…..:::::|. The Tawny Swan .|:::::…..

The dawn had not yet come on their third day of travel. A rush of what seemed like chilly hands wrapped over Halycind's shoulders as she walked the promenade of The Tawny Swan. She was taking little happy sniffs of Siin's rose. Smiling alone.

She hadn’t talked much with her cabinmate as he’d been with Percival being school of bits about magecraft and discussing boring Villa details. So much of him had been new to her now and she was a bit thankful she’d had room to breathe from her insatiable wants of him. But she did think of him a lot. Enough to get used to the idea of him becoming a powerful mage.

She was not wearing her wildergear correctly, but she didn't care. The brigandine was the heaviest piece with its rigs and gadgets and whatnot, so it hung open at four of its six clasps. What she was concerned with was this overwhelming sense of dread in her middle as they approached the shores of Buraamira.

Their trip had been short enough and the Swan was a terribly wonderful joy to sail. But she was weary of the sea. Its endless openness. Its great wide nothing. The den back in Ashok was comfortable and close. Warm and still. Though, she rued being there, Ashok was a familiar comfort.

This thing gnawed at her gut as if all the shamaness in the council bid her steer clear of these shores. What was she so frightened for? What had gripped the middle of her that even her fingertips were anxious? Wolves didn't much like leaving the territory they set but she had travelled before. This wasn't new. She had seen some of the world before this Agency order.

She then, immediately, realized what it could have been that gnawed at her. The Agency. Prospects didn't go on excursion. Their only duty was to trial and wait for acceptance. No, her Exemplariat had beguiled the three and started them on missions unprepared. And she felt hugely unprepared. Though even upon making these conjectures, Halycind's anxiety had not been soothed any.

Loud low drones, sounding long and stretching far, echoed out over the sea now. They were approaching Cloudsfall. Yet she saw no clouds. Perhaps they lay on the other side of the ship and so Halycind went toward the bow to view a site she almost wanted to wake Siin for. He had been right.

Her mouth stood agape and her eyes blinked wide about a hundred times as she stared at the wall of grey stretching like lazy men across the sea. Mists so thick she saw them only as a mummer's curtain before the opening of a play. She immediately wondered if this was the work of a mancer. They had been known to adversely affect weather and ecological climates with their rule-bending magecraft. She wished for Siin to see this and answer her curiosity fully. He’d been right about her curiosity. Now, she wondered if he knew she’d been curious of him. She felt her face now and realized she was smiling at the thought of him. Halycind took another little sniff of his gifted rose.

As they drifted yet forward into the longest arm of the mists, Halycind watched and shivered as the chill of it slid long-side of the Swan. The magnificence of it overshadowed her other more practical thought. Why, on all of the planet, build a town in the middle of this much mist?

Straining to see, Halycind could just catch the slightest hint of a light. A dot floating just above the sea's surface. She caught another and then three more flickered on. Slowly moving along just above the surface. What she also thought she could make out in the mists were shapes, small at first, then growing very large and moving forward. A tiny growl escaped her and her primitive fear of looming things took over again.

She aborted the whole inspection and darted back inside the doors down to her cabin.

Siin still slept comfortably. The furs on the floor where she had slept still slightly lay in the curled shape her body left. Siin had been an honourable cabin mate and they'd talked briefly just to reminiscence when he hadn’t been practicing weaves all day with Percival. However, now she was thinking they would have to correct this pairing as she was finding all this new knowledge of this battlemage, distracting.

A loud crash of what sounded like a jumble of chains cracked and crawled across the hull of the ship and she leapt over Siin to view their certain doom through the porthole.

Siin rolled up a calm grasping arm, eyes still closed, and pulled her hyper and trembling body down into his. “It's just the tethers, Cash.” He murmured not wanting to break his state of rest. This was the first he'd even attempted to hold her and it seemed more out of care than some wanton advancement for he was quickly fast asleep again, arm and tail clenching her and that gifted rose close.

As the scraping and jangling carried on, Halycind blinked back into drowsiness curled warmly against her friend, then into sleep.

...

Waking refreshed, Halycind had slipped away from the Zhuer's lightly snoring grasp toward the galley. She'd met Kodlaa in the companionway nearing the smells of meats.

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Kodlaa rubbed her eyes and palmed back stray hairs of her wolaenki. “Don't ever let me sleep with Percival again.” She outed.

“Huh?!” Halycind jolted.

Kodlaa patted calm into her best friend's shoulder. “The quarter. The quarter is too tiny and he's creepy just staring off into nothin'.”

“Oh.”

“I am for sure going to sleep every night once I'm Agent.”

