The Shaded City

The sunlight lit the edges of the countless leaves of the Mother Ash, turning them into millions of candles. It was dawn, and the easterly sun pried itself away from the horizon in a leisurely pace. He was almost made redundant by the light from the leaves themselves; though their light was greener in color and smoky, as if from flame. They were legion: millions and millions of fluttering pendants hanging from six dozen limbs, each a third of a mile long. They sprang at odd points from the trunk of the tree; which itself extended a mile into the sky and was two miles around. Two million eyes saw the rising sun every morning. From Davwar. The metropolis of the Mother Ash.

Davwar was not built inside of Mother Ash, per se, but around her. Long ago, a mage of singular power and vision had discovered a method of transmogrifying the sap of the Ash into amber instantaneously. This amber was then shaped into semicircular plates, which were then anchored to the trunk of the tree to form a foundation of stone strong enough to support buildings. They varied in size; some small enough to hold only a singular family estate, while the largest were ten miles in circumference; supporting entire neighborhoods. They looked from a distance to be a parasitic fungus, whose golden flaring caps were semitransparent and shot through with pylons of concrete. This had the effect of giving the Mother the appearance of being even older than she was and she was ancient to begin with. Hers were the first eyes to see the sunrise, hidden though they were from only but the most carefully observant. Like Mokka. Mokka rose with the coming sunrise, welcoming the sting the brightness of the light brought to her tired old eyes. She was a beaver, with greying fur and yellowing teeth, and her eyes that now stung were amber brown. They would have matched her tail, were there not silver and gold rings adorning the scale there. She liked the look of metal jewelry, it was the only conceit to vanity that she made allowances for. People often mistook the streak of white fur she had as another decoration, but that came by accident. Lightning struck her when she was but a kit, and now she bore a stripe of bleached fur from the bridge of her nose to the base of her tail. When she came back to the world on the surgeon’s table, her mother had told it to all who would listen as a miracle. “The Ash herself intervened, because she has purpose for you, my sprout!” Mokka’s mother would say. Mokka’s heart would sink at the thought of those days, when she and her mother would stand on street corners, sermonizing for food or meager pay. At least, those were Mokka’s motives. Her mother would say that they were out there for the good of all, and that the Tree’s blessings were food enough for a righteous spirit. All the same, the sentiment could not stave off the hunger pains, or the chills of autumn and winter… including, and especially, the ones that carried off Mokka’s mother. That was still so very long ago, and yet Mokka was still holding her mother’s hand in the dreams which guided her to waking each morning; and the pangs of loneliness which hounded her sleep every once in a moon turn were hard to contain sometimes. Still, these were bearable pains. Privately, Mokka thought that the ache of her mother’s death was the closest thing she had to a child. She had fostered it, after all. And priestesses of the Tree were not permitted to sire heirs.

Oh, yes, she had gone into the priesthood, after all that. What could Mokka have done? Her secular education had ceased as soon as she had her miracle, and she knew naught of any trade. At first, she resented this path, but as the years bore their way through her, Mokka soon found delightsome relief in the simplicity of a priestess’ life. The routine of skimming the moss from the surface of the holy river; of passing out small honied buns to the children as they passed the temple. Her existence was shaded from the harshest sunlight.