#lodged

by Robert Frost

i know the broken inside

feel the shards of mirror

how they are daggers

still whole

stuck

reflects life

rusted, wasted

self locks door

bell of warning

sounds land

'You push and I'll pelt.'

They so smote the garden bed

That the flowers actually knelt,

And lay lodged--though not dead.

I know how the flowers felt."

You have been travelling for hours, now, when you see the city. Moonlight twinkles on waves that do not move on the shore of a sea you have no name for. A tsunami, hooked and about to crash stuck still as glass. Buildings made from driftwood are pushed into its surface, hanging without bobbing or sinking. 

The Merchant, not ungingerly, steps out onto the water, using his staff to support himself. Each footstep feels close to wet sand, sinking a little into the surface of the frozen waveforms, onto a ramp formed from the prow of a ship. The city has many floors, and steps and ramps and rope ladders, and each street has one side with buildings and the other in the open air. The water is cool and salty, and the air fills your lungs (if you have them) with a deep clean feeling, and your belly with hunger. 

Your machines, carts and animals stay on the shore, tended by members of the Rorsarch Troupe. They wave to you as you mount your way up into the city, and when you look out, you see them casting huge shadows in the fire, acting out fierce battles for the delight of the inhabitants of the city.

The people of this city are wildly different, but the native inhabitants are the Mara; collections of stone and coral used as a humanoid shell for a collection of polyps that work together to move their inanimate bodies as if it were a shell. A single head pokes from between sodden shoulders, a single eye and many stalks that open and close with changes in emotion. 

The gangways converge in a single, giant door; eight walkways leading to (what you realise) a giant squid, wrought from the carcasses of boats. The Merchant bangs his staff against it, making it reverberate like a drum. He passes one of the letters through an open crack, and the door creaks open, slowly. 

Inside, a hall juts outwards towards the back of the wave. Many artists have canvas’ and easel set up, and each are painting something in fine, extraordinary detail. At the end of the hall is a huge window that changes view every few seconds - the sky, a volcano, a sunken palace, and beneath it, a ship in a bottle.