82nd of Nemulum, 313 EA
Peyr Myarsa
The lower stacks of Peyr played host to the bulk of the city’s residents, to their laborious days and nights of humble rest. The rest of the city hung atop this grand foundation, casting all but it’s outer edges in shadow. The constant overhang gave the district a cavernous feel, some facsimile of living underground or else as mice beneath the floorboards of giants.
A crowd had formed in this undercroft, amidst a market square. From the center of the crowd rang a singular voice, wizened and perhaps louder than ought to have rung from one as elderly as they were.
“To endure this life, one must hold a love for one’s own in their heart. And make no mistake, we here are our own.” The words left the people gathered to swirl and mingle, to coalesce around one another.
Leça pushed in to join the crowd, heavy-handed and humble but met with only the soft smiles of recognition as they nodded a neighborly greeting to as many of the onlookers as they passed.
“Our days run long,” The speaker continued, “Our backs strain with the weight of our responsibility even as our tools break. And for that we pray. Illness takes our rank, our sisters and brothers, and for that we pray as well.”
The crowd murmured between his words, nodding along. He drew long, measured breath in before the weight of his next statement fell through. “I ask you now, when will prayer be enough? I have as much faith as any here, none can deny it, for I know that Old Myarsa most surely holds our salvation. But we are Conservators, that is the title that has been given to us by our ancestors, and in order to honor that conservation there are certain necessities of living. Metals. Medicines. Magics. These materials could be within our grasps.”
He met eyes with those congregated to hear him speak, and they with him. “So I ask you now, to join our voices. To sing with me, that together our song might carry to the ears of those most gracious above.”
The crowd broke out in hymn, and Leça along with them. The hum from their chest resonated out in the air, and for a moment they shut their eyes and felt whole.
When Leça opened them again, their gaze landed on a pair of figures they did not recognize. The two stood tightly together, cloaked. They held no hunch to their shoulders, their vestments hung too clean, and though they sang with the chorus their voices did not harmonize.
The song came to a close, and the crowd began to disperse. Leça scanned their goings uneasily, and found more faces that they had not seen around the district before.
Even those they did know seemed not to be so singular a body as they first appeared. The people broke away in threes and fours, cliques and bands. Few of them said even a word in goodbye, instead exchanging suspicious glances as they pulled back into the depths of the city to return to the abodes of their respective families.
Leça felt a touch at their shoulder, flinching out of their own head to find that the speaker had approached them. He was a calloused man, with tawny gray hair dreadlocked back in long coils off the top of his head. Wideset and thin, he had the look of one who had held quite a remarkable strength in his youth but had since been bowed by time. “Mikhal, my apologies. You startled me.”
“It happens to the best of us, dear.” Mikhal waved away the apology with an assuaging hand. “I wonder if you would walk with me, back to my home. A steadying arm is always appreciated.”
“Of course,” Leça nodded, holding their elbow out for Mikhal to secure themselves as the two began an ambling walk. “It was a rousing speech you gave, sir.”
“Aye, rousing.” Mikhal intoned ruefully. “I’m afraid it must be so. It is necessary, for these things to be said.”
“Yes,” Leça spoke now with an awkward sort of carefulness, choosing their words one at a time, “Even still, I worry for your meaning to be heard and understood. There were some new folk attending tonight. Folk I did not know.”
Mikhal nodded sagely, “Nor I. I wonder, where they might have come down from. Perhaps you might help me, to assuage this curiosity? The next time we gather, if they are to be in our midst, their names ought be known.”
Leça chewed on the veiled request for a moment as the they approached their destination. Mikhal’s home was a long-held shieling wedged into the corner of the undercity. Patchwork repairs wrote their history across its walls and its fixtures.
“I do not think that appropriate, sir.” Leça hung on her answer, glancing up as though she might be seen through the district’s ceiling. “If they are of the sort you expect, the sort from on high, then I know that our shared faith will guide them towards what is best for this city. What is best for our people.”
“You have a hope that I envy.” Mikhal’s voice took on a subtle note of concern as he crossed the threshold into his darkened doorstep. “I hope for all of our sake you are correct.”
Leça gave the most reassuring look she could, coupling it with a gentle squeeze to the elder’s shoulder. Mikhal nodded his thanks to her, and the two parted.
Leça made her way back through the shadows that eve. She walked, and watched others walk alone just as she did.
The Etra Anthology 