Everspring
[Ch 1] — Dreams of Fire

“Stay home tonight, why don’t you?” Pali said.

Sierra paused mid-step. Her mother’s back was to her. Her hair just starting to show silver strands. Sierra’s younger brothers, Aster and Sage, were tugging at her mother’s pants. They pleaded for a taste of the pleasantly pungent alcohol-soaked spicebread Pali was pulling out of a wooden case.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Sierra lied. “Not anywhere far,” she added. On top of her mother having an owl’s hearing, Pali could spot a lie like their orange cat could spot the grey blur of a skittering mouse.

“You’ll be busy at the inn the next few nights with another caravan in. I’ll be busy in the Schoolhouse prepping for fall. Heather needs help practicing her letters.” Pali hands off the loaf to Gramd, Sierra’s grandmother, who liked to be called that ever since Sierra, her first grandchild, called her that as a toddler.

Gramd hummed an old song from her father’s homeland. She shooed away the boys clamoring for the bread, and tied it with waxed paper and flax twine. The parcel was passed to Sierra’s cousin, Heather, a girl half her size and Red’s second born daughter. Heather, atop an old wooden stool salvaged from the town’s inn, placed the bread in a stack high in the pantry. She was older than Aster and Sage by two and four years, and was chuffed to have such a respected part in the kitchen’s work.

“I’ll just be a bit.” Sierra said, “I’ll be back before last light.”

Like many towns in the Greater Baysian Alliance, Sunside was connected to a pylon; a towering feat of post-Sunfall engineering crafted by Everspring University’s Students. Sunside had doubled in size since it was erected. That meant the finite power the pylon drew from the wind and sun needed to be rationed out. Last light came halfway between dusk and midnight. Each house in Sunside was then limited in their energy draw until dawn.

Sierra would have stayed that night, and she almost did. For years to come, Sierra would look back on that night and wonder about ways she might have been able to prevent what happened. She didn’t know that at the moment though, because this was all happening in a dream, and in this dream, she was reliving the last night she still had a family.

Most nights and most mornings, a thick fog rolled eastward from the ocean. That terrible night the skies were clear. A person could spot Cinis Stars tracing lines across the sky. Sierra would count them, when she could, wondering if the ancient relics entombed in orbit saw her too. She threw on her oilcloth cloak, a hand-me-down from Red, who lived in the attic with Heather after loosing his wife to illness.

Sierra loved each of her family members but occasionally needed respite from the lively chaos. With the another caravan rapidly filling town, the only truly quiet place nearby was in the cornfields that butted up to the inn where she worked. With dexterity and a little reckless enthusiasm, she would climb the city’s pylon there, the one that provided town mana through a thick copper cable. Climbing it was explicitly forbidden. There she could watch the stars, the ships coming and going, and the town buzzing with life.

“Cedric! Bring a sparker in?” Pali called out leaning past Sierra to stick her head out the now open kitchen door, which faced a large wooden shed that was her father’s workshop. The yell made Sierra’s ears ring.

“We’re out of matches?” Sierra’s father cried back a few moments later, his voice muffled by the closed door to his workshop.

“Aye.” Pali shouted back.

“Sierra!” Cedric opened the door with a shout, nearly concussing Sierra with it. “Sierra,” his volume adjusted accordingly. “You mother needs you to fetch some matches when you go to work tomorrow.” He notices her cloak. “Where are you off to?”

“Pylon. I’ll be back soon.” Sierra said, still barefoot. “I’ll get matches while I’m out. The shop’s open until last light.”

“Have you seen the hammock?” Cedric’s voice was scratchy, but soothing, unlike his lumbering heavy footsteps that sounded like a crashing bull. “I’ll sleep in the workshop tonight. Need to keep an eyes on the commission.”

And yes, Sierra had seen the hammock, it was still tied up under the pylon. She told her father as much, adding, “Can I see the piece yet?”

“Jameson says no. No peeking. Nobody. Very secret.” Cedric shrugged. “Not even the schematic. Special materials. Secret secret. Don’t stay out late, either way. Your mother can’t sleep if we’re not back home.”

“Even when I work?”

