Coffee Stained Pages. Part 1. Lilla Somn

closed her eyes.

      The chic, charming city seemed like the ideal place to start a new life.

      There is always a whiff of something that will provide her with a meaningful, promising and interesting existence and a worthy future.

      The prospects are vast, like the unforgettable view from the cliff on which the city was built, of the endless Ocean and the equally endless and beautiful bottomless sky above. All this gave an exhilarating sense of freedom and unlimited possibilities in this incredible corner of the Continent. It is said that in the cold season, when there’s no clouds and no fog. From this height of a Mountain Prime you could see the Continent from the Wastelands almost all the way to Zeth, and even draw a map of it… Many who were able to catch this rare moment probably did.

      To see the rest, one had to descend from these dizzy heights and go into the Northern Wastes beyond the high hills to Youlle or the Elven Forest. Then walk to Zeth and look over Mount Omill, go through the Great Forest.

      But even if you don’t go far, Prime is a place where you can get a lot of information about anything in the Mainland without leaving the city. Practically, we can say that this is such an awesome enormous Archive.

      It is not established with certainty who was more hungry for knowledge – the Prime academic witches or Ami, but the first ones, unlike her, had exactly what everyone needed. Information, which they painstakingly gathered from all possible sources and poured into the Prime Central Archive in deliciously wide streams and the Royal and University Libraries.

      Knowledge here was truly power and wealth. Prime was not only a place to obtain information of a scientific, technical and magical nature, but also a large Market for trading information from all over the Mainland.

      This was done by large, almost monarchical organisations like the VST Agency, as well as influential scientists and royal families, small offices and private intelligence agencies. Everyone who could was trying to find something, to find out something, to make a discovery, to profit from something… Of course, this was not without its intrigues and rivalries among the competitors.

      Primers are obsessed with knowledge and information, and as it turned out, it was a valuable resource, thanks to which the city lived and prospered.

      …Even for Amelia, who had no practical use for it, whose ever-hungry, inquisitive mind was in desperate need of new stimulation and nourishment, this approach was close at hand. Prime is the perfect place for people like her.

      A city of ageless students. Ami walked for a long time between the buildings of the educational institutions, mingling with the crowds of students, anxiously hurrying somewhere, imagining that she was also hurrying somewhere, alone. For something meaningful and interesting… What can you get now if you go into one of those carved towers, get a stack of tablets full of tasty knowledge and disappear from this world, swept away by an exciting stream of new, tasty information. Like a speck of dust in the rays of light passing through those beautiful, infinitely varied, multicoloured windows of which there were so many in this City…

      …The Kantinian sighed dreamily.

      This is life! Damn it. Somewhere… Where she is not.

      Well… Let’s return to some positive and pleasant thoughts, if there are any.

      About food. Food for a stomach, not just food for thoughts. Food is fine, you can’t go wrong with it.

      Prime includes chic restaurants and refectories. Local magical fruit dishes, famous for strange and unusual combinations, refined and simple, traditional and regularly appearing innovative, which were an eternal reason to snort for those who preferred simple and satisfying vegetable dishes from the Kantine. If Ami had enough dried herbs and grains to trade, and enough time to try everything… she would probably go mad with happiness, because there would be no more pipe dreams in her life.

      Eating and wandering around the city had always been her favourite pastimes.

      Here, the pleasure was multiplied tenfold. An incredibly bizarre architecture, Om houses that could hardly be mistaken for dwellings, a fairy-tale city that could already boast of magnificent views beyondeven on the approaches to the city, with a huge number of coloured stripes of fabric and ribbons stretching across the streets, fluorescent plants of different colours and glowing witch lanterns that looked absolutely fantastic at sunset, attacking the visual receptors with a rainbow of coloured pebbles on the paved paths. Incredibly beautiful stained-glass windows and shining glaze covering the buildings complete the picture perfectly.

      An enchanting, hypnotic sight that for a long time took away the will and the desire to live… somewhere else.

      The Om houses themselves and their interiors were the main source of pride for those who owned them. Everyone tried to build something fundamentally new and different from their neighbours. As a result, the shapes varied – from buildings that looked more like strange vegetables or local sweets, to transparent structures, looked like the crystals of the Zeth Mountains, they all attracted the eye for a long time. Witches could take some liberties with reality.

      All this was already amazing, even if one had never seen one of the bright and abundant local festivals with all kinds of entertainment and delicacies…

      Ami sighed enviously.

      …Prime also meant for her five unsuccessful attempts to settle there, the complete collapse of all hopes for the aforementioned bright future and a dull resignation to the dark present…

      “I’m going to sit here, in this beautiful place near my personal swamp, and I’m not going anywhere. I’ve had enough of this…”

      Ami reached her only true love in these places – the soothing green edge.

      …When she was a teenager, her parents threatened her to be taken to the edge of the forest and given to the elves, if she continued to be naughty. When she grew up, she did not stop being naughty. And also began to come to the Forest herself, hoping that the elves would take her.

      Of course, no miracle happened. Again.

      But Ami found a wonderful place for herself, which helped her a lot to come to her senses and calm down.

      Thoughtfully, Kantinian sat down on the log, slided down to a comfortable half-lying position, and exhaled, staring at the sky and the treetops…

      …This place consoled her every time she came here with confused feelings, it was the only being that understood her, giving her, if not rest and inspiration, then mind saving indifference to the world.

      …which helped her not to go mad after each successive failure…

      She had already internally agreed to this swamp, a “pit” with slippery slopes, having decided in some kind of humble detachment that if she sits here until the end of her days, then so be it.

      Without wasting any more strength and nerves, she will do it with maximum indifference.

      She will not struggle to climb and slide down again.

      …Everything is pointless. Everything is meaningless…

      Everything in this life.

      And Ami gave up her long-held idea of running away from here, and let herself be drawn into a boring daily routine in the form of her relatives, into plans to renovate their shared house. They lived with their whole large, unfriendly family, according to the bad old Kantine tradition.

      And… That’s it. Sometimes it’s just simple like that and there’s nothing else.

      …And it was definitely the Bottom…

      Now Amelia knew what it looked like. And could examine its slippery, viscous base in detail. Feel with her cheek the wet, viscous cold of despair slowly seeping into her core…

      For there she lay, face down, turning away from the hideous, eternally inaccessible light of hope shining from above.

      …Remarkable