Glory
By icecreamlova
9: City of Ghosts
- : -
Sandry did not know how long she walked the city, if such a concept applied in a place where buildings of empires lost to memory and eras yet to come squatted side by side, sharing a shade of gray with the sky. In them, beside them, transparent figures moved, jerkily, as though she was only seeing a series of images transposed one on top of another. The sounds they made seemed to come from far away, mingling with flickering, multicolored wisps.
Distance, perhaps, was a better term with which to define her journey, but by the time she thought of it, what felt like hundreds of miles had passed beneath her feet.
She wondered, fleetingly, where the others were, in this place beyond life. They had to be here; only death could make her connections to Daja's serenity and Tris's dry wit and Briar's wildness disappear into thin air.
An impossible number of years and an impossible distance passed before Sandry reached the edge of the sprawl of buildings so tall they scraped the sky, so low they were level with the fishponds decorating her garden at the Citadel. One moment she was still lost in the maze she had presumed endless, passing knotted vines and copper wind chimes; the next, she had stepped into open air, the roaring of an ancient river slapping her with its sheer presence.
"Saati."
"Sandry!"
She gaped, and for the first time since arriving in the city for the dead, she could see the sun and feel wind.
- : -
Well?