“Just don’t stay out too late or your mom won’t let me take you anywhere, and I need to get you out to Everspring before you fall for some sailor and, I don’t have many goals in life, but I don’t want my daughter with a sailor.”

The bell above the front gate dinged. “Oh, think that might be Jameson? He’s early.” Her father trooped off with excitement in his voice. “Payday. Grab the matches and hammock too,” he said with a wave as he walked away.

Sierra smiled.

Suddenly, she was elsewhere. Time speed by impossibly, her dream shifting somewhere new in the way only dreams could. A second ago she was home, watching her father trek between from the workshop door, through the front door, and up to the front gate. There he greeted a plain looking man in grey.

In a blink, Sierra was standing in a corn field, lost in the late-summer height of the stalks. The pylon above her, turning quietly in the cool late summer night. A new box of matches was in her messenger bag. All she could think was to keep the matches from igniting as heat of her burning home bore down on her; because that is the logic of dreams.

She fell to her knees to tear and her hair and the grass beneath her bleeding feet but the dream tumbled her somewhere new. She landed on the cold floor of the inn’s kitchen, her knees bruised and abraded by the rough wood. She looked down. Her apron was wet with old stew and her hands cracked from soapy water. It was winter in that moment.

She looked up. She was in rubble of the old garden shed, less than a week after the fire. By then her neighbors and family friends had helped clear the charred wood and all that remained was ash, dirt, and an empty lot where Sierra’s life should have been. Her bare hands dug down, uncovering a box buried a foot deep in a compartment her grandfather once used to store pickled eggs. Within, among empty jars, she found her father’s lockbox, untouched by the heat.

Thock! Thock!

Sierra bolted awake, her heart racing.

“Fuck. What?” She spun towards the noise, jamming an elbow into something sturdy and wooden and topping from her hammock. She could usually handle the dreams. The firefighters were kind, they assured her, they wouldn’t let her see the bodies. They lied, saying it would spare her nightmares.

“I said wake up!” A gruff voice huffed. His iron club cracked against the cart’s wall once more. “Sunrise is in three hours. We’re six from town. Last shift then we get paid and its off to the cafes.”

Sierra blinked hard and breathed deep. It was cold. It was night. It was almost exactly six months since the fire. Her wiry body was wedged in the back of a wooden cart after the rough awakening sent her tumbling. Her feet still hung in the hammock. Her green woolen blanket wrapped around her torso like a tattered dress.

It wasn’t only the dreams that rattled her. Over a millennium, the Cinis highways had been replaced, piece by piece with brick and stone and salvaged cement; worn down and paved over again and again. Last night’s stretch had been particularly rough. Sierra felt every bump and crevice tumble her between reality and the nightmares for hours; the same night, the same fields, the same bell at the gate, the same fire.

She untangled herself, and hefted her road-tired body onto the back step of the wagon, letting her feet drag on the dirt below. She blinked up at the sea of stars glowing under a new moon. Just like that night. Except, now she couldn’t see the Cinis Stars. The stories were right. Everspring, the glowing city, was too bright. They were a day out now and that fact helped her get her feet under her and bundle her space supplies. Her arms went up to shield her eyes from the firelight of the lantern that suddenly drowned it out.

“Earthmother bless me,” the lantern’s owner grumbled. “Wake up. Get up.”

“I’m am up.” Sierra said, swatting away the lantern. “I didn’t hear a call for alarm.”

“Oh,” the thick man cleverly retorted. “Well, you’re up on the sunrise shift at the rear, caravan master’s orders. I’m to wake you up.”

“Fuck. Right. I know.” Sierra pulls her cloak back over her and slumps against a barrel. Based on the smell in this one, either wet ash or sloshing piss.

“We’re getting close to the city.”

“Any sign of bandits?”

“Would have been an alarm. The damn city folk got magic but can’t feed everyone.” He huffed. “Ain’t that the way it is with some folks. And they say they can’t figure out why there’s a bandit problem.”
“If he wanted us to push through the night shouldn’t have skipped the last three inns.” Sierra rubs her face through her cloak in frustration. “I haven’t slept since sunrise yesterday.” She wasn’t sure it it was true. The past few hours had been delirious, at best. It felt true, though.

