Tonight, your dreams flower beneath your eyelids. 

It is green here. And brown. And all the colors one could imagine, and quite a few one could not. Above all else, however, the virid glow of vegetation stands out. It is a lush, fat hue that you can recall having seen only once before, in those few childhood moments between bouts of starvation, when you had time to play, to live, to feel yourself as a part of the world and the world as a part of you, to be alive. It is a green that does not exist in Atrament, where the grey and black of uneven cobbles, or the sickly brown of rotting wood, or the wan and xanthous cast of lamplight are the only colors you know. It is beautiful.

Then the music begins.

You dance for a hundred years. It feels right, it is right. There are others who dance with you, here. You cannot see through their bramble-masks or heavy crowns of yew, but they dance with such wild abandon that no introduction is needed. You know them better than anyone you have before. You come to the acute understanding, in these hundred years, that this is the way it should be. This is everything you have been missing. That is what the dance tells you, anyway. This is something beyond the isolation of the city, where out of five million souls, hardly a dozen deign to speak with you, where hardly anyone speaks with anyone in anything beyond the most shallowly familiar terms, where the packed streets and alleys rumble with foot traffic, yet hardly a word beyond angry shouts and the occasional mumble is spoken. There is a unity in this dance, wild as it is, which flies in the face of the rigid patterns of the city's layout, of its boxlike buildings and boxheaded people. In this dance, there is no one above other. Each gets their turn to contribute to the patternless pattern, and each knows when to let others take their place. Is is ordered. It is neat. It is wild. It is carefree. It is a decree: think as you will, act as you will, as long as you dance to my tune.

Whose tune? You needn't even think it, and it shifts. This is your signal. It is your turn in the dance, and your grasstongued companions part to allow you to move forward, to contribute your own song, to let your voice harmonize and pull you forward, deeper in, through a knot in a tree with seven branches, along a twisting mycorrhizal root structure, firing like a synapse, until you come to rest at the foot of a stair woven from rose-needles. At the top, rests something. Something that sings, and plays, creating the tune to which all things dance. Only at the top of this stair, rests something that promises a new life, a chance at something beautiful.

Verdure, everlasting.

---

 

Will you climb the stair?

In this space I find myself in, I feel finally at peace. At ease. My life has been filled with nothing but constant hardship. My constant growling stomach, my sapped physical strength. I had been lucky that my name and my voice were as talented as they were, as others saw it as my only appealing attribute. Everything else about my appearance, from my ashen skin to the dark hair, from the black fingertips to the forest green eyes, was seen as things others pushed away. So to find myself in such a situation felt truly like I was in a dream come true. 

With all of this in mind, I eagerly climb the stairs to see who was the one singing.

You trip up the steps as easy as silk. Each step causes more blooms to flourish, paving your ascent to the something which sings above. It smiles, or something akin to a smile passes something akin to a face. It is difficult to see. No, not see. The verb isn't there. It is hardly in your vocabulary. Nonethelss, you perceive something warm and mirthful from this honey-glazed thing of russet roots and lush vegetation and twisting curling seething rhythm. It is birdsong and rowan. It is a return from katabasis. It is everything you have never seen. You dance to the foot of its being, as a bark-hewn maw whispers unquiet words through your spine:

Hello, it says/thinks/is. I see/hear/am you. You call out to us/me/it. Sing-sweet with bird-maw and rending-head. Beg for help/instruction/companionship without front-thought of what you request. Trip and stumble through mirror-mazed stonefields, cut your tongue-feet on glass. Your cry is sharp/loud/beautiful/arrhythmic, reaches my ears/head/soul/teeth. You are suitable/desired/needed. 

It extends a seven-fingered hand-and-head, reaches to you with seeking tendrils. You are unlike others, it whispers/rumbles/laughs. You reach our ኡልህልዪኡጎኡረቹክ in dream without issue. You clear-see ኡጎጮቹዪዐነ- These words (if you can call them words) are unfamiliar, but ring true nonetheless. You may not understand them, but the following are clear:

We desire you as ours. To plant us in your reality. To spread the revelry. To render all the world to perfect harmony. This is but a taste of what awaits.

It extends one of seven finger-faces to you.

It is your choice to make.

I feel my heart race at its words, the music of the world causing me to dance without thought. Everything this being said sung to me, echoed within my heart and mind with great desire and longing. I gave a nod, reaching my hand out towards it to take it. “Please…” I try to say back to it. “Please help me. Let me spread this feeling in my world. Let me find comfort and safety with people there. Let me guide them to a better life and a more beautiful one that I may also be a part of.” I bow my head to it, giving a deep sense of respect in the bow. “I am here as your humble servant.”