Having procured meats and potatoes fried to a crisp, the girls climbed up the second access onto the deck. They were told to meet Percival here just after dawn. They were late but here, strangely enough, so was Percival. Just as their faces began to purse, two of the three men of their party strolled from the cabin doors of the ship onto the manned deck.

The third, Siin, emerged very slowly. He was blinking hard and holding his head on to his shoulders as if it we're going to float away.

“Ugh, the Adhesive makes me feel a different weird than the Initiate.”

Percival nodded a sympathetic tilt.

Though he’d not ever taken the focus potion, he’d seen his share of students go through these toils.

Halycind snatched the moment to gag him once more as she called to him loudly over deckhand orders and ship-boy yelps. “It's that Yaan...I keep telling him to lay off, or it'll make him impotent.”

A few of the deckhands chuckled and nodded in agreement, routinely performing duties, having not looked at her clearly false expression.

“I...” Siin's cross glare shot competitive daggers to her under fingers and hands holding his throbbing head down. “...am just...laying in wait…for the perfect time, wolf. You do know that, right?”

Something of a coy grin burst to Halycind's face. He smirked reading her expression as fancy and shook his head just slightly making the decision he was going to have that coy grin on his lips one day very soon.

“Good to see you girls up.” Percival said brightly.

“That's 'cause we actually slept.” Kodlaa chided.

Percival turned her smug face away and pushed her by the back of the head on toward the front of the ship.

The jostled lot stepped toward the gangboard of The Tawny Swan fixing jerkins and heavier armours for the walk. Siin caught glimpse of the rose he'd given stuffed into the inners of Halycind’s brigandine.

"You still have it?" He questioned with a relieved grin.

"It's pretty and I wanted to do something with it." She was feigning disinterest but he smiled all the same as she walked on passed him. He’d thought he’d lost his chance with her somewhat back at The Curtain but she seemed to have still been warm.

"Halycind." He whispered at her back.

She turned already in love with his voice again but her smile was mild. "Hm?"

"Oh, nothing I'm just flirting with the sound of your name."

She let out an exasperated sigh.

Percival ushered them on still. It had been too early for their knees and cramped bones to be expected to move with such immediacy. Both Percival and Veygornne groaned as they prodded the young lot ahead.

Inside the choking fog now, Halycind looked along the side of The Tawny Swan’s hull and noticed what those lights had been and what that horrid sound of metal on metal on wood was. There were pitch an oil lanterns afixed to gigantic chains where the sides of the ship ran along. The chain metal tethers had been threaded through metal holds on the sides of the ship in order to keep them lined up with the landing the ship was to dock on. Barges also on tethers had towed the boat inland.

Looking out through the fog as it slowly moved about them, she saw more, many more of the same arms of light both spidering out into the clear sea and back toward the deepest fogs. It was an ingenious system to stave collisions but, again, she wondered why the trouble?

As they reached a band of criss-crossing lanterns, Halycind realized what she was actually looking at were the docks themselves; all alit with lantern glow. This system immediately and warmly reminded her of her birth home, Carabaan. The lake called Tearless, at the base of Q'erskha Heit and its tall mountain clefts, boasted many bridges like this network and lanterns along their lengths so those who walked her surface in the morning fogs could do so with assurance. She wondered if the network of bridges at Tearless Lake had been patterned after this brilliant make.

Many many horns blared as they signaled the approach of many more ships. The shores of Cloudsfall seemed much busier than what her own ports in Ashok’s Vrubaan were. As if some great migration to the clouded town had taken place, ships were guided in on tether after tether and docked all along the coastal network. She wondered how large this town was to fit so many ships and quarter so many travellers for she had the impression it had been a little town.

Percival stepped almost passed her toward where the gangplank was to be laid and told her of the sights she was viewing. Of the five of them, Halycind had been the least travelled and though she had seen some of the world, she had never seen the wonders of Buraamira's engineering first hand. He told her Cloudsfall was a feat of arithmetic; a boastful triumph in problem solving.

Many port towns had lofted piers and lighthouses that kept shipwrecks at safe bay, but Cloudsfall had tethers anchored by magecraft to underwater glyphs where barges guiding ships in could, with the ease and swiftness of import and export, dock without incident and embark without making plaint against the town. Many marinas had bridges and boat houses, but Cloudsfall had swiveling networks of bridges accommodating ships of all sizes and weights of cargo, even bridges that also acted as lofts to bring ships on to shore for repair. Other port towns, including Aoustueilless took inspiration from the research, findings, and developments that cropped up in this ‘little’ town. This was Cloudsfall, he had mentioned proudly, and she was Buraamira's.

Stepping from the gangboard, Halycind heard the solid creak of heavy wood underboot and saw torches on posts burst to light to mark their way along the bridges then fade again as they passed. This place was indeed about to offer a stunning new reality for her.