Surviving Arkadia

Moonstone was too much. Everywhere I looked I could see the impossible. There was just no way to process all of it and so I didn’t. I stopped trying to fight it and allowed my brain to retreat a bit. I let Jethro drag me around by the hand. Occasionally he pointed at something and I would say “Yes, of course,” and store the information away until I could deal with it later.

There were smaller glass Gondolas that moved between the floating domes. Because of course there were. What a perfectly normal thing for a city to have. How foolish of me not to have expected such a thing. We got on one that bore a sign saying Citadel for City Archive. The smaller Gondola had a door on each side and a lot more seats. It was half full of people when we got on. So many kinds of people. All kinds of ear shapes and skin and hair colours. I wasn’t the only beast kin and there was also a bird kin with a huge hooked beak and magnificent rainbow coloured plumage. I tried not to stare.

#

The City Archive seemed like a deeply unimpressive building by Moonstone’s, admittedly stellar, standards. It probably didn’t help that it was sandwiched between the grandeur of the Council Chambers and the restrained classical lines of the Central Library.

It did at least have a properly forbidding door. I was intimidated. However I was also in a hurry to get inside a building where I wouldn’t have to look at all the impossible sights of Moonstone for a while.

Once we’d passed through the dread portal we were in a tall, well-lit building. The floors were marble. There were shelves everywhere. The foyer had a small glass dome in the middle of the ceiling. It threw light onto the circular desk where a couple of extremely stern looking young women sat, pointedly not reading. They both had piles of books and papers in front of them that they were both ignoring in order to stare at Jethro and I.

“We have a book that we’re supposed to be delivering to someone,” said Jethro.

I realised that I had the diary. I pulled it out of my bag. “It’s the Rotveil Diary,” I said.

Before I could elaborate further one of the stern young women said, “Ah yes. We’ve been expecting you. Follow the signs for the Chief Archivist.” She pointed deeper into the building.

#

After a few wrong turns we eventually found a room that said it was the office of the Chief Archivist. The door was open but we knocked anyway and then obeyed the shouted instruction to come in. The office was huge and crowded with bookshelves. There was a desk, big and old and battered, but it was currently unoccupied. The voice had come from an alcove furnished with a low table and a selection of chairs.

One of the chairs was delicate and gilded and upholstered in green. The ornate frame of the chair was wrapped in metallic vines and leaves. In that chair sat the first person I’d seen with truly elfin features. She had the delicate build, the long face, the high cheekbones and of course the ears. Her long, dark hair was twisted and coiled up at the nape of her neck and held with long silver pins. She also had a commanding presence that reminded me of Agnes in spite of looking like someone that Agnes could break over her knee.

The whole effect of haughty elven grandeur was somewhat spoiled by the chunky drop earrings and the hand-knitted cardigan. It wasn’t a bad cardigan by any means. It had been knitted with great skill and patience. The detailed colour-work of the enormous strawberries was clearly the work of an elite hand-knitter. It’s just that it made her look like the host of a kids TV show where the rest of the cast were puppets, and not like someone who had the word ‘Chief’ in her job title.

The other occupied chair was a wingback armchair upholstered in deep green leather. The occupant was a Beast-kin man. He was a deep, inky black and, at first, I took him for Panther kin, but his bone structure was wrong and his ears too big. He looked more like a domestic cat in every way apart from his size. He was huge. Almost as big as Agnes, so over six feet tall. His scalp hair was long, like mine, though his mane was a mass of tightly coiled dreadlocks tied back in a ponytail.

He was the first person that I’d met in Arkadia that looked properly dapper. I’d met a few who were well dressed, or wore fine clothes, but none of them had been dapper. I don’t know how to explain the difference, I just know it when I see it. He wore a purple shirt, a lilac tie, a heavily textured dark grey waistcoat and matching grey trousers. He wore brogues on his feet with a spit shine you could use to signal rescue aircraft, should rescue aircraft be a thing in Arkadia. From the shape of the shoes it looked like he had regular human feet in them.

The cat man had a book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. By the look of it he’d been reading something out to the Elf woman, since she was sitting back in her seat with both hands on her cup of tea and he had tiny golden pince-nez perched on his nose. He was peering at us over the top of the lenses of those spectacles.

“Uh, hello?” I said, suddenly the most nervous I’d been since waking up in the woods, even more nervous than when I saw Murder Hobos sneaking up on my friend. “We’re here to deliver the Rotveil Diary.”

“Ah yes,” said the Elf woman, leaning forward in her seat and putting her cup of tea down. “Jethro and Petra? I had a letter from Agnes Adder-Brook about you.”

The cat man made a strange choking sound, as if some of his tea had gone down the wrong way. He coughed, as if trying to clear his throat.

“Yes, Amris?” said the woman.

“Petra?” he said. “Quite an unusual name.”

“It’s the feminine of Peter,” I said. “It means rock or stone.”

“I’m sure it does,” he said. He laid his book down, put his cup of tea back in its saucer and pulled out an electric blue silk handkerchief to wipe his face with.

The woman gave an irritated sigh. “I am Gertrude Robinsdottir,” she said, “I am the Chief Archivist. This is my friend, Amris Farrah, he’s a Senior Librarian at the Central Library, and apparently incapable of keeping his tea down today. You may give me the Diary. I will ensure that it is copied and disseminated.”

I gave her the diary and, without thinking, turned to go. I was just relieved to have completed my task.

“Don’t go yet Petra,” said the Chief Archivist. “You and I need to have a private word.”