At the moment of contact, you feel something blossom in your throat. The yew-thing gleams. The music swells... you begin to dance, to be subsumed back into that frantic rhythm, and then you

Oscen wakes up with a pain in his neck like the last blow of an execution. Not something nice and clean, like the good old guillotine during the blood-soaked, if quickly stymied revolutions of '88, no. Something more like the dirty, dull axe-blows featured in the discarded, moth-eaten book he taught himself to read from: A Brief and Somewhat Bloody History of the Old Empire, 1385-1698. The type of axe that doesn't cut through the bone so much as break it.

There is a crust on his eyes like no other this morning, and it tears at his eyelashes as he splits his lids open. As he wipes it off, it feels strangely sticky and yet powdery, and the substance that falls from his lashes is a sort of glaucous-green hue. He pushes himself upright, getting his bearings as the ache spreads from his neck down his shoulders and back, dripping like hot molasses through his whole central nervous system. There isn't a single muscle that doesn't ache. Oscen is intimately familiar with aches and pains, but even this is abnormal. It feels as if he has been exercising all night, without pausing to stretch. He vaguely recalls something in his dreams, something of movement...

But it's gone. The only thing that remains is this dim storage closet where Oscen makes his bed, in the back rooms of Mssr. Stenlin's Ship-Chandlery 112 Barleycorn Street. The Rote District, just off of the sunken roads of the Wash. Atrament. Home. A greyer city has never been known. Monsieur Leopold Stenlin, the proprietor of the establishment, inherited from his father when he died, when it was only a chandlery. The Wash was a happy accident for the dying business, as while candles faded from popularity, a new market opened to hawk boating supplies to those who trawl those rotting waters. Perhaps 'happy' is an exaggeration. It is a poor market, and Mssr. Stenlin is a poor man. He has offered Oscen room and board in exchange for his work at the dying shop, but is unable to offer him any pay beyond that. 

It is time to get out of bed. Months of sleeping in a closet with very little natural sunlight has fine-tuned Oscen's internal clock. Time to greet another miserable day.

A Discovery! Lodging - A Room Behind a Ship-Chandlery

A Discovery! Employment - Ship-Chandler's Assistant

A Discovery! Affliction - Aches and Pains (1 level of exhaustion until rest or treatment)

It is... Morning, Monday, 6th of Augensrain, 1847 at... 112 Barleycorn Street (Stenlin's Ship-Chandler), Rote District, Atrament, the Empire.

Oscen groans a bit as he begins to rise from what might call his bed, rubbing his sore neck. He shuffles up to his feet, rubbing at his eyes and throat as he stands. ‘What…what was that…’ he thinks to himself, trying to recall what he had dreamed of the night before. With nothing coming to mind, he sighs with some amount of disappointment. All he could recall from his dreams was simply that he was happy for once. A feeling that feels so foreign that he feels desperate to have it back.

Either way, he for now rises up from the hay filled crate he calls his bed, grabbing his heavily patched work clothes from where they hung by the door. He quickly finishes getting dressed before opening the door, closing his eyes as the sun hits his eyes before starting to head inside to see what Mssr. Stenlin had first on the jobs to do for the day.

The store is a sorry state. A pile of splintery oars and rotting wood sits propped up against a wall, while the row of shelves across holds moldering tins of rosin, pitch, and turpentine. A black lump stands in the center of the half-bare shelves, where a dollop of tar spilled and was trod into the floor until the two were entirely inseparable. Coils of rope, hatchets, hammers, boat hooks, and even a few candles (next to the far more popular bottles of whale oil) lie scattered haphazardly along the shelves.

Oscen might organize the shelves, but he and Leopold both know that to straighten them would reveal just how bare they are; Stenlin's is a building whose insides have withered away to the point where they cannot sustain its frame. Despite it all, the stubborn git refuses to die. Perhaps it's better that way. After all, Oscen might start to feel like he were the problem, if two businesses happened to crumble beneath his touch, one right after the other. Of course, with or without him, Stenlin's is not long for the world.

Leopold Stenlin himself is standing behind the counter, staring into the middle distance. 

He looks up as Oscen approaches, breaking from his reverie.

"Oscen. Had a good night's sleep, I hope?"

It is... Morning, Monday, 6th of Augensrain, 1847 at... 112 Barleycorn Street (Stenlin's Ship-Chandler), Rote District, Atrament, the Empire.

“As good as I suppose, Mssr. Stanlin,” Oscen replies, rubbing at the back of his neck as he gave a bow of his head. “Is there anything you wish for me to get started on this morning?”

Stenlin offers Oscen a tight-lipped smile. "Actually, I do have something. Andrej put in an order for a few bits and bobs, and I've just recently gathered them up. It's all sitting behind the counter here, would you go and deliver it to him? He should be out floating by the old collapsed bridge into the Ho— into the Wash."

Stenlin gestures to a small crate below the counter. It looks to be filled with assorted boat maintenance supplies, a new hammer, and some fishing tackle as well as, interestingly, a half-dozen candles.

It is... Morning, Monday, 6th of Augensrain, 1847 at... 112 Barleycorn Street (Stenlin's Ship-Chandler), Rote District, Atrament, the Empire.

