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

Silanis' hair got caught under the shoulder strap of her bag as she turned to check the streets behind her. 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, 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. Silanis blinked as she knelt down to pick up the boxlike object, her silver eyes catching the green of her gloves as she did so.

The little box was small enough to fit in her pocket. As she examined it, she saw it was covered in intricate little engravings of vines with flowers. There was a seam running like jagged teeth all along the middle. For a moment she thought it could open, but after a few moments of trying, she gave up because her fingers started to hurt. There were three buttons on the top, and an inscription on the bottom, 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 as she turned she caught a glimpse of something lavender moving just out of her vision. 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; There were purples, oranges, pinks, and blues all mingling in the sky above her, and they all set a mood of intense elegance upon the façades of each and every building. This mood was most tangible among the quaint booths, tables, and small tents that made up the marketplace. The marketplace marked her being very close to home, and since whoever she saw had gone in the other direction and her home was now in sight (though still a ways off behind the booths and tables and such), Silanis slowed her pace a bit.

Clover Hill itself was a fair-sized town, in Minovalle, on the Gandran 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, through Gyhktus and D̀Airee. The sea in the West was about a week away, and the ocean in the East was roughly five weeks, through Sephirôt and Ytemo. Though in the months of shorter days it never got quite cold enough to snow, 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.

It seemed that Clover Hill had gotten quite warm over the centuries. Indeed; there was a sort of tropic in the ocean to the West, smaller than that of the Southeast, and everything was generally very warm on Gandra. Of course, Silanis had heard tales of snow falling in Clover Hill before 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 deserts. This was the Skydragora, and it connected to the Kadragora at the top of Nylia. There were two other deserts on that continent, the Wadragora and Fydragora in Eg Segycr. On her own continent, Gandra, there was the Mandragora, on the other side of Lake Xodaik in Meht ta Ehkma, of which a small river arose from under the ground about two miles East of Clover Hill. It spanned most of Meht ta Ehkma, parts of Sephirôt, and part of Ytemo. In Sephirôt there is a large forest that spilled into Minovalle. In that forest it always seemed to travelers that the further East you got, the safer the forest appeared to become. Hunters got less and less brave about Sephirôt Forest, and became less and less likely to even talk about it, let alone enter. Silanis, too, feared this forest, but there was always a mild fascination with stories like this, and a desire to explore and see for herself. Silanis guessed she was an adventurer at heart, but she would never get the chance to adventure with her parents pushing her to find a nice boy and settle down.

Most of the places Silanis had heard such wonderful and sometimes frightening stories about, she had never been to. As a child she had been to the Edelridge Mountains in Gyhktus, Gleneden in D'Airee, through the Ridgegate Mountains, Farmir in Ytemo, Lakshur in Meht ta Ehkma, and Meadowvale in Sephirôt. She'd learned how to speak Ehkman, Ytemese, Gyhktese, Sephiroan, D'Aireean, and Sardan, which was spoken among the many settlements of the Sarda Islands. Because a lot of the languages of the Gandran continent were evolved from the same mother tongue (though it is now largely out of use, let me tell you), Kyorian, it was quite easy for Silanis to become fluent in them. Other languages, like Nylian, Segycren, Hundrian, Dragoran, ByTalnan, or any of the Dnubylian languages throughout the Dnubylem Islands in the southeast, Silanis felt would be far harder for her to learn, especially now.

The languages she knew now, she'd learned because her father wanted her to take over the family shop when he passed on to the Great Hall of Rebirth, to await his new incarnation. Realistically, Silanis hoped that never happened. Mostly because she loved her father dearly, but also because she did not want to be a merchant - buying, selling, and trading for the rest of her existence. Not that she had ever really been sure what she wanted to do as an adult, now that she was getting close. When she was a child, she'd wanted with all of her heart to be an adventurer and discover the races in the legends and tales she'd been told when she'd gone traveling with her parents on business.

For several years she'd wanted nothing more than to be old enough to go out on her own and fight monsters and villains, rescue princesses, get saved by Elves, captured by Dwarves, and so on. Heck, she'd even wanted to slay dragons, and solve the Gods' riddles in order to gain their favors! Of course, that was all silly childhood dreaming, and now she didn't know what she wanted out of life. A brief sigh escaped her as she considered this on her way home. She wished she could be a child again, and dream those dreams in honesty...

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

Its time to open my wings and soar
Far and wide
Across the shore
Past the horizon
To the land of the sun
Over the wide and glorious sea.
Those beautiful waters
Deep and clear,
The water-world below me
Full of life and love
My shadow showing on the sea floor
As if I were only a few feet above.

Its time to rest
To float on them waters innocent and pure,
To drink of them to taste the truth
So sweet and warm,
So clear and real,
So beautiful it almost brings a tear.
So hard to believe
In its reality
Despite my presence in the purest of cure's
And despite my own eyes
And the absence of lies
I drink some more, and off again I take to soar.

To watch the mer-folk
A-hunting their game,
And lock eyes with the little Shepard
Her flock all a-swish,
To wish to be there below those waves,
Especially thinking back to that nightmareous cavern;
The islands before where the slaves were in trade;
The main-lands far back where the Telmari stayed…
Out on these waters one needs no food.
The sun shines much brighter, much closer,
The current runs faster,
There is no heading back, for those come by ship.

Further and further
The ocean turns silver,
To part the lilies a-grown on these waters
With a sword's flat edge,
Looks like carving a line right through a mine,
Looks like pushing your way through the molten metal.
Sooner still I think I shall reach
The final destination
The Lion's great beach,
With all that is and all that's been...
Everything you may
Imagine in between.

As I draw nearer I think I can see
It looks like the Lion in front of me stands,
It looks like the beaches stretch long ahead,
It looks like everyone I have ever met,
Like everyone I have never had
The pleasure to shake hands with
Stands a-waiting on those shores,
Where the Lion roars, where the Lion waits
Staring softly to my pretty face
Coming on fast as I race on
Coming on fast as I finally
Come home.