Tatehan leaned back in the library's solitary chair, letting the details of Loenitt settle in his mind. His imagination began to drift, sketching the city vividly in his mind.
He imagined narrow, winding streets carved between soaring stone structures that looked less built and more risen, like the fossilized spines of ancient beasts. He imagined the citizens. He pictured market stalls set up in plazas where the ground itself formed the tables, and children playing on steps that grew seamlessly out of the floor.
His thoughts then turned to the founder herself. Kryana Smith. A widow's daughter, born from grief and survival. What had she looked like, shaping the first walls with nothing but her will and the trembling ground? He could almost see her: not as some polished statue in a city square, but as a young woman with dirt under her nails and a fierce, lonely light in her eyes, pulling a home from the red dust for people who had none.