Oscen gives a nod, trying to remain positive about the job. ‘At least I can get a bit of sun today…’ he thinks to himself, wandering behind the counter. “Why did Andrej order candles?” He asks himself aloud, grunting a bit as he lifts up the box. “Is there anything else you need me to grab on the way back, Mssr. Stanlin?” He asks, just managing to pick it up and getting it into a carrying position.

"Candles? I'm unsure, though I am glad to clear them. Perhaps you'd ask him? We've plenty of equipment in the back, but I haven't had any reason to use it as of late, our stock has been more than enough to meet the demands of the few in the area who still operate by candlelight. If he's caught anything good, you might buy dinner? Not anything too expensive, mind."

The way to the Wash isn't difficult. Is Oscen doing anything in particular as he walks over?

It is... Morning, Monday, 6th of Augensrain, 1847 at... travelling along Barleycorn Street, Rote District, Atrament, the Empire.

Oscen gives a nod, stumbling a little as he heads for the door. “I’ll see what he has,” he calls back as he just gets out the door. He winces in the sunlight as he readjusts the crate before heading towards the Wash. As he heads over, he takes his time to walk and take everything in around him, trying to find bits and pieces of joy that he can find. Maybe a penny or pence that might have been dropped here or there. A piece of bread that had been tossed out half eaten. Even a glimmer of something to help him through the day so not everything around him was something to be miserable about. For the first time in a while, though, he knows that he wants something: to recall that feeling of happiness from how he felt when he awoke earlier, and to just try and enjoy it for a little while longer.

Roll me a perception check!

13

Oscen sees many things. A constable digging his heel into some puling nobody's side. A man crying by the side of the street while pedestrians flow around him like river-water around a stone. A halfhearted costermonger advertising shriveled fruits. None of these sights are new. And yet... here, the street urchins play marbles, laughing despite it all. There, through a window, a family shares a meager breakfast, but the parents smile as the youngest gets the lion's share. And around the corner, in a crack in the wall, a single red hibiscus pokes through the stonework. 

When Oscen sees it, a half-measure of something half-remembered plays through his mind, and is whisked away. All of a sudden, his throat feels very, very dry. 

A Discovery! Affliction - A Dryness of the Throat (No mechanical effects... yet)

Oscen passes by, and the Wash opens before him. Half-submerged buildings loom out of pitch-dark waters, which are hardly pierced by the sunlight filtering through the hazy clouds above. Waves lap up against rotting driftwood and rotting docks built from the stuff, and at the base of a demolished stone bridge lies a small rowboat, packed with fishing supplies. A name is painted sloppily along the side: The Royal Pardon. A man sits within, wearing a flat cap and thick wool coat, and waves to you as you approach.

It is... Morning, Monday, 6th of Augensrain, 1847 at... the Broken Bridge, Wash District, Atrament, the Empire.

As soon as he sees the Hibiscus flower, Oscen feels as if he is ready to start coughing. He keeps it down, though, as the last thing he wanted to be confused for was being ill. As he arrives at the Royal Pardon, Oscen tries to clear his throat for a moment before saying, “Good day, Mr. Pap. You had an order from Mssr. Stanlin, yes?” He asks, a bit of his cough and dry throat showing signs through his speech.

"Yes! You can put it in the boat right here. Thank you very much!" Mr. Pap beams, his impressively white teeth gleaming. "You need something to drink? I have water, if you need it. Or, if it pleases you..." He gestures to a conspicuously flask-shaped bulge in his breast pocket. 

Regardless of if Oscen takes up his offer, Andrej begins meticulously picking through the shipment, mumbling to himself as he does so.

It is... Morning, Monday, 6th of Augensrain, 1847 at... the Broken Bridge, Wash District, Atrament, the Empire.

“Some water would be good, Mr. Pap,” Oscen says, scratching at his throat as he watches the man begin to scrounge through the box. He waits for a moment on how to breech the subject before saying, “Mr. Pap, I noticed in your order you had a lot of candles inside it. Wouldn’t that be dangerous to have with your current setup here?”

Andrej pulls out a bottle full of mostly clear water and hands it to Oscen. As he drinks, the fellow laughs and gestures to a freshly installed candleholder at the prow of the boat. "Not more dangerous, friend, it is far more dangerous without! If you are fishing at night as I have begun to do, anyways. Candles are... soothing, yes? Less upsetting, anyhow. Tallow is best." He pats the candles, and pulls the melted stub out of the holder, replacing it with a fresh candle.

Oscen's throat is feeling much better after the drink, and he can speak clearly again.

It is... Morning, Monday, 6th of Augensrain, 1847 at... the Broken Bridge, Wash District, Atrament, the Empire.

“I see,” Oscen replies, giving a nod as he sees the candlestick holder. He hands the flask of water back to Andrej, giving a nod of thanks. “Thank you for that. Have you caught anything recently that would be for sale? Mssr. Stenlin was wondering if there was anything.”