Describe an Imaginary Place

[Talysia]

Frost-trimmed cobwebs hung across the old wooden stile, glinting like diamonds as the sun rose over the snowy path. Dark evergreens framed the little used trail, their needled branches a stark contrast to the skeletal deciduous trees that skirted the other side of the nearly black river, bare and bleak, providing ample vantage points for the crows that perched there, looking for food. The wind picked up, stroking my face with icy fingers, and I kept moving forward.

[Thadlerian]

For such is the curse of the twin cities; that any traveller spending the night in one is consumed with longing for the other. He stumbles down to the waterfront to stare. There, across black, forbidding waters, lies the other city. An arrangement of wavering lanterns and golden streetlights specking the horizon like a warm constellation, framed in the sturdy red blink of the radio beacon strobelights. He takes in the gusts of wind; the periodical smell of lilacs and whiffs of jessamine surviving the reek of brine. Oh, the promise of bliss in that wind, the fragments of clear girls' voices and pan flutes. He recognizes them from a long lost past, almost remembering where, only to have the sound and memory cut off by breaking waves. For ever, he stands there, his soul slowly devoured by longing for the city from which he imagines his name is being called: Oh, come here, be with us.

And then, empty, he wrenches his eyes from the distant horizon and trudges drowsily back to the sailors' hostel. Dodging derelict cranes and rusty puddles, nearly slipping in something unmentionable, he walks in between the sooty shacks. Pulling the dead-drunk boatswain out of the gutter, he supports him up the rougly cobbled streets, stumbling over holes concealed by the false-light of the neon signs. Ignoring the jeering calls of the whores, vulgar paint hardly covering scabbed faces, he staggers into the dormintory with only one thought in his head: Tomorrow he will leave this place for the other city. He has already forgotten; he left its port just this morning.

[anthorn]

The path was hardly a path at all, but a winding line of century worn ground made slick and smooth by years of rainfall. Weeds and grass and bushes came up on either side slowly to reclaim its land. Trees weather worn and wet, bent inwards over the path making an arch of leaves and jagged branches.

[Talysia]

Dendritic silver vines crept over the side of the rock, almost clawing their way to the ground, whilst great crystalline structures loomed beyond the cave entrance, gleaming in the sunlight. Emerging from that cave was like walking into another world - a world with no plant life, only minerals. A small waterfall trickled over the side of the mountain, falling away from me into the ravine below, and the pillar-like crystals very nearly formed a gateway to the path leading up to the temple.

[The_Warrior]

Half of this village was on a port above the sea; the round and brown huts were on the land section, and not too far from that, there was the jungle, which stretched along the seaside with a great length.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Inside the shop, it was impossible to hear anything but the ticking of clocks. They crowded the shelves, jostled each other for space on the counter, broke out like a rash on the eastern wall. Two long-case clocks flanked the door: a solemn grandfather, so tall that his crown nearly brushed the ceiling, and a grandmother clock with a bowed outline, suggesting narrow shoulders and expanding hips. Low windows at the front of the shop kept out almost as much light as they let in through their circular panes of wavy old glass, and the clockmaker had surrounded his workbench near the back with a circle of lugubrious wax candles, melting into pools of their own tears. At noon, when all of the clocks struck at once, it was bedlam; the walls creaked and the floorboards danced as if in an earthquake. The clockmaker continued on with his work regardless.

[Talysia]

The water rushed along, gurgling over stones and branches in its path as it continued its chaotic way to the weir. Along the banks, the Undine tugged at the graceful willow fronds that brushed the surface, stirring the branches and disturbing anything that was hiding in the tree. Their giggles sounded like the water, rolling and frothing over anything it touched, and they batted and swatted at the waterfowl that tried to stay calmly on the surface. The rains had been heavy that month, and the swells that came down from the hills were an excellent playground.

[pyan]

The windmill was only a stump now...the wooden sails, the cap that had held the gears, all had rotted long since. The cast-iron gears themselves must have crashed down through the floors when their supports had finally given up the struggle with the insects and the slow, creeping rot - in any case, they now lay like the bones of long-extinct creatures on the remains of the threshing-floor.
Around the base of the tower, where once the miller had gone about his daily round of grinding the flour, the verdant vegetation had taken hold. The ivy was up to the third floor now, and the door was blocked by a flourishing birch thicket The coarse tufts of wind-seeded grass that grew from the cracked brick path to the millers house had all but hidden the way, and the house itself was a roofless, indistinct mound, half hidden in the scrub.

