The Greatest Discovery

Stone-hearted

The morning of the meeting with the city ardents, Juliyah woke up with the first ray of sunlight. She always did, the last few years. She could feel the cells in her body opening up to the warmth, like the dark petals of the truthberry plant perched on a tall stack of books nearby. The gentle flower looked out of place in the cold stone room of blue strata and unnatural silence. You and I both will have to grow some hard bark to adapt here, she thought to the little plant.

The city lord's mansion was crawling with people. They had to repurpose every corner in the large castle-like building to accommodate so many people but reserved an entire wing for her and her kind. The fact that people would rather sleep on top of each other than sharing a room with someone like her was regrettable but, in current circumstances, convenient. She decided to focus on that second part.

There was no door in her room, just a long white sheet that she had hung in the doorway to play the role of one. The fabric granted some privacy but it did little to muffle the sounds of the industrious shuffling in the corridors. People were cleaning, getting water from the well or cooking the morning meal. Juliyah felt a pang of nostalgia but shooed it away like an irksome cremling. No use ruminating. Those leaves have fallen, withered, and scattered in the winds long ago.

She went through a series of morning stretches, got dressed and made her way down to one of the balconies a level below her bedroom window. The center of the terrace was covered with a layer of soil that the gardeners had spread an evening before. Juliyah slipped out of her shoes and stepped barefoot on the soft fragrant ground. Oh, how she loved that smell! Craved it the same way others enjoyed the smell of freshly baked bread or a sizzling steak. Perhaps even more so, considering how special a treat good soil was: emerald soulcasters had to regularly order it from Shinovar and make sure it contained all the necessary salts.

Juliyah stood on the terrace looking at the shambles of the city, which looked wistfully poetic in the mornings but painfully sad otherwise, until she felt that she got just enough nutrients and sunlight to get her through the day. It was hard to tell how long the ardents' meeting would take, so she had to soulcast her daily portion of grain and register it with the new quartermaster beforehand. She wiggled her toes in the soil for the last time, walked back inside, and joined her fellows in the harvest room.

It was an unusual sight. The large elongated space was filled with clay, crem and sand collected and left here overnight. To her surprise, a good portion of it was already transformed into tallew grain. It seemed that she was not the only one who had started the day early.

"Good morning, Aillia," Juliyah said to the piles of dirt. "I didn't realize you are on duty today. Should I help you with tallew or start the lavis rations?"

The sound of heavy footsteps followed and a short woman with curly hair emerged from behind one of the piles. Aillia did not look like other emerald soulcasters. Like Juliyah's, her hair was streaked with dark green vines and an occasional leaf. Her eyes were also bright green but had a thick gray ring at the edges of the irises. She was one of the rare soulcaters who could master two essences to the necessary degree of control. Her skill with topaz soulcasting added heavy solidity to her tiny figure. Stone bones decreased one's agility, but certainly granted a significant presence in a room.

Aillia glanced over the raw material in the chamber and pointed to a mound of big rocks by the door, "Those would do best for lavis, and I think there are just enough to fulfill the quartermaster's request. Simin and I would take care of the tallew today".

"I can soulcast gravel to lavis as well," Juliyah said, "It takes a little more stormlight but I think lavis is worth the effort. People enjoy it so much more".