The Cacographer

Chapter the first

      No one knows when or how Havalus was built. It is said among the old women running markets of exotic fruits or foreign contraptions or last year’s fashion from overseas that no one built the city. They say that the city was found, already complete, with the temples and the banks and the pennants already erect, waiting. The old women say that a woman wandered through the desolate streets with the apple carts stocked and the fountains flowing until she came to her house and settled in, cleaning and cooking for people who hadn’t arrived yet. The old women in the bazaars say that this woman was the first, and that other people came one by one, finding their courts and brothels, their families and enemies. The old women say that no one knows if these people found their old work and relationships, or if they took what was already set for them in Havalus. Some old women say that the people who didn’t couldn’t find their lives anywhere else found their lives in Havalus, already complete. Some old women say no one existed before Havalus, that there were no lives or people, only bodies wandering and eating, staring and shitting.
      The old man who work as cobblers and blacksmiths, shoemakers and coopers will tell you that it took twenty years to make Havalus, and that it was their lives that built the city, not the other way around.

posted by OrangeDrink @ 1:41:00 AM