[Talysia]

The locals thought that the snow that gently drifted down from the mountain were scales shed from the back of a great white dragon, falling to the earth to cover it in frigid brilliance whilst it grew new skin. Houses topped by oddly curving roofs, showing red tiles through the patchy snow, stood here and there around a frozen lake, and bamboo structures erected to dry out fish for storage sat beside the small boats that went out to catch the sea's harvest. Everywhere in the village, the people were busy, going about their business in their thickly furred clothes, trying to make the best of the bad weather. In the sky, hidden behind heavy white clouds, a pale sun tried its best to stretch some sunlight to the frozen ground.

[Dwarf of Moria]

The snow-capped mountain lay in the view of the travelor, it's peaks slicing the sky like razor-sharp swords. It's once lush slopes were know covered in ash, a silent testament to the destruction it had born for centuries. Blackened stumps crawed all the way to the rocky peak, where the snows of the late fall had already struck. It looked on the ruined valley as a beggar might look on a dead man.

[Chaser]

The air inside the cavern seemed nonexistent. There was a coldness there that numbed the senses and deadened all thought. They could see steps leading downward, down into the blackened core below, but none knew what lay beyond. And so they descended. With each step they felt a prickling on their skin, a need to sink beneath the darkness and go deeper into the shadows.

As a dying glow of a candle flickers, so too did their strength of mind, until each light of reason had gone out.

[Talysia]

Coloured light spilled onto the gleaming marble floor from a multitude of lanterns tinted with bright hues, and the dancers stepped lightly into the centre to begin the celebratory dance. The ballroom was full of people, all of whom were silent as the musicians on the dais struck up a slow, deliberate air. Then, as the music built up, the dancers began to move. Skirts and ribbons twirled as they glided around the floor, endlessly graceful, coming close to the ring of tables that encircled the room where the others were sitting and watching. The buntings on the wall lifted and swirled as the dancers skipped and weaved by, fluttering like birds with the increasing speed of the dance. Then the music slowed, and the dancers slowed with them, coming gradually to a stop in the varicoloured light.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Oh, very pretty, Talysia!

A pale grey city, cloaked in fog, most like a graveyard haunted by ghosts of houses: so it seemed to me the first day I ever passed in Quiranöerion. In places, the mist was thick as wet wool, yet now and then I encountered a pocket of air and light. Sometimes I heard footsteps in another street, or the racket of a wagon with a loose axle clattering down an alley between the houses. Only once between the docks and the house of my cousin did I meet anyone face to face: a grim-faced man in the garb of a city gaoler, dragging a shivering child behind him. Though I never guessed it then, that brief glimpse of obdurate justice and helpless poverty was to characterize everything I came to learn of the city later.

[chrispenycate]

The darkness was total, like velvet curtainsover the back of the eyes. The cool, damp air smelt faintly musty, telling of life even if that life was fungal.
Freed of the eyes’ dominance, the ears start th build a picture, taking in the return from the hurried breathing. A big space, floor and walls smooth, whether manmade or natural that sense is not equipped to tell. And far off ; the roof a dome concentrating all the information where she stands. Hold your breath; beneath the echoes of your expelled air, is that the tiniest scraping noise, like that of innumerable insect claws? To use another sense she kneels, and runs a hand across the smooth floor that scurries away from the touch.

[Talysia]

Gently sloping valleys lead down to a small, crystalline brook, where the deer gathered to drink early in the morning. Steam rose from the deers' bodies in the chill winter air, and the frost crackled crisply beneath them as they made their way towards the icy water. Overhead, a sky white with unshed snow covered the scene from horizon to horizon, making the eagles that soared the heights seem far more visible on their dark brown wings, effortlessly drifting in aimless-seeming circles. Up here, where the humans preferred not to come, the wildlife thrived, and they shared this natural paradise in a perfect balance.