Sorry but your princess is in another castleCerita Praha, the Elerd capital. Once I walked these stone floors in the entourage of a doomed Rogwel raiding party. Now I walk down in broad daylight and tip my hat to the guards as I smile my way in. Why didn't I think of this before?
The Elerd crafting machines look like a mix between a brass typewriter, a jewelry box, and a Fabergé crustacean. It's marked "Paws off" for some reason, though feel free to make a campfire nearby.
The entrance to the hall of Cerity Praha has a golden dragon guarding it. Do they really want something this unfriendly to be the symbol of the government? Look at that thing. I don't want to petition that thing for local zoning ordinances, it looks like it'd golden flame my whiskers off.
I resist the urge to make the victory signI'm an Elerd, so no one stops me from walking right down the main hall.
A Rogwel Pom? Here? in the hall of the king? (Where is the king, anyway? Is there a king? A queen? Some sort of Duke?) Does this mean that the ancient Maestros were also Rogwel Poms — dark, brownish lovepuffs with winning smiles and unspeakably dashing demeanors? Would that mean that the whitish Poms of Elerd are of a different bloodline? Or are we more racially similar than we realize?
On further consideration it's more likely the Elerds just stole this dude like they did our zeppelins and trains and put him up here as a prop.
I give him a glance to see if he recognizes me for what I am, but he retains a stoic if amicable impassivity. Or he's a statue.
I bow before the High Priestess, the most senior member of the Elerd royaleaucracy that I can manage to get an audience with. She's a tall Elf of indeterminate age, delicate features, and a svelte, lithe frame. LIKE EVERY OTHER ELF.
Sorry princess but there were a lot of stairs on the way here. Hope you don't mind. Do they make your cloaks with earholes?
My query is simple. My cousin/sister/friend has recently come to the city from the outskirts of Whereverville, is there any way to find out where she's ended up?
In an extremely polite manner she tells me to get lost. It was so polite in fact that I was halfway to getting lost before she finished, and quite ready to apologize for ever not being lost in the first place. Why should I ever assume that a complex government like Elerd's would bother with up-to-date census material? Or that any government member would have the time to go through it even if they did? Don't I realize that they are already extremely busy standing there, sometimes swaying to one side, sometimes pacing?
They remind me quite a bit of Rogwel's government actually.
Only one more place to check: the town of Bijumir. It's not likely that I would ever find her there, that place is more for mystics and hippies than good, hardworking Poms like us.
Ah, Bijumir, city of mills. Last time I was here I got chased onto the docks by a small mob before leaping courageously into the brine to escape. (Okay I was chased by two people and
got a sound butt-whupping.)
I come to the reflecting pool and who do I see, sadly standing on the stairs of the cool clear fountain like an ancient water-bearer, but my friend.
My heart leaps out of my chest and plops down the steps like a slinky.
She is astonished of course, but she immediately recognizes me behind the white hair and blushing cheeks and runs into reeds in shame or surprise or something cute like that. I wade in after her and tell her it's alright, it's just me, I just want to see if you're okay!
When in doubt, DanceBut why are you dressed in those robes? She is a mystic, she tells me, she is studying the powers of fire. This is a chance at a new life, a way to start over, to see new things and be a new person in a new land. She had to come to Elerd, and had to do it without me.
But she is sad at the same time, because, she tells me, though everything here is beautiful, none of it is
home.
I guess I understand. And I'd been too busy trying to crack open Rogwel like it was my own personal puzzlebox to remember how lost I felt at the beginning of this journey. And how new and wonderful it all looked that first day...
I tell her it's alright, she can go native if she wants. Elerd isn't our enemy, no more than Rogwel is truly our home. Just let me deliver messages to your family, let me visit often, and keep telling me what a good time you're having.
We sit down by the docks of Bijumir, the wide open sea and violet sky out in front of us, as wild and unpredictable as the future itself.
"No, I guess I've had enough," she says. "Let's go back."
It wasn't an ending, and it wasn't a beginning. I guess it was just a
moving, like the gears of a great steam machine. And as this journey winds to an close I can almost already see, out there in the clouds, all the future adventures stretching out before us.
Ah, a Pom's work is never done...
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