Acropolis

Lost

The same light from the passageway the other side of Acropolis bounded her in blinding bliss. The air was not darker, but cooler. Circinus glided bravely into the light. Medora was right under their nose, the next stop on the journey, but the unicorn city had returned sooner. Aside from the marketplaces, the sprawl opened into wide boulevards of stone mosaic, shining whiter than Acropolis, and inlaid with lavender alabaster. The buildings were crowned with decals of gold. The streets dipped into a river wide enough to breach the sea.

That was the moment Acacia and Andelko looked up to the sky. The city was not underground; the man-made cavern entrance was. The city revealed itself in openness. Even further away were the swirling cone spires of the main fortresses. Even wider and broader it was than Agora-atlantisia.

Mandolin and tamburitza players huddled on the street corners. Andelko went up to one of the mandolin players and asked for an armory shop and an exit. The man pointed to the other side of the spires supposing it was close to a shop. Acacia hoped anyone knew the exit from the city closest to Medora.

The hustle of the streets silenced her after she had another vivid vision. Jan's father spoke with velvet tunes yet irrepressible murmurs. "Jason-son, never let the fruit fall into any other hands. It is our world." Jason hesitated, "Father, I can't go after it. It doesn't even belong to Daphne—belongs more to you than me." His father shared a sharp appeal in his eyes, intensified by age. Jason's visage yet was full of innocence while his eyes opened, honest and wise. His dad looked like he needed to fling a dagger at him but instead dispensed his son a key. The exact copy Acacia carried from the passageway.

This time Acacia kept her divinities to herself, waiting for the entire picture. Her closest priority was finding costumes for the ball. Much inheritance waited for her behind doors of the passage, but it felt best to ration for fear it wasn't her possession.

A squabble broke their attention. Two merchants accused each other of letting go of a thief.

"It wasn't I, it was Milko—that rapscallion boy, always beleaguering me. You let him go." Acacia tried best to tune in, but the conversation escalated with hurry.

"You, always beleaguering me—make up for my loss or I'll recompense all for the war." The younger merchant swiped his sword from the instigator's sheath. Perhaps the younger merchant was his slave or apprentice.

"It was you, boy, and believing you; and it was the unicorns that helped do it!" The accent of unicorns resounded unmistakably with tilting rhythms in his voice, and unmistakably mixed with the accent of Chiron's tribe. Distant cries of other unicorns were heard.

"The unicorns aren't in need of my help for their deeds." The older merchant practiced the same slide of hands, removing without permission the large scimitar from the sheath of his junior. As he grabbed it, the older merchant tried to slice at his wrist, and as he hopped away, his head, but the younger man hopped over the sword in a lithe movement, so the blade caught earth. The younger merchant's features grew fierce and mischievous. Then his face transformed into a less lined and looser form. Years of grudges and grief dissolved from him.

His heart changed as instantaneously as his face. It shrunk to the size of a boy's. His clothes even transformed from the elegance of the Turkish silk robes to the clogs, quilted red overalls, and scarves of a folk dancer complete with a fez. The moment he revealed his boyish demeanor, he ran off, pushing away the crowds with his spectacle. His clogs clacked on the pavement.

"Milko! You again—I will curse you back into the elements of which you're born! Baptism by death, m'boy."

Perhaps he was a spirit or an age-shifting shape-shifter.