The day was beautiful, she almost thought she could step away from it all if she kept walking and kept smiling.

But it was never that easy. Her head lolled back and she stared at the blue sky and the clouds that floated by. A knot tightened in her guts. Had it all been for nothing. All. These. Years. She pushed the thought, did her best to deny it but it refused to be cast down.

The world reminded her to smother her delusions. It showed she had more naivete to kill. But two refused to falter. She gave the angel a smile that showed too much of her sharp teeth. “Thank you for your wisdom emissary. We near Spes Nova’s heart. There will be much for you to see. I know not what will catch your interest but do my best to expound it while we walk.”

He looked at her with a pity she despised. She’d rather vitriol, but that wasn’t him. “Then tell me of the statuettes.” He gestured at a family of stone beavers sitting on the wall of a nearby house. ”At first I thought them mere decorations but they seem far too common for that.”

She laughed a touch too brightly. “Well spotted emissary. The statues you see represent the denizens of each residence and represent the Bestial line from which they descend. While I cannot speak for nobles you will often see handmade offerings adorning the windowsills of the city’s denser regions.”

“Offerings?”

“It is what we call them. They are offerings to the house for protecting and the ancestors for giving us life.”

“Even in the slums?”

“Yes if you have a place to call home.”

On it went. The angel was an endless font of curiosity. In comparison, Two’s knowledge was but a puddle. Yet that never bothered him. He simply dredged up things she’d forgotten she knew. From grand contemplations better suited to priests, to simple things like what a person ate in a day. Two had never met someone so taken by the world and never more had she wished to sample another’s feelings.

If she drank his wondre how deep would its flavour be, how rich its flavour. Could it distract from hers?

Passersby became hangers-on as they walked through the city’s heart. People congregated, stared and made noisiness of themselves as they lingered. Yet none dared approach. An ever moving ring surrounded the emissary and by proxy her. The crowd flooded streets and flowed onto balconies. When their path took them over a channel the clear waters were chocked by the city’s aquatic residents.

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They whispered and shuffled in consort but the angel’s voice was the only one that rose above the quiet din. Their quiet was surreal,but Two understood.

The angels silently drifting behind her was a wonder, one that pulled as they replied. A thing not meant for their touch, she thought of Deadra and the bloodied girl had cried into his pants, though perhaps not one that minded it.

Would they ever reach their destination with this mob? More importantly, she needed to know more and those questions were not for public ears. The answer to both was negative. Two slowed until she was by his side and spoke at a volume just for him. “Sir, is there any way for us to escape this crowd? They complicate our journey.”

He looked away from his latest fixation and took in the crowd for what might well be the first time. “Yes.” He hummed. “That might be a problem.” He offered his hand. “Would you mind if I carried you? “

Two’s thoughts stuttered and she stared at his hand with a vapid smile. Hundreds watched them at this moment. Before she had been a faceless attendante but if she took his hand and rumour did as it was know to do… But, glanced at the sky and thought of the horizon hidden beyond her view.

She took the angel’s hand. The results were more than she could’ve imagined. One moment she was there, the next she was thick mist fading in the breeze.

She had no form and possessed no constraint but the wind’s whims. In seconds she was spread along the streets, seconds later she was an invisible current dancing in the sky. She had no heart but it was racing. The city retreated as she climbed up and up and up. Her whole being was wrapped in a current of mist no thicker than a finger. It should have been terrifying, vertigo should have long stolen her thoughts. Yet she smiled, without lips.

Spes Nova expanded bellow and the heavens Towered above. She floated in the middle. Even the governor’s palace was hundreds of metres below. Yet still higher she rose.

Spes Nova, The eldest, the land of her many hopes and greater torments became an oblong. With bulging bits here and there and wide rods budding off it like a tree’s roots. It was a massive thing. It curled and flowed with the contours she had only now discovered the land to possess. She had always known it to be great and it proved itself to be greater.

To think it was but the surface. The skin of a creature that had outlived its makes. A city older than her kind. To think she was flying above it.

She laughed and spun and let the wind do as it pleased.A new not tightened in her. One borne of joy and the world she would never see.

“Are you enjoying yourself?”

Her laughter choked and though she had no lungs she found a way to cough. “Emissary” she tried for formality but even Two was not that good.

“Don’t mind me.” He said. “I just find it rather interesting that you can see.”

“Am I not supposed to see.” Two became very aware of how far the ground was and dearly hoped she had not tried the Angless patience.

“I did not believe you had the capacity. You saw my brother yet I did not expect you to see through my mist.” The angel hummed and the sound came from all about her. From the very mist, that consumed her. He was the mist and she was inside him, she put that thought aside. “I wonder why you couldn’t see through me before.”

Two had no words to give.

“So,” his attention turned. “How is it?” Two realized she had not lost his attention. His curiosity was endless and had strayed for a time. But now? She was its centre, and they might as well be the only people in the world.

She followed the horizon, spinning and spinning as if the city were a stage beneath her feet and the sun her spotlight. She didn’t know how he doing this, nor did she care. The streets and alleys she scurried through in her youth were things she could barely see. The market was a mismatch of coloured patches. The slum was a grey stain at the city’s centre. That had been her world but the truth was grander.

The horizon circled and beyond it lay the wilds and the empire proper. Below the old capital, her whole world was cast in colour, thin lines and vague shapes. The wind pulled and scattered her across the sky, its currents danced through her. The twin knots tightened further.

She found her voice but there were no words to encapsulate what she felt. Still, she tried “I wish it would never end”but it would.