It had been a few days since I last met Melissa. It continued to snow for the last few days, so I was not able to visit the library again. The roads had been piled with thick snow again and again and even the occasional shovelling when it stopped snowing was not enough to open paths and it was all undone when it inevitably snowed again.

Therefore, I had been trapped at home for the last few days without much to do. I had still had a few books from the library that I had loaned out, and they became my only source of entertainment, if you could call them that. After all, these were history books specifically about Sivas which I had begun slowly reading since I arrived. They were by no means boring but they did not provide the same sort of fantastical feeling a fictional book that made it feel like you were actually enjoying a break of sorts. They did however give me a lot of information about Sivas however.

These books had a clearly more in depth history of Sivas and reading them expanded my understanding of the town in swathes. However, the things Melissa had told me in the library about Sivas’s decline had stayed with me.

Her view was significantly different from what I read in the history books of Sivas in the past. This made me wonder if I had been lied to? Did those books not have truths. It did not seem like it, Melissa herself admitted that there was a decline. Therefore, what was the thing that was bothering me about this after all?

Was it that those books had overemphasised the downfall of Sivas due to its decline as a cultural center? I had been surprised all this time since arriving because of the preconceived notions from the books I had read, so the fact Sivas continued to have such a vast library and excellent infrastructure shocked me.

Why did I think everything written there was true or was unchallenged? Who had written these books after all? Thinking back those books were brought by the authority of my home land in order to try and raise education levels amongst other things.

Who had written those books?

They were written by academics from Hax, who had little to no contact with Sivas. Their views of Sivas were purely centered around its status as a cultural center. It did not look at other consequences outside of the decline outside of the cultural sphere that a citizen of Sivas would see for themselves.

However, why was this simple discovery bothering me so much? Is it because I really took the arguments of those books at face value?

Creek*

Laying down onto the bed, I stared at the ceiling and realised.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I was annoyed at myself that was why. I had drawn conclusions from those books that the decline of Sivas was a general one, whilst the authors in fact had only focused on its cultural status. They were not interested in the specific results of the decline to Sivas but to Hax instead, who benefited from it by capturing SIvas previous status.

Melissa knew the results of the decline and not all of them were negative for the city. So, she was able to crack my own short sighted conclusions of Sivas status, and what bothered me was that I had not noticed it before.

‘I still have a lot to learn,’ I sighed in dejection.

Ekk*

I felt a shiver suddenly, and hugged myself unconsciously.

‘So Cold’

The fire at the stove had slowly lost its strength whilst I was pondering. So I walked over and fed it a few more small logs for it to regain its warmth.

I still have quite a stock but I should try to use less,’ A good stock of logs has been left at the front of the house a few days after my arrival which in itself surprised me but I realise it probably was impossible to survive without it. The first few days, I had relied on a few pieces that I had brought with me and I was ready to buy or exchange things for more after my arrival but all that was luckily for me unnecessary.

The logs had been a great help to stay warm but for how much will it stay like this?

I said while I glanced at the outside of the window the snow falling.

The weather had never bothered me but I had somewhat underestimated the harshness of the cold in Sivas. It was rather difficult to do anything so it involved a lot of idleness which did not help with overcoming the cold. It would probably feel better if I had someone else to talk to - As I said that Mellisa face surfaced in my mind.

‘I wonder what she's doing now?’

‘Maybe, she is stuck at the library again’ I jokingly thought for a second after remembering how enthusiastic Mellisa was when she was talking about anything related to Sivas.

‘This town has indeed done a tremendous job to not only adapt and survive in this weather but also flourish,’ I thought to myself, so it is no wonder that citizens would be proud of it.

Before arriving I could only imagine the winter of Sivas but actually experiencing it makes me respect the people of Sivas. It was not something easy to deal with and they did it year after year.

‘Though, I guess I could say the same about us too…’ sighing in dejection in dejection i spoke to myself as I sat down on my bed once again.

Whilst Resting my back on the wall, at the corner of my eye I caught sight of a book. After picking the book, I looked deeply at it as the title said ‘The Western Opportunity.’

It was a book about Ximu, my homelands as they called it. I was interested in finding out if there was anything written about it, so I looked for a book in the library about it. It took a long time to find one and I spent a lot of time looking over many rows of books in the History section of the library until I eventually found just this one book.

‘No wonder, Mellisa said she did not know much about it’ I said and broke into a wry smile.

I did not expect many but only one was a bit surprising. It probably was too recent for many academics to be interested in writing about, the western lands and my people themselves had a long history but its history under the empire was still a short one.

Looking over the book again, I was still at odds with the content maybe because it talked about things that I had personally experienced, so It felt a bit uncomfortable to read.

*Knock*

The sudden knock on the door broke a deafening silence, and I was surprised that my body jolted violently that the book flew from my hand and fell into the floor. After getting myself together from the sudden shock, I moved towards the door.

‘Who can it be?’ No one had ever knocked on my door since I arrived so I was somewhat curious.