Girl wanders inside the Castle on the Rock. The Castle's lost its life. The noise, the colour, that crackle of beating heart; all of it gone, stripped out of the walls carved from the mountain's stone. Lonely stone rooms filled with stale, silent air. The colours drained away, leaving everything a dull, washed grey. There used to be court here. There used to be gusto. Now, all that's left is dusty memories, like a thin, dried-out eggshell. Well, there are still some things here. The Girl finds the court room, filled with long stone benches coming out of the floor, all circling the centre. She finds the room behind, the small, private library of the last judge. Most of the books are written in the curious pen that the spire picked up, all tall letters marked with hooks and spins, but she finds one book, the Folio of Skies, the one filled with the maps drawn of the spire, and all the maps that could be found in the shipwrecks over the years. All of the skies laid bare for her. It's a prize that lifts her higher than the highest cloud. She keeps looking. She finds the museum. Low in the Castle, the long rooms are filled with the day's light, filtered through the thickest mist the spire can manage. The Castle lives in perpetual twilight now, never more than a shadow of true light reaching the corners. And yet, in those long, dark rooms, she finds treasure. It's hanging by ropes from the ceiling, broken into bits and pieces, but it's still there. She lays eyes on the craft and freezes in her step. The Serena, the royal sloop of the Castle, as outfitted to fly as it could be back then. The sloop is held aloft in place for the day when the storms clears. Its silhouette burns into the Girl's mind. The sloop's name, Serena, echoes in your head. If she's getting off this rock, she knows it's on the Serena. But first, the spire's peak.
YOU ARE READING
A Simple Story
Fantasía~ A Skies of Fortuna Tale ~ "It's a simple enough story to start, and it starts like so many do. It starts with a storm." So begins the account of a lost girl exploring a dangerous, secret mountain in the sky. Shipwrecked and abandoned, she begins t...
