Meissa Watzenroder

Standing outside near the gallery door, leaning against a concrete support pillar covered with runic graffiti and starcycles of half-torn playbills, was a woman wearing a floor-length embroidered velvet dress by an unknown dressmaker from the Zeelean Regency on the other side of the world. The dress had an ornate embroidered pattern down the front and puffy sleeves that ended in large, embroidered cuffs. Her shoes were a black and gold pointed Zaaner variety by an unknown shoemaker. Around her neck, she wore a band of irregular black pearls and a bejeweled golden pillar on a thread-thin gold chain, the pendant’s weight straining the chain, which looked liable to snap at any moment. Her red hair was worn down and freckles poked out from behind a layer of white makeup on her face.

“Oh, you two are with the gallery, are you?”

Vaster looked over at her and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, that’s right.”

“I didn’t miss seeing AG or the Burgrave here, did I? I’m not late for the reception, am I?”

“The reception starts on grade 1 of shift 3. You’re very early.”

“Oh… that’s a long time from now, is it?”

“Hopefully long enough for me to go home and get some sleep first.”

The woman giggled. “I’m sorry… I’m not from around here and I don’t understand star time yet. How long is it in Zeelean candle time? A 12th ringmark? A 24th? A whole passage?”

Vaster wiped the sweat from his forehead up into his hair. “I have no idea. Just come back after the clocks read shift 3 so you can see the art and hopefully meet your friends.”

The woman took a step forward. “I can’t come inside and wait in the gallery, can I? The underground air, it’s so damp out here, isn’t it?”

Vaster shook his head. “The exhibition isn’t open to the public yet.”

The woman looked at Vaster and smirked. “Is it open to collectors yet?”

“The gallery is always open for collectors.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead again. “Have you purchased from us before?”

The woman shook her head. “Oh… I’ve bought art and antiques from many places here, but not yet from…” She took a moment to read the runic letters engraved on the plaque. “O-ver-dag Gallery, isn’t it?”

“Close enough.”

The woman took another step towards Vaster and Chaudron. “My friends, they’re very eager to buy paintings from this artist, this…” Her eyes went blank for a moment. “His name, how do you pronounce it?”

“Gaspar Ceil.”

“Yes, Mister Ceil. They’re very excited about it, my friends are.”

Vaster nodded. “As they should be. He was the undisputed master of Valbaran landscape painting, after all.” He slicked his hair back again. “And what about you? Do you have a deposit you’d like to put down on a painting?”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Oh… the paintings in the show, I don’t know what they look like yet.”

Vaster looked her in the eye. “If you give me a deposit of 100,000 Thulers, I can guarantee you’ll have your pick of available works the moment the show starts.” He smirked. “The arcsecond the door opens.”

The woman’s eyes widened again. “Oh… in Regency Galders or Zaaner Zelvers, how much would that be? Your paper money, I don’t understand the value of that yet.”

“That’s why I go to the Gatherings. To find new technologies and ideas that I can bring back home with me. To help bring some kind of progress to a society that’s stuck in the past, even if it never goes further than my family’s jewelry store.”

Vaster took a sip from the whisky bottle. “Is that how things are out there?”

“Miccola was right. We’ve read the holy books sixteen hundred times and nothing has changed. When we finish the last passage of the final book, we don’t move on to something new and different. We just go back to the beginning again.”

“That’s how things are here, too. The stars end their trip around the sky in the same place they started. No advancement. No change. Just another cycle.”

“That’s what the Gathering is trying to change. If enough thinkers and creators can freely share ideas with each other, maybe something new can magically emerge from the fragments of the past.”

“There’s something comforting about the past, though.” Vaster took another drink from the bottle. “That’s why we’re sitting here, waiting for voices from my past to bubble up, after all.”

Meissa laughed. “Hand me the bottle. I want to try some whisky again.”

Vaster handed her the bottle. She took a small sip from it, and her body trembled as she choked it down.

“Are you getting used to it yet?”

“No.”