Midwinter

The High Priest: That follows from your previous assertion.

Alpaurle: I have not asserted anything, but I think I understand your meaning. Will you not also say that what is good and what is holy are the same?

The High Priest: I had not thought of it, but it seems obvious as well, for that which is holy must always be good.

Alpaurle: And do we not sanctify what is holy?

The High Priest: Of course.

Alpaurle: So, by your reasoning, one can do nothing else than sanctify the Gifts! As you have said, that which comes from Aba must only be good, and therefore holy, and therefore sanctified.

The High Priest: You have deceived me again!

Alpaurle: Certainly it cannot be so, since you have made the assertions yourself. I merely asked questions of you…

Alpaurle

from Conversations with the High Priest of Ulet, Conversation XXI

Edited by Feven IV of the City Emerald

sylvan

Sylvan is the only city in all of the Seelie Kingdom that remains green in Midwinter. Beneath the snow, their slow motions hampered by hanging threads of ice, the grass continues to grow and the trees retain their leaves throughout that dark season. In rooftop gardens and tiny courtyards, delicate flowers of jasmine and honeysuckle exhale their fragile breath into the gauzy morning air. Hot springs lace the air with steam; mist roils in the city streets, warring with the cold, bathing the cobblestones and lampposts in milky white.

In Sylvan, only the Temple Aba-e stands above the mist. From its foundation on the Mount of Oak and Thorn, the grand edifice rises in three massive stone tiers. The bottom tier covers the entire mountaintop, its sides blackened by thousands of years of dirt and grime, the carts and hovels of the peasantry pressed against it. Its face is dappled with thousands of white dots, the prayers of commoners written for a few coppers by bored scribes, folded and pressed into cracks in the stone. The second tier is open to the air, composed only of columns and archways of stone, massive clear glass windows. A bridge leads from the Common Road to a gallery on this tier, where Fae from every station come and stand in the shade during hot summer days, gazing into their reflections in the dim silent pools, contemplating the statuary crafted by innumerable generations of Arcadian coenobites.

The third tier, that one is a mystery. Permanently shrouded in clouds, its shape is difficult to discern. Sometimes, at odd points during the day, a laboring farmer or strolling alderman will look up and see the clouds pierced by a shaft of golden light and, for an instant, he will see the Temple Aba-e in its entirety. But those moments are rare and unpredictable and have yet to yield a reliable account of the complete structure.

The rest of Sylvan bends toward the temple like flowers toward the sunlight. The Mountain of Oak and Thorn describes the city's western boundary, beyond which are the barren wastes where nothing survives. Sylvan nestles in a valley at the base of the mountain, her stained-glass spires and dizzying cobblestone streets winding up the hillside toward the temple. The garden villas and castles of the nobility line the rim of the valley's bowl, and the accommodations descend in rank proportional to their altitude. At the valley's floor, where the fog is thickest, the lowborn and outcast of Fae society mix in poverty and anonymity. The streets are narrow there, and the inns and bordellos display no signs or markings of any kind. From the City Center it is a long way to the silver-shrouded peak of Oak and Thorn, though they reside in the same city, and the one is but a few hours walk from the other.

On Peacock Lane, in the heart of the City Center, Fourth Stag dawned beneath a gray shroud that hid the temple from view. Evelyn Yeoh watched the dim smudge of sun climb above her back courtyard, drinking coffee while the children clambered out of bed upstairs. Morning was her only quiet time. The coffee, black and heavily sugared, was one of the few indulgences she allowed herself, and she exacted the maximum enjoyment possible from it.

She'd nearly finished her coffee when she heard a light tapping at the door. She approached the front room warily, longing for a world with door chains.

"Who is it?" she said.

"Brian Satterly," said a familiar voice from the other side of the door. "Is that you, Evelyn?"

Evelyn pulled the door wide and rushed to embrace him. She pulled back, holding his hands and looked at him. Could this be the same Brian Satterly that she'd sent from the real world just two years ago? He was tanned and thin, his hair worn long in the Fae fashion, dressed in the winter clothes of an Eastern merchant. You'd have to look twice at him to tell he was a human.

"Oh God, Brian," she said, hugging him close, "I didn't think I'd ever see you again! When they took you, I was horrified. But there was nothing I could do. You must understand…"