Paved with Chalk and Carbon

There was a rhythm to the city. And if you’d lived there your whole life, it was a rhythm that got written up into your bones. The days would begin with a soft light and a gentle rumbling, the skies would have just a kiss of gold against the black, as the furnaces were stoked into life; the streets would join in with the rumbling as the townsfolk flowed out onto the cobbles and made their way into work. And the city rocked, it swayed with the river currents, and the low growl of furnaces, and the steady, small thunder of hammers, the gentle roar of the waterfall over the mill-wheels. Voices joined the sounds; and the bleating and squawking and hissing and squeaking of animals brought to market.

The rhythm would slow again as the sun set, as the factories closed, and the stream of workers returning home from jobs and taverns finally died down. The mill was always there though, always humming and softly thundering, the wheels turning under the power of the water, the little hammers as often as not still going as the water fed iron and grain and wool through the great edifice well into the night – and with no-one awake to turn them aside the hammers worked the air, and the bare stone, even after their job was done.

The night was never totally still. Never totally quiet.

And Melidula had been born here – in grand, theatrical, famous and infamous Adrios. Those sound were tattooed onto her bones. She was a living part of this great beast.

And she didn’t mind.

Or at least she thought she didn’t mind. Her family were gone: mother and father to a grave that was early, but not so very early for one who lived and worked and was amongst the poor. Both of them having lived long enough that she had known them and had memories to hold. Her brother, much older, having left the city many years ago for the army. Meli knew it for the best, since there was an itching in his soul that drove him to anger so often; this military life might be the only way to channel and soothe it. Or so she hoped, having not seen nor heard from him in over ten years.

But she had her work in the mill, she had friends who talked and drank with her. Who’d sing into the evening and they’d all walk home together, joined in dance and song.

She would marry one day. Bear a child or two of her own. Teach them and watch them go out to live the same life she had.

The rhythm. The cycle. On and on and on.

She’d never thought more about the world than that.

Except that such more existed. She remembered her friend Solshae, who knew how to read and who composed poetry, and who’d found herself a place in service to the nobility and was now far beyond Meli’s reach and understanding.

But if Solshae could find another path…

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Winterheart night was the coldest of the year, or so they said, although the factory district didn’t feel the cold - not much, warmed with the burning coal of the factories, the heat of the forge and the city’s ovens. And on Winterheart all the less so, since the people were permitted bonfires, and there was such a press of bodies, and such a flow of ale, that the breath of winter really couldn’t make headway.

On Winterheart there were no grand balls for the poor, no masks, no poetry, fine foods, fine entertainment. But the fires would burn high, and the mismatch of songs would rise above the chimney and twist in amongst the smoke. On the ground, the people would draw on walls and roads with coloured chalk and charcoal. What they left behind would be a patchwork of drawing, all levels of talent, all ideas, and all of this meeting at the edges, smudging into each other, a tapestry of living and thinking and being, on these hard, ungilded streets.

Meli looked forward to Winterheart. She loved the camaraderie, the feeling of freedom and hope as Winter turned on its axis, making way for Spring. And she liked to express herself in chalks that sold for a copper.  This Winterheart, as the cold mist battled the bonfire warmth, she drew something in the stones that was a bit like a dragon, but also a great whale, such as she’d heard existed on the seas, and its back was knifed with long spikes, and its eyes were burning slits, with a purple fire inside.

Above her head she heard shouting, calls of “away, away!”

That meant that someone of standing was trying to get past. Who knew what such a person was doing out here at this hour? Solshae: her thoughts couldn’t help but somersault, grasping at the possibility.  Maybe this lord or lady was lost on the wrong street, late for a ball and taking a shortcut.

No matter. Meli did what everybody did, scurrying to the side to make way. She looked at the fine, twinkling carriage as it passed, and was surprised that it stopped right in front of her.

She was holding her breath.

The door opened, and a woman of extraordinary blue and ice-fire beauty sat inside. She reached her hand out a little way to Meli. “This is your drawing?” she gestured at the dragon-creature.

“That… that so.” Her tongue was too big for her mouth.

“Why that?”

“Just… came to me.”

“It’s splendid.”

“Th… thank you.”

“I think you are meant for far greater things.”

Greater things? And than what? But the lady had said her piece. She pressed something into Meli’s hand before signalling the carriage to move away. It was pulled by a unicorn, such as some of the finer folk fashioned these days. “Away, away, away!” called the coachman, and people who didn’t want to feel the steel annoyance of the very wealthy made sure they obliged.

Meli stood beneath the glow of the fire. She opened her hand. The coin was thick, fine gold. She could feel its weight in her palm, she could feel the heat of the fire begin to seep in, for the orange light to redden the gold. This was worth more than she had ever so much as seen in her life. But what did it mean? So much money in the palm of her hand that she could build her own future.  But build what?

Meli stowed the coin carefully in her pocket. Greater things.  Just so long as she got it home without being mugged. Who had seen her given it? Which watching eyes? But she was accustomed to being careful on these streets, and she knew where to hide it until she could change it. And after that. Greater things. She didn’t know what they would be yet, but she promised herself in silence: she would find them. She would leave her mark on this city: stamped in gold, chalk or carbon.

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work