***

Janurana gripped her parasol as if it were a weapon. She stared back through the impenetrable night of the Outside’s forest but saw only the still scorched and gnarled trees. All was silent. Reluctantly, she turned from the darkness and continued running towards the distant city.

That night’s deafening silence made all guards atop the Capital’s walls bristle. Both the ranks and the officer with them strained their leather-gloved hands on their bronze weapons. Rather than use the dice in their pockets, they scanned the ever-shifting silhouettes of the Outside.

Janurana broke free of the tree line and entered the field of stumps and saplings that extended to the city walls, dotted with raging bonfires. She collapsed onto one. Hyperventilating, she clasped at her chest, and tried to stand again, but it was no use. Her legs refused to move.

Suddenly, her back seized. Janurana whipped around. She dug her hand into the stump and scrambled to her feet as the faintest sliver of pale blue flickered far in the distance. She was exposed.

The guards couldn’t see her at all as she ran through the expanse, struggling to make out even the shaking outline of a tree beyond the bonfire’s light. They angled large reflective discs of polished bronze built behind the fires toward the base of the wall to illuminate its entrance. Despite the roar of the flames, they could tell how unnaturally quiet that night had become.

Janurana bolted through the no man’s land, effortlessly leaping over stumps and not making a single sound as she ran, until she crashed against the light’s edge. She staggered back and sent up a cloud of dust. Having barely caught her breath from hyperventilating, she struggled to breathe through the plume. When she spun around again, hands against the light as if it were a wall, the distant pale blue sliver had stopped. It shuttered in place, then slid from side to side.

Janurana watched, frozen. Even through her massive clump of wild black hair, Janurana saw another gleam of blue behind her. She spun and, rather than the same sliver of blue, she saw a glowing string of unfamiliar, angular runes carved along the wall’s length.

She checked the forest yet again, and the wisp was nowhere to be seen. Janurana wanted to collapse and finally take a breath. Instead, she tried to press through the light. However, the patched and sullied hem of her sari, ringed with ivory white accents, compressed against its edge. She recoiled, unable to enter the intangible threshold.

Tensing up and eyes wide, Janurana frantically looked up and down the wall for some gap in the fire’s protection. She saw none and checked along the top, spotting the guards.

A few of them had finally noticed Janurana and were struggling to make out whether she was a person or any other Outside creature kept at bay by the fire’s barrier. Others stared past her into the distance, having not heard Janurana approach at all.

“Hello?” Janurana squeaked. She could barely bring herself to be louder than a whisper and tightened her fingers further around her cream–colored parasol, slotting them deeper into their worn position on the handle.

The guards didn’t respond.

“Good evening?” She prepared herself and raised her wavering voice, “I shudder to think such great walls unguarded!”

She jumped at her own volume as it echoed and shattered the still of the night. An arrow thunked into the ground at her feet.

“R-reveal your name, weapon, and state your business!” The gate captain stuttered, but his voice remained powerful. He wore a breastplate of solid bronze that glowed in the firelight.

“And direct your escort to show themselves!” added another guard who notched another arrow, having loosed toward the sudden sound. Her only real armor was her bronze helm.

“I’m quite alone, sir and madam!” Janurana called up.

The guards strained to make out Janurana since she stood beyond the periphery. She looked and sounded like a young adult with a full, bottom–heavy shape, but chubby cheeks and round, innocent–looking eyes that darted back and forth. Though she appeared no more than twenty, she was unshaken by the guard’s arrows and bowed steadily with her hands together, her wild black hair draping over her shoulders, contrasting her complexion that was much lighter than theirs. Janurana carried herself as a noble, even held a parasol, but she was alone, and dirty.

The captain scanned the sea of stumps for any atypical movement, but not a single Chohtah imp or mangy wolf scraped at the light’s boundary. However, further in the distance, past the tree line was an unearthly, silvery blue glimmer. It was too far to look like anything more than that.

Other than Janurana, the night was silent and the guards exchanged looks of confusion and worry. The armored captain slid his bow over his shoulder and unfurled a rope ladder, cautiously and methodically descending. He passed in front of the great cedar gate with bronze barring near every line of the wood’s grain.

“Good evening, honored guardsmen. I hope your night has been safe.” Janurana bowed once more as the captain hopped from the ladder, kicking up a puff of ashy dust.

“Thank you.” He dropped to a bow, putting his fists together. Her accent was off putting to him. It wasn’t anything he’d heard but wasn’t so peculiar to be fully foreign. He cleared his throat and got into the character of his work. “You have a seal?”

“Of course, sir!” Janurana forced a giggle, and the guard cocked his brow. She produced her clay seal, weathered and chipped, from a pocket inside her sari. It was no larger than her palm.

Though her expression remained chipper, Janurana refused to look at it, staring at the captain instead. His thickly gloved hand clipped off a corner of the worn tablet when he took it. She grimaced at the sound. Nevertheless, she kept her gaze locked on him.

