[ from the city of gardens ]

springtime gusts quick and clear over crystal-paneled greenhouses, and the flowers blossom into veils of sweetness that trail after long-twined wind. you arrive on the back of a brass-winged beast—one of those newfangled airships built for nothing for devastation—as the war careens with the seasons, the skies going pale and ashen. choose a souvenir:

• invitation, sealed (x1) the cream-colored paper is unmarked, the seal of blood-dark wax unbroken, red like a lake of roses in falling snow. when you examine the envelope, the sealed-away contents appear to be perfumed in the fragrance of jasmine petals on soil; when you set the envelope back down, there are ruby-jeweled rivulets blooming along the veins of your palm, as if carved in blood. you feel no pain
• bronze gears, varying sizes (x6) you find a handful of gears discarded in a coach station, gleaming bright as flame between the shadows that stir like wandering moth wings. the gears are worn along the grooves, winking in a miniature constellation when you hold them beneath falling sunlight. they smell faintly of cinders, hissing like smoke, leaving your mouth coated in acrid-dark and ignited in something ashen
• cloak, fur-trimmed (x1) the black wool drapes cleanly over your figure, as if it's been hemmed and stitched to fit exactly to your measurements. still, it sits unnaturally on you, like some cruel second skin strung up over a lamb for the slaughter, and you can feel the weight of a dozen eyes prowling along your shoulders, dread slithering cold-fingered and ophidian between your ribs. when you take it off, the air tastes faintly copper
• candy pieces, slightly stale (x3) the mage who glamours away the bags under your eyes offers you a peony-pink satchel, lined in scraps of lace and blossoming with appliquéd silk rosettes. inside, you find three gold candies. when you put one in your mouth, tentative, jewel-winged butterflies flutter and dance before your eyes, dissipating to a shimmering nothingness as the lemon-tart sugar crystals mist away
• crystal flask (x1) a flask of cut glass, holding nothing but water and gushing streams of bubbles, trapped air beating against the sides like pebbles of rain. you can't tell where the bubbles are coming from, though the bottom of the flask feels warm to the touch, like a smooth river stone left out beneath midsummer sun. when you take a sip, you can feel the bubbles puffing down your lungs, somehow cleansing—like air whistling through hollow bird bones