Port Evergreen

Chapter 2 - The Hills Have Wisps

The interior of the elevator hasn't changed. It's still got the same four gun-metal walls. The same dark carpeted floor. And yet it's transformed. Everything has. I can feel it, even still trapped in this little metal box. The gray of the walls is still gray, but it's more alive, more vibrant than it had been previously. What had seemed drab and colorless before is now just so many colors at once that I can't name them all.

It's as though reality's been layered over with an iridescent, shimmering veil that's both visible and not.

The elevator slows to a stop and the doors open. Taking a deep breath, I step out into the first day of my life as Erin Blackwood.

It's a little bit crowded here too. I'm not the only traveler still lingering at the top level of the Aether side's Nova Needle. Finding my own little spot near the window, I stand and stare out at the ever-changing vista below as the ring rotates.

I've seen pictures from this side of course, and absolutely devoured every bit of media I could find pertaining to my future home. But nothing ever prepared me for the actual beauty of it. And how could it have? On that side of the portal, it'd be physically impossible.

My eyes catch on the ocean first. Dark teal decked with froth. Even from here, I can see animals swimming just beneath the churning surface, cresting the waves. Enormous creatures, both familiar and very much not.

Then, there's the sky. Somehow, it seems bigger here. Full of towering clouds, dark with the promise of a storm. Ravening upward from the horizon, the mountains are steep and green, with fir trees taller than half the buildings in Seattle. And then, immediately around us—where the mountains meet the rocky shoreline—is the city itself.

Port Evergreen.

Most of its buildings, even the very tall ones, are built of intricately interlocking logs and mountain stone. The one exception being those made of earth, which are indistinguishable from ordinary hilltops but for the colorful glyphic poles flanking their entrances. The clouded light of the sun gleams off thousands of stained glass windows, a muted rainbow.

I'm not sure how long I stand there. I have three hours to adjust in the glyph-conditioned environment of the aetherport before I'm allowed to step out into the wider world. Deciding to spend most of it up here, I dig out my sketchbook and set to work. There's no way I'm leaving a view like this behind.

When the three hours are up and I ride the ordinary elevator down to the ground floor, it finally occurs to me to worry about my appearance. First impressions are supposed to be important, after all. I don't want to seem disrespectful by going to greet them looking like, well...like I'd gotten too anxious and completely forgotten to care how I look.

It's really just my hair and face I have to worry about, though. I'd planned my outfit obsessively and well in advance, so I know that's fine. Hard to go wrong with a black, off-the-shoulder fitted tunic top edged in lace and black leggings. The leather boots and long jacket over the top of it all are a uniform for me at this point.

And of course, I remembered my Token. They'd sent it through to me as soon as I'd accepted their offer, with instructions to wear it the day I crossed over. A pendant bearing the Blackwood family crest, embossed in the silver at the back of a cabochon of evergreen opal, a stone found only in the mountains of my future home. Etched beneath the crest are my initials: E.B.

With the pendant around my neck, the "B" now stands for Blackwood. I left the Bianchi name behind me in the Uther realm, as they call Earth over here, and I hope I never hear it again.

Stepping out onto the ground floor, I scan around. Humans and aetheri-folk alike mingle and eat and laugh everywhere I look. Though the signs are written in at least twelve different alphabets—none of which I recognize—I know their meaning. Aetheri languages are amazing like that, every one of them a spell in and of itself, radiating the essence of their own definition for anyone to perceive.