• Silanis quietly and thoughtfully traversed the streets of her hometown, Clover Hill. The young woman was coming from her friend Kaiana’s apartment in one of the ebendsahdc buildings - large, multi-level abodes, which housed many families. These were scattered through normal houses, with a few things like two schools, a market place, and city hall. Her house was in the Northeast end of town, and Kaiana’s building was just in the middle. She was in the market place, about ten minutes from her own house, which was right on the outskirts of the market place and had a storefront attached to it. The two girls had been working on a dress for Kaiana, a long gown for her to wear to her twentieth birthday dinner - an event to mark her full adulthood. She herself was only eighteen, still a few years off from such an event, though she longed for it. It was coming along nicely, but Silanis had to be home around sunset, and it was fast approaching.

    Shifting her bag from one shoulder to the other, her long brown hair getting caught under it, Silanis looked behind herself. Fixing her hair, she felt as though she was being followed, but there was no one else around that she could see. Just the same, she started to walk a little faster. The townspeople she trusted, she had known them all her life, but if there was someone from out of town around, she didn’t want to take a chance in them being trustworthy. As she rounded a corner, the toe of her boot struck a small metal object. Blinking to clear her vision just a little, she knelt down to pick up the box-like object to study it, her silver eyes catching the green of her gloves as she did so.

    It was small enough she could fit it in her pocket and covered in intricate engravings of vines and flowers, a seam running through the middle as though it could open. Her fingers became just a little sore as she tried, and eventually she gave up. There were three buttons on the bottom, and an inscription on the top, but she wasn’t about to try to figure out what for while she was still out on the street. Something fell behind her, and she turned to catch a glimpse of something lavender zooming out of sight. Rather than follow it, Silanis took this opportunity to run quickly in the direction of her own home, slipping the small, ornate box into her bag as she did so.

    Even in her rush, she was able to note the beauty of the town at sunset; the purples, oranges, pinks, and blues all mingling and setting a mood of intense elegance upon the façade’s of each and every building. Especially among the quaint booths, tables, and small tents; this made up the market place, and marked her being very close to home.

    Clover Hill itself was a fair-sized town, on the Gandaran continent. It was roughly one day on horseback from the ocean in the North, and just around eight weeks from the sea in the South. The sea in the West was about two weeks away, and the ocean in the East was roughly five. This meant that Silanis was at the top of the continent, and in the months of shorter days it never got quite cold enough to snow, though sometimes Silanis wished it would; she’d heard stories that it had done so in the past, and longed to see the snow, rather than just hear stories of it. Clover Hill, it seemed, had gotten quite warm; indeed there was a sort of tropics in the ocean to the West, smaller than that of the Southeast, and everything was generally very warm on Gandara. Of course, Silanis had heard tell that it snowed in the South, but she had also heard that on the opposite side of the world the snow was heavy in the North.

    Silanis had heard fantastical stories of Queen Hegunini of the Royale Mega-City, near the ByTalna cliffs of Hundr Buma to the East, who ruled a kingdom of snow. It was said that only the very bottom of her continent, near the bridge that connected Hundr Buma to Nylia below, was desert. This was the Skydragora, and it connected to the Kadragora at the top of Nylia. There were two other deserts on Nylia, the Wadragora, and Fydragora. On her own continent, Gandara, there was the Mandragora, on the other side of Lake Xodaik, of which a small river arose from under the ground about two miles East of Clover Hill, near the edge of the Sephirôt forest. In that forest, the further East you got, the safer it became. It seemed there were creatures that stuck to the Western half of the forest, and even the hunters dared not go in except in great numbers with greater weaponry.

    Finally Silanis came to her own house, making her way to the side door rather than going through the storefront that made up half their house. Letting her parents know she was home, Silanis entered her room and sank quietly into her bed, kicking off her boots so she could relax.