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Authors: Will Wight
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G ARDENS OF M IST
Compassion, tied to the Rose Light, is also the virtue most necessary for leading Travelers of Asphodel. To protect their minds, they cut themselves off from each other. This is understandable, perhaps, but it is also a tragic weakness. If we are to heal them, we must first show them what they lack.
-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 4: Rose
Today, I learned why Damascan magistrates don’t accept eyewitness testimony gathered in Asphodel.
It’s not like I didn’t know what could happen to people out in the Mist. I’ve lived in the Gardens my entire life. I was born here, in a hollowed-out tree on the edge of the Midnight Fields. Every day, I step out of my door and walk into the Mist without a second thought. I’m not rich enough for a carriage, and I have to get to work somehow.
I give the Mist nothing to feed on, so it can’t touch me. My emotions are my own, locked up and held tight until I’m back between four walls. I’m no Traveler, bending the Mist to my will, but I know how to survive. That’s why it always surprises me a little when someone vanishes into the forest and is never heard from again, except as a drifting voice on the wind.
Don’t they know any better?
It’s not fair of me, I know, but I expect everyone to know the rules of Asphodel like I do.
First, you don’t walk into the Mist unless your mind is clear as good glass. When I walk outside, I’m a saint in human skin. You couldn’t get a rise out of me if you stabbed me through the foot.
Second, you don’t stop and smell the flowers. The bigger and brighter the blossom is, the more it wants to eat you. Nobody survives a day in the Midnight Fields unless they learn this lesson.
Third, you don’t trust anything you see in the Mist. Not ever.
It’s hard for some people to remember the last rule, which I guess I understand. If you can’t depend on your own eyes, then how do you know what’s real?
The answer: you don’t. But it’s easy to forget that.
Which is what killed Adrian Corydon.
I never had a problem with Adrian. He was about forty years old, and had been working in the Fields ten years longer than even I had. He rescued me, one day, when I was foolish enough to let myself get distracted by a herd of wild bulls and forget that I was standing in a patch of purple blossombells. They had dissolved through my shoes and started digesting my ankles by the time Adrian pulled me out, and I never felt a thing.
Even when the pain set in, I didn’t scream. I didn’t allow myself to think about my shredded, bleeding feet. I knew better; the Mist was all around.
So anyway, I remember Adrian as a good guy. Not everyone thought that way.
Adrian tended to get a little angrier than he should, a little more stressed. He let the work in the Fields get to him, and sometimes he raised his voice in the middle of the Mist. One time, he staggered into our work site, stole another guy’s hoe, and waved it in the air while screaming about how his wife didn’t respect him. He had a bottle in his other hand, and I had no doubt what it contained. Adrian was partial to a particular recipe of nasty liquor made of yellow starvine sap. It was cheap, he could brew it at home, it burned like a bonfire, and yellow starvines were known to produce the most pleasant hallucinations of any of the flowers in the Midnight Fields.
That was only one of the Adrian stories that floated around my work pool like kites on the wind. Adrian was a big, bearded guy, and he threw his weight around even where he shouldn’t. Some people resented him. Others wondered about his wife, Phelia. Was she safe? Did he hurt her? Maybe we didn’t see her as often as we should…
Looking back, it was all a recipe for some kind of disaster, but I didn’t notice at the time. I tended my own garden, as they say in Asphodel, and let everyone else tend theirs. I keep to myself as much as I can. I’ve been that way for years, ever since my own wife
Compassion, tied to the Rose Light, is also the virtue most necessary for leading Travelers of Asphodel. To protect their minds, they cut themselves off from each other. This is understandable, perhaps, but it is also a tragic weakness. If we are to heal them, we must first show them what they lack.
-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 4: Rose
Today, I learned why Damascan magistrates don’t accept eyewitness testimony gathered in Asphodel.
It’s not like I didn’t know what could happen to people out in the Mist. I’ve lived in the Gardens my entire life. I was born here, in a hollowed-out tree on the edge of the Midnight Fields. Every day, I step out of my door and walk into the Mist without a second thought. I’m not rich enough for a carriage, and I have to get to work somehow.
I give the Mist nothing to feed on, so it can’t touch me. My emotions are my own, locked up and held tight until I’m back between four walls. I’m no Traveler, bending the Mist to my will, but I know how to survive. That’s why it always surprises me a little when someone vanishes into the forest and is never heard from again, except as a drifting voice on the wind.
Don’t they know any better?
It’s not fair of me, I know, but I expect everyone to know the rules of Asphodel like I do.
First, you don’t walk into the Mist unless your mind is clear as good glass. When I walk outside, I’m a saint in human skin. You couldn’t get a rise out of me if you stabbed me through the foot.
Second, you don’t stop and smell the flowers. The bigger and brighter the blossom is, the more it wants to eat you. Nobody survives a day in the Midnight Fields unless they learn this lesson.
Third, you don’t trust anything you see in the Mist. Not ever.
It’s hard for some people to remember the last rule, which I guess I understand. If you can’t depend on your own eyes, then how do you know what’s real?
The answer: you don’t. But it’s easy to forget that.
Which is what killed Adrian Corydon.
I never had a problem with Adrian. He was about forty years old, and had been working in the Fields ten years longer than even I had. He rescued me, one day, when I was foolish enough to let myself get distracted by a herd of wild bulls and forget that I was standing in a patch of purple blossombells. They had dissolved through my shoes and started digesting my ankles by the time Adrian pulled me out, and I never felt a thing.
Even when the pain set in, I didn’t scream. I didn’t allow myself to think about my shredded, bleeding feet. I knew better; the Mist was all around.
So anyway, I remember Adrian as a good guy. Not everyone thought that way.
Adrian tended to get a little angrier than he should, a little more stressed. He let the work in the Fields get to him, and sometimes he raised his voice in the middle of the Mist. One time, he staggered into our work site, stole another guy’s hoe, and waved it in the air while screaming about how his wife didn’t respect him. He had a bottle in his other hand, and I had no doubt what it contained. Adrian was partial to a particular recipe of nasty liquor made of yellow starvine sap. It was cheap, he could brew it at home, it burned like a bonfire, and yellow starvines were known to produce the most pleasant hallucinations of any of the flowers in the Midnight Fields.
That was only one of the Adrian stories that floated around my work pool like kites on the wind. Adrian was a big, bearded guy, and he threw his weight around even where he shouldn’t. Some people resented him. Others wondered about his wife, Phelia. Was she safe? Did he hurt her? Maybe we didn’t see her as often as we should…
Looking back, it was all a recipe for some kind of disaster, but I didn’t notice at the time. I tended my own garden, as they say in Asphodel, and let everyone else tend theirs. I keep to myself as much as I can. I’ve been that way for years, ever since my own wife
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