This is But One Fragment Five Hundred Words Long Constituting Part of Something Much Larger, With At Least One New Episode Per Week, And May Be What We Call A Serialized Novella.

I’m waiting for Nusci in the High Street, sitting on a stone bench just across from Dragon’s Teahouse. The famed establishment is located in a squat stone building that is sheeted in hand-worked metal that is now not much more than panels of colourfully oxidizing iron alloys. This gives the structure a pre-Tempest Era aesthetic that seems all the more rare as modern glazed-tin architecture, such as what surrounds Dragon’s on all sides, gradually replaces the older buildings of a bygone age. There is deep history in Dragon’s walls but I doubt many of the patrons care. And it is only the raw mechanics of such a design that appeal to me now.

I’m early, but not too early. And it has been such a long time since I’ve bothered to walk this far from the carefully plotted geographical triangle of my daily life — work, food, and home — that I sit for what seems a long time in silent observation of the bustling life stirring in one of the city’s main thoroughfares. I try to remember the last time I had been in this neighborhood but the memory escapes me.

“Do you have the time, please?” An older man is standing a few paces from where I’m sitting, hovering expectantly with a dour expression on his face.

Couldn’t he just ask a bot? I think, spying a Model Eight lumbering along the stones there across the street. But I sigh as I pull my timepiece from my breast pocket and tell him — and he shuffles on his way, losing ground to both the bot and the rushing crowds. I lean into myself a little more, resting my elbows across my knees, and try to look unapproachable.

I’ve changed out of my utility cottons and I’m wearing a skirt that is both clean and more fitting for drinks in a High Street teahouse. My personal distaste for that sort of culture aside, I will admit I am acquainted sufficiently with it to avoid embarrassment. I had remembered to scrub the smears from my hands. I had remembered to tie my hair back. And I had changed from my comfortable shoes into a pair that had perhaps been in better fashion when I was in school but would serve today to pass me as deserving patron of afternoon tea on the High Street. Yes, there is a perception of equality between the sexes of this encapsulated little city, but the lingering uncertainty of everything in Asgarth has created an immortal dualism that will never crumble no matter how black I can stain my fingertips.

How easily it seems, I am thinking, that I can step into this delicate role and blend into the hurried facade of this cityscape. As if to confirm that idea, Nusci walks by me just then, pulling the door open to Dragon’s and strolls inside. She didn’t recognize me. I pull my bag back over my shoulder, take a deep breath, and follow her inside.