."

[infinitely_stranger]

"It was that."

[imeanforever]

"I wish I had seen more things. I'm probably not even a century old but I could have seen more things than I have in that time."

[infinitely_stranger]

"You've seen more things than I did in my first century, I don't doubt."

[imeanforever]

"Mm?"

[infinitely_stranger]

"I started over a large ocean, and I didn't get interested in exploring until much later. Most of what I saw in my first century was the same four or five floating islands, a lot of water, and a lot of sky."

[imeanforever]

"Were there any other fairies in the island cluster?"

[infinitely_stranger]

"Yes, a few, but I didn't go near them. Later on I found other clusters that were more densely inhabited, and eventually of course I found proper land and landed on it."

[imeanforever]

"I thought I was reserved."

[infinitely_stranger]

"I don't necessarily recommend the lifestyle. But it did tend to make a lot of things simpler."

[imeanforever]

"It didn't get boring?"

[infinitely_stranger]

"I spent a lot of time just watching the sun go around and the harmonics shift. I didn't really have a more interesting life to compare it to. Maybe it would bore me if I went back there now and tried to live like that again, but I don't think I can get a long enough vacation to tell."