Northgate
75 Winter 217
Ringo jolted awake again with a start, the same way he did almost every night … the smell of smoke still clung to his nostrils as he absent mindedly scratched at his left leg. He muttered softly to himself as he pushed to his feet then took a moment for a long cat-like stretch, which caused his muscles to groan and his joints to pop.
He staggered over to the open window to breathe in the night air and shake the last of the sleep from his eyes as he exhaled. “Good evening for a stroll, I suppose,” he mumbled as he shifted and shook into a smaller form. Warbler, the field mouse, sat on the window’s ledge, nose twitching and whiskers wiggling as he took in his surroundings with his newly acquired senses. He gathered a few small things into his cheeks from his crumpled pile of clothes on the floor. Then gazed out over the city of Northgate. What possessed people to build this massive place? Warbler wondered. We had to trudge through a literal river of piss and shit to enter this city, and it’s right under the people that live here at all times, yuck. Closer to some than others though, he thought. “… every creature knows not to sleep where you defecate,” he mused to himself. “People are weird.”
Warbler skittered from ledge to ledge, up to the rooftop, and peered down into a rain gutter. Plink! He dropped a small object from his cheek down the pipe. “There’s so much I still don’t know about the world, about magic, monsters, war, my enemies, my allies, even myself … Sav said it well. What did she call me in that accent of hers? Country mouse? Yeah, she’s right though … I’m still just a country mouse in the big city; I’ve got so much to learn.”
Warbler moved through the shadows of the alleyways, always with one eye out for predators … cats, snakes, owls and swans. Plink! He dropped another small object from his cheeks between the cracks in the cobblestone, and he took in the sounds of the city. Footsteps, voices, laughter in the distance. The ruckus was never ending here; how did anyone find peace? Was there a place here where a single moment of stillness and silence existed? A scream several blocks away, but no matter, need to focus on the task at hand. There’s so much to learn, little country mouse, so much you still don’t know. Plink! Another small object dropped from his cheek and down into the sewers.
He wandered further, past small crowds, and through different parts of the city. Markets, stores, homes, slums, mansions. Plink! Another small object fell as he stared up at the looming structure of the Painted Swan Headquarters. “There is a sort of beauty to this city I suppose. The stark controlled geometry of it. The symmetry.” Plink! The last of the seeds fell from his cheek. “Maybe with enough time I’ll understand why they think they get to decide what should be built, and what should be destroyed. Maybe I …” His thoughts faded and wandered, and the voice in his head sounded more like rustling leaves than any voice at all.
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