The more he examined it, the more the seal looked like that of a governor’s house – not a mere trader. He curled his lips in confusion. It bore a bull–horned woman sitting between a tiger, a turtle, an elephant, and a rhino. Above it, he found an unfamiliar name, ‘Malihabar’. Next to it, scrawled close to the elephant was ‘Janurana’. It was rough, and not just because of its weathered letters. As far as the captain could tell, the first name was the family name.

“It’s just you then?” he asked, looking behind her.

Janurana shot her head around then nodded. “Yes,” she said smiling, her tone hardened.

“Uh huh. You weren’t ambushed?” He waved the tablet about. “Split up? Anything?”

“As I said, it’s just me, sir,” she said, her smile waning further.

She suddenly snatched for the tablet fast enough to surprise the captain. His warrior instincts were honed and he jumped back, almost dropping the seal. He reached for the ax on his belt loop, a sharpened bar of bronze on a carved handle as his comrades on the wall focused their arrows or wound up their slings, but the captain paused.

Janurana had ran into the wall of light only to crash against it and fall into the dirt again. She scrambled back, still on the ground, and frantically checked every tree for any movement.

The captain did a single panning scan and saw nothing. He offered her a hand. “Not used to the silence?”

“Uhm, yes—Well, I mean, no, it’s that I thought.” Janurana took his hand. She dusted off her sari, still keeping an eye on the forest. “I thought I saw something.”

“Uh huh. Weird how quiet it is tonight. Are you foreign?” He motioned to her face.

“Not,” Janurana hesitated. “Entirely.” She twitched impatiently.

The captain curled his lips again. He further examined Janurana’s sari. It was covered in repairs by less than skilled hands but was clearly not common, being made entirely of thick jamawar fabric. It was colored light cream with deep brown stripes along its length, or at least would have been where it wasn’t faded or tarnished. Her parasol was made of the same material and colored the same, but the rings on the tip of each rib were lacking the adornments every other parasol had. Rough patches of haphazard fabric pulled together the hewn pieces of her outfit, including one particularly heavy looking patch on her hip which bore thick seams from repeated sewings. The sari hung on her heavily, pooling around her boots. Given the mud and wear on her hem, it was clear she wasn’t recently lost in the Outside. The dry season was ending, so mud was a rare commodity. Rather than being covered in dehydrated flakes of dirt that were easily beaten off, she looked as if she had headbutted multiple monsoons without a change of clothes.

“Alright then.” He paused. “I suppose this is all in order…” Stepping back through the light as he spoke.

When he returned to the top of the wall, he was bombarded with questions by the female guard. The captain confirmed to her and the others that Janurana was alone, did seem foreign, but her seal was valid.

The bars rumbled as the mechanisms churned from inside. They retracted and lifted respectively, grinding the gate open, and spattered up reddish–brown dust to further sully Janurana’s sari. The guards bid her entry.

With a massive sigh, she stepped forward through the light’s threshold. It took effort, but only subtly so. With a bit of exertion, she managed to push through the light the same way one might push through a crowd. When she had finished, Janurana merrily strolled through the gate and marveled at the sky above. The heavy cloud cover of that night was slightly thinned over the city, revealing the violet moon that commanded the majority of the sky. It was blanketed in its swirling storms as if it were simply a massive cloud itself.

She watched the gate closing behind her, relieved that anything on the other side would need time to burst through.

The guards on the wall didn’t put as much faith in their defenses. A few more had come to the fire above the gate, including another captain in bronze scales. They all drew their bows, loaded their slings, or clenched the handles on the gleaming disk to direct the fire’s light further out, prepared for the wolves and Chohtah imps.

But none appeared. Not even a scrape on the light’s edge broke the heavy silence settling on the night once more as the last bar locked into place. The guards loosened their grips. They stood smothered by the quiet.

“Sir.” The female guard turned to the captain who’d met with Janurana. “Did you hear her move down there?”

The captain didn’t respond.

“Alright, was I seeing things or did she have trouble passing the boundary?” Asked another guard, stepping down from the fire.

The scale armored captain stepped closer to his counterpart. “I thought you said it was a moon or something before the Gwomon got here,” he whispered.

The one who greeted Janurana clenched and unclenched his fingers as he scanned the tree line once more. Again, he spotted the same silvery blue movement. It almost looked like a woman’s figure, not quite visible and circling the path Janurana had taken. It slid about, as if pacing. The captain peered over the wall, watching the runes at its base gently glow brighter as the figure approached and retreated.

With a worried grimace, he raced away to report what he had seen.

