34th of Ashan 721 Taleteller... of the Future??
Calendar Date
The Pilgrims Ascent has a strange chap sitting on the steps. Wearing strange clothes the man stops passers-by apparently randomly and tells them stories. These stories are of time past - things that he couldn't possibly know - and then of things to come.
Strifa was her usual chatty self on the way up to the Glass Quarter, where they were set to go. It took some time, but the young nurse student began acclimating to the style of spring dresses. She'd even begun to revel in it, wearing lower necklines and short-sleeved chemises beneath blue wool overdress and corset. Diana was happy her friend was getting used to the place.
Strifa kept chattering about little nothings, pointing out this person or that cart of goods and then cooing at the neighborhood stray animals. Diana just smiled, letting her chat away, filling the air with her background noise, lest Diana's thoughts be drawn back to those troublesome memories that couldn't belong to her. Of late they'd grown more frequent, terrors remembered upon waking in the night. Half-understood impressions of a time centuries ago, which was... insane. Nobody lived that long.
For DIana, she wore over a long-sleeved linen chemise, a thick and fitted gown of richly colored brown wool, slashed with splashes of orange color. Fitting the dress to her form, a leather corset wrapped around her midsection, while on her feet she wore thigh-high, soft calfskin boots. She didn't bother with jewelry that day. She had nobody she wanted to impress.
They had climbed all the way from the Earth Quarter, but must have gone too far for now the saw the Cathedral, and the places of the Lightning Knights and Priestesses. Diana turned to Strifa, "We've gone too far... We should turn around. I don't even know if they have shops in the Sky Quarter."
"Oh! Look at that building, it's taller than the any part of Viden's fortress!" Strifa chattered excitedly, pulling at Diana's arm like she were a stubborn beast of burden. "C'mon, let's see if the let people inside. It must be incredible in there!"
Diana shook her head, she didn't have a good feeling about entering it. She began drawing back from Strifa, wrestling herself out of the woman's grip and turning around, back to PIlgrim's Ascent. To her surprise, she heard a voice calling her. The voice hit her ears fully, and there was something familiar about it. She turned, to see an Eidisi man, dressed outrageously. Like some jester, or else as if he were from a foreign land. "Come, Daughter of longing and knowledge. Come and learn the secrets the Great Zarmanil has to tell!"
Diana eyed him skeptically, but it probably beat getting dragged to the Cathedral. She turned to Strifa, and nodded, "You go on and see the Temple. I'll be right here when you come back."
"You sure?" Strifa's eyebrows lifted, as she crossed her arms, disappointed to lose a follower.
"Yes." Diana managed a weak smile, "It's not everyday you mee the Great Zarmanil, after all."
Strifa grumbled, muttering, "Not everyday I get dragged into some safehouse to get murdered by a demented clown, but hey." Strifa sighed, and then started away, toward the Cathedral.
