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

[imeanforever]

"It's gorgeous."

[infinitely_stranger]

"One of my favourite landscape features."

[imeanforever]

"What are the other best ones?"

[infinitely_stranger]

"I started over a much bigger ocean, all the way on the other side of central Queenscourt territory from here, and it had floating islands with incredible crystal formations growing on their undersides. For a good few centuries they were the only landmasses I had any experience with. I was mildly disappointed by my first sight of ground I couldn't get underneath; it seemed to be missing the best part."

[imeanforever]

Awwww.

Promise doesn't say that, but she thinks it.

"Do you know the big waterfall that starts out of nowhere and falls for miles before it forms the tiled river?"

[infinitely_stranger]

"Yes. I like that one. Let's see... as of about a century ago, there were a set of tuned canyons nearish your tree that whistled music in the wind; are they still there and have you heard them?"

[imeanforever]

"They were there when I started. I was going to go but didn't get a chance. I was very new when Thorn got me."

[infinitely_stranger]

"Ah."

[imeanforever]

"I was waiting until I learned to turn invisible because I'd heard they were colonized by razorfeet."

[infinitely_stranger]

"Sensible."

He is quiet for a second or two, then says, "The first thing that really sold me on the merits of continents was a mountain range. They weren't even particularly good examples of mountains - I've seen prettier ones since - but they were enormous and solid and mountain-shaped, and they had beautiful lacy trees growing all down their sides."

[imeanforever]

"I heard that on an island in the far west there's a volcano made of bands of clear gemstones."

[infinitely_stranger]

"I've seen that. It's a sight. I wanted to see it erupt, but I couldn't stay long enough that trip and I haven't been back yet."

[imeanforever]

"I don't remember hearing anything about how it erupts."

[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?"