SkyEarth (Reborn) Book 1: Stratos Rising

Chapter 3: A Dandelion in the Wind

     A week after the successful test flight had gone by and Shaun stopped coming to Windmill Hill early morning. The sunrise had since lost its vivid colors and it won't return till next year. So instead he spent the mornings painting it on a large canvas in his room.

     The painting's an exact replica of the late summer sunrise in Shaun's stylized Impressionist signature. The dark night colors indigo, blue, and purple and the bright morning colors orange, yellow, and gold provided a striking contrast. The pastel dawn colors lilac and peach provided a silver lining to the whole picture. They all blended in beautiful gradient harmony. Every brushstroke had been done with an expert hand. Painting's one of Shaun's many hobbies aside from playing the violin and flying, and since his mother possessed the key to his workshop, he can't get to the Peryton or his glider to fly.

     Later in the afternoon, Shaun decided to explore the town where people continued to decorate the streets. The annual Cesta de Veran festival is almost upon them. Walking along Wistoria Avenue, red-and-yellow flags and banners hung from flagpoles and walls of buildings. Tiny baskets of fruit and marzipan wrapped in colorful cellophane adorned the window boxes of homes. Larger ones sat beside doorsteps and displayed in shops and stalls. Aside from the colorful barrage of decorations, the avenue was also filled with noises, the casual chatters of people, the loud shouts of shopkeepers about their fine merchandise and wares, the gleeful laughter of small children playing, and the lively music coming from the Great Music Mountain at the small Modernisme part of Easthaven known as Cadafalch Place. Shaun decided to go there just to listen and enjoy the music.

     Cadafalch Place took up the northern part of town, a plaza filled with quaint looking buildings, mostly shop-houses that sell all kinds of curious stuff, small galleries and cafes; shady trees and lush gardens; and antique-looking lamp posts. Towers of church spires that looked like pearl-encrusted stalagmites clustered at one corner of the plaza.

     Those spires belonged to a church of white stone and marble with tall leaf-shaped stained glass windows, statues of doves perched along the eaves and niches, and a bell tower towering over the other lesser spires. With its organic and natural design, the Santa Lucille Church looked like it grew from the fertile soil of a garden of marble. Shaun had drawn a rough sketch of it a few years back.

     At the center of the plaza was the source of the music: The Great Music Mountain. Sitting atop a marble fountain, the Mountain was entirely made of bronze and silver by the late artist Bartomeu. A harmonious blend of Granazian steampunk and Agrotikan Modernisme aesthetic, the five-tiered mountain contained lots of tiny bronze automatons of ordinary people doing ordinary things like a man riding a bicycle with a big front wheel, children running and playing, a woman baker selling fresh breads among others. At the top tier were cute automaton figures of the seven deities of SkyEarth playing in a band with cute little musical instruments: Granos Wolf with a violin, Agricia Dove a harp, Lithursus Bear the drums, Solaris Clearwing a piano, Espadon Gryphon a bugle, Nyx Owl the glass harmonica, and Peryton Wing Stag the guitar.

     The music the playing was a song called Carousel of Dreams, a lively orchestra with the fun bounciness of carnival music and elegance of waltz music. A busker with a newsboy cap harmonized with the Mountain with his accordion. His accordion case was open with a few copper and nickel hoops of ringen. Shaun checked his pocket and found he had one silver ringen. He dropped the silver ring into the case and the busker nodded to him in gratitude as he played.

     Shaun sat on a nearby bench, watching the Great Music Mountain. A book in hand, he turned to a bookmarked page of the classic novel Mountain Whispers by Joanna Clearwater, a first-person telling of the life of a little girl who moved to a foster family after her parents died of a mysterious sickness and, while exploring the highlands, met a mysterious little boy who lived in a ruined church overgrown with flowers. Shaun's in a chapter where the girl had a nightmare about the boy in terrible danger and was about to wake up on the side of a road when a real girl with fair olive skin and wavy strawberry blond hair like liquid golden amber approached him. Shaun didn't see her until the girl cast a shadow over the page. He looked up to see who interrupted his reading and blushed. The shadow belonged to Persephone Ambrose.