Allie's War Episodes 1-4(90)

A city bursts out of the dark.
Its many windows reflect the morning rays of a bloated sun peeking over the horizon. I recognize the skyline from my dreams. I see the jagged steel and glass squares sticking out of the ground, the older city beside them, the dense layer of smog over the honking cars and bicycles and auto-rickshaws on the street. People walk down the sidewalk in ragged patterns and stand by coffee shops and older-looking buildings with red and gold facades. I see flickers of the city from all sides...from the ground to a vantage point somewhere in the clouds.
I am afraid, focusing on the enormous metal and glass squares looming out of the dust of a predawn sky, the watery structure squatting closer to the ground.
I see more cars and bicycles and the light brightens, when...
...I am hovering over a different square, filled with people.
The sky in this new place is the opposite of the one over modern-day Beijing.
The curve of the atmosphere looms so high and clear I think it must belong to a different planet. The sun shines hotter here, too, but gentler somehow; it hangs in the sky, a near gold-white, so small and bright I can’t look at it for long, even from inside the Barrier.
The city’s buildings have rounded corners instead of square ones. They crouch around one another, yet have a kind of regal elegance, covered in greenery that makes them appear almost alive under the dense shadows of dark stone. Cut windows without glass overlook the center of town behind balconies covered in moss and dripping sprays of purple flowers. A fountain marks the center of the square itself, and watery creatures decorate the basin, foaming more of that crystal blue water from mouths and fingers.
Black volcanic tiles pave the center of the square, too. The streets radiating outward from that same square are of large cobblestones, but those stones look new, or as if someone polishes them daily. Statues mark the passage into arterial roads that spiral out from the center like spokes in a wheel. Flags ripple in a light breeze like silken snakes.
A portly man who looks to be in his mid-sixties stands at a balcony, giving a speech to a packed crowd standing below. The older man wears dark red pajamas and a long, embroidered tunic that looks Asian yet is not.
The crowd listens raptly as he speaks. I look over the crowd, fascinated by the beauty in so many of the faces I see, regardless of age. Men and women both wear their hair long, I notice. The men’s is wound in wooden clips studded with brightly colored stones, and the women’s hangs loose down their backs, woven through with thin metals and threads with small, embedded stones. More jewelry adorns men’s hands and ankles, compared to the women who wear stones at their throats and hanging from around their ears.
I listen to the crowd murmur, although the language is new to me, and to Revik too, it seems...so different that even my mind’s translations inside the Barrier aren’t quite right. Above the speaker’s head, a three-dimensional Barrier image shows two curved lines with parallel staves, like a crude drawing of one of those impossibly tall Japanese bridges.
Everyone in the square sees it, I realize. The image is painted inside the Barrier, but they all see it over him, and stare at it in some curiosity.
The man’s words grow more distinct, however briefly.
“I do not present this...concept from...ego, for self-aggrandizement,” I hear him say. Words go missing in his speech, words for which my mind cannot find context. “I merely wish for sight...the urgency behind...my plea. It can be peaceful,” he adds, holding up a finger. “There is no wanting to...war. Or...living miseries.”
The man continues to speak.
I hear only some of the words.
He speaks of working through differences, of wars that have come before. He exudes confidence, yet is unsure if they hear him, if they really understand what he is trying to tell them. I feel a lot about his mind, I realize.
My spine prickles as I wonder if it is too much.
This is Balixe, Revik says.
I startle, having forgotten him.
Even so, I look around me as his words sink in, in a kind of wonder. This is more than prehistory. This is history most humans don’t acknowledge having existed at all. This is history before humans.
If Revik is affected by this, I cannot tell. He continues to teach, even here.
This is our history, Allie...not prehistory from a seer perspective, but early history, certainly. The Merensithly Address, prior to the first Displacement...
The First Displacement? I say wonderingly. So these are Elaerian? They are the first race?
I feel Revik acknowledge this, right before his thoughts grow audible once more. Most cannot even see events of this kind. Vash is very generous to share it with us.#p#分页标题#e#
Revik gestures towards the podium.