As he did, Janurana continued to stare at the gate after it closed, watching the dust of the Outside mix with that of the city streets in a gentle swirl. A few of the unseen mechanisms clanged within the wall itself and atop the gate as they settled back into place with bars and chains behind the doors secure. She gripped her parasol again. Despite the imposing power of the walls, she felt her safety subsiding, expecting the pale blue sliver to be behind her again. But instead, she was greeted by the docile cacophony of the city’s ambiance. From the roof of a nearby house a husband snored a bit too loudly, eliciting a tired argument from his wife. A bull snorted down the road and rattled in its stocks. A brick maker working through the night carefully tended his kiln’s fire. Janurana even heard a bird being shooed off the wall and one guard chastising his comrade for not skewering it to use its feathers for more arrows.

Her fingers fully relaxed from the parasol and again, she smiled contently, sighing in relief.

“Ma’am,” called a tax collector jogging towards Janurana from a small hut by the wall. She spun to face him like he was a lion who had just leapt from the bushes, and he stepped back. “Ah, oh, no. I need your… Taxes…” he trailed off, seeing her parasol, skin, and sari, then put his hands together and prostrated before her. “Oh! Oh! My apologies, my gwomoni. My sincerest. Welcome to the Capital of Daksin and the entire southern plateau! Of course, your entrance taxes are waived. The Keep is at the city’s center. Any main way street should lead you to it. Do you require an escort?” He looked up from the dirt and peeked past her as if an armed guard were hidden behind her hair.

“No!” Janurana yelped. She had tensed up again at the word gwomoni. She tried to calm her tone. “No. No. No, thank you though. I can easily navigate a city alone.”

The tax collector rose awkwardly. “I suppose you’re right. Your journey must have been trying. The Maharaj will certainly cater to your every need at the Keep. Once again, any major street should lead you there soon enough. I think you’ll find our city well within your expectations,” he finished proudly.

Curtly, Janurana bowed, put her parasol over her shoulder as if nothing was wrong, and fled, leaving the tax collector perplexed.

She heard him return to his hut, and then she leapt behind the nearest house, putting it between her and the wall. Her heart pounded at the word still, “gwomoni” rattling through her bones.

‘Of course. Out of the dirt and into their fangs…’ she thought.

Janurana grew angry, gripping her parasol so tight it strained under her fingers, creaking like an animal yelping in pain. When it did, she brought it to her cheek and stroked it like a crying child. She reviewed the situation again with a calming sigh.

‘The guards didn’t recognize me. That man did mention the Maharaj. I doubt the ruler of the whole plateau would be one of them. Maybe she has a treaty with them? No. They can’t be that powerful yet.’

She had to stop herself before she went too far down that path of anxiety.

‘That is what a Maharaj is, yes?’

Janurana tapped her head, trying to remember, but she only felt her hair padding the knock. She smoothed the front of her sari, grimacing as she touched the largest patch on her hips.

‘Somewhere without nobles. Common folk. Information is the priority.’

Janurana brought her parasol up to her cheek again and caressed it to apologize. She slipped out into the street, staying close to the edge as if it gave her cover. The sights and smells of the city bombarded her as the sounds did before. Mudbrick, single-story buildings lined the streets, and each had unique character. Many were painted conservatively with small but telling splashes of color. Walls were carved with names of who owned what or general graffiti. Some had been scratched out, not having been left by the owners. Others had a canopy over their cloth covered door. Janurana bent down, picking up a small wooden elephant with one tusk missing. The child who owned it was too rough with their toys. The bricks of the buildings paved the roads as well, with the center bisected by a covered causeway. She enjoyed the scent of the bonfires being carried along the breeze and the remnants of what every nearby house had made for dinner. She caught the taste of cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, and other spices she had forgotten or never smelled. Each blew a wave of calm through her, as if they were a physical comfort. After so long among the shrubs and dirt of the plateau, having anything pleasant in the air was paradise to Janurana. Even the acrid hints of burned meat or lentils from someone’s failed attempt at cooking added to her olfactory comfort.

The bull in the distance snorted again, drawing her attention. Janurana focused to hear multiple voices coming from the same direction, muted from being indoors. There were a few other sources in the distance, but one was the loudest and closest. She took a step towards it, realized she would cross the street, and froze.

“No,” she said to herself. “They have night guards out now. So the others would be asleep. It’s not a barracks.”

Rationalizing that it had to be common people, Janurana took another step forward, looked to the gate to see no one was watching her, then to the other end of the street. In the distance, along the arrow straight main way and past the multiple storied upper class houses further along, was the city’s central hill. It was topped by a smaller and just as imposing wall as the one she passed through. Even below the violet moon, it still gleamed a wondrous white, obscuring the Keep behind it with only a few of its towers fully visible. The entire city rose towards the hill, hiding yet more of it. Janurana hurried over the causeway and slipped between the tightly packed houses on the other side of the street. The neatly paved main street of the city gave way to a cobbled mess of alleys and minor roads, all dusty. Deep inside, past countless houses and the occasional community garden, Janurana found the source of the voices at the edge of the city walls.