“None of us has.” The man huffed. “But getting there two days early means the master leaves two days early and that’s money, we know it. He knows it. You’re rear guard until we hit the city.”

Sierra considered the ramifications of punching the Caravan Master in the mouth. Despite having her mother’s temper, she was also part her father. “Give them respect,” he’d say. “Not too much, they’ll walk all over you. They like feeling big. You treat them right, they might treat you right too.” Sierra was more her mother than her father though, and the thought of bloodying the nose of the person responsible for their exhausting pace was enough to spark her to life. She slung her messenger bag over her shoulder and hopped out of the wagon. By then, the club-wielding guard was already two carts down, harassing others awake.

A brass hook on the back of the wagon held an electric lantern; a simple, smooth, brick-like device. It lit, but gave off a pale dim light instead of glowing bright, and rapidly dimmed in her hands. Of course, she thought, skipping inns meant no pylons. No pylons meant no recharging. She sighed. The caravan kept corn oil lanterns on each cart, as backup. Those were at the front, near the horses. She hung the electric lantern, hurried ahead, and pulled the corn-oil one off a hook. She flicked it to life with a sparker that also hung on the hook, careful to not spook the beasts of burden.

Patting off her cloak she pulls down her hood, revealing her the green eyes and brown hair she’d inherited from her mother’s side of the family, as well as her rounder eyes and sharper jaw; the more Baysian features of her face from her father’s side. The sass and snark was also from her father’s side. When he was still around, he was known for having the stubborn last word. That genetic stubborn gift wouldn’t yet let her admit he was gone, forever. She stood there, letting the carts roll by, a long winding snake of white and orange light leading towards the pale of Everspring.

Sierra let it meander forward. As the last cart in the caravan rolled past her, she nods to it’s driver. The young Elkrider woman, who responds by turning a cold shoulder and muttering something disparaging about Sierra’s being halfblooded Rhodian mutt.
“Ko’l’e ra’ra,“ Sierra grumbled, not bothering to keep up, wondering how people could even tell the difference between an Elkrider and Rhodian, without the former on their famous mounts. It wasn’t the first time she’d been called halfblooded, but she decided that she was too tired to worry about it. Tired of the caravan, tired of being hungry, tired of being covered in a layer of dust and, more than anything, tired of walking. A guard’s pay was split in three; up front, half way, and on safe arrival. She promised that she’d buy new boots when she got the final portion. The boots were the innkeeper’s, hand me downs and a generous gift, but had worn thin and blistered her feet terribly in the heat.

Her own boots burned in the fire. She didn’t need them that night. The tilled cool soil of the cornfield was soft and climbing the pylon was easier without shoes. A memory; the acrid smell of burning leather, of burning flesh, crashed against her heart like a charging ram. The wind left her chest. Her body withered, wrapping around itself as she tried to hold back desperate tears.

Not here. Not now. She promised herself. Everspring was close. She patted her pocket, where a thin rectangle pressed against her hip. Once she was there things would work out.

She told herself to breathe, to connect with her body and surroundings with each breath. Breath. Her shoulder bag. On her belt was one of her father’s first pieces, a hand me down like the boots. It didn’t have ammunition, sure, but few knew to check when on the wrong end of one. Everything was where it should be. Laying the small oil on the ground and turning a metal knob on its side, its little flame is dimmed as low as possible. With a long sigh, she stretched her back and gazes skyward. If there was nothing else good about the night, it was at least a new moon. Then she saw movement as her eyes adjusted, a tiny light zipping across the sky; a Cinis Star. She tracked it soaring past Atemnion’s Wing, the constellation named after a cursed warrior.

Snap.

Her hand is halfway to her weapon when the twig breaks. Hot breath blasts against her shoulder. She whips around, reaching for her father’s empty revolver. A forearm tightens around her neck, choking back her attempt call for an alarm. She vanishes from her lantern’s faint halo of light.

The caravan rolls away, unperturbed and ignorant. They would not find her missing until the Caravan’s bookkeeper would pocket her pay, passing the evidence of her existence off as someone else’s error in the caravan’s manifest.