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Brandon Sanderson

Mist hugged the shadows.

Cars zipping overhead made the sunlight strobe like an short-circuiting lightbulb, the shadows flickering over Ayven as she stopped on the groundwalk, looking into the alleyway. Afternoon crowds flowed around her with the efficient annoyance of city people, as quick to dodge around her sudden halt as they were to lob a curse her direction. She heard little of it, with Terris mountainfunk playing through her headphones, the noise of the city rendered as background beats to a peppy soundtrack.

That mist... surely it was too early in the day for it. Or too late? She couldn’t recall having ever seen it during the lighted hours, not even lurking in an alleyway. She seemed the only to have noticed it; perhaps she was the only one who cared. In fact, as she blocked the flow like a dead rat in a drain, someone moved by in haste and hit her oversized shoulder bag, knocking it to the side. That twisted her headphones by the cords, yanking them free of her ears. She left a world of synth-drum beats and entered Elendel at its most aggressive: the clatter of feet on concrete groundwalk, the shouts of the crowd, the call of distant sirens. The hum of cars overhead kept aloft by the steelfield, each making their own kind of music as they wavelength-shifted past in an auditory bell curve.

She pulled her headphones down around her neck and slipped free of the main flow of foot traffic, pausing by the alleyway to untangle cord, straps of her bag, and her brown corduroy jacket. She hesitated before reaching to the tuft of mist: a cloud perhaps a foot in diameter, hovering in the shadows like a stray. The mist twisted a tendril about her fingers as if a vine growing at speed, curling around the brown skin of her wrist, tickling the cuff of her white blouse as it peeked from the jacket sleeve.

Ayven, on impulse, squeezed her fist closed to watch the mist squish out and make a half-dozen smaller tendrils that wiggled in the air. She’d heard of it acting this playful before, though had never experienced it firsthand.

The body of Harmony, she thought. The essence of a god. Though REDACTED had no direct children, she liked to think of this as her ancestry through the lineage of her great-great-great...well, she didn’t know how many greats. Her greatest grandmother, whose name laced legend, myth, and history with distinguished tenacity.

Ayven glanced back at the flow of traffic, many of whom were enjoying a half-day off from work because of a minor holiday. As always in Elendel, they were joined by tourists, clustering in these first octant streets near the field of rebirth, enjoying the sights of the governmental district and the nearby theater row. The blocky skyscrapers were as if sentinels, guarding older, historical structures with intricate stone faces and regal bearings. There was always something to gawk at in Elendel: buskers had to compete with architecture and neon for attention, so perhaps it wasn’t so odd that nobody noticed the mist. City denizens trained themselves to keep moving along, without distraction, and newcomers had more unique sights to stuff their eyes and consume their attention.

Still, she thought, looking back as the mist slowly evaporated, clinging to her fingers as if in regretful farewell. She lingered, soon touching nothing, before finally remembering her own urgency. By her wristwatch, she had over an hour until the signing, but work had kept her a few hours late even with the holiday, and she’d learned to never underestimate crowds. So, she hurried on her way, rejoining the flow of traffic, turning onto an even larger roadway two blocks further along, until finally the skyscrapers fell away somewhat to reveal the large convention center.  

The oblong structure had a domed, almost futuristic shape, which was coincidentally appropriate today, considering the signage out front proclaiming that it was hosting Spacercon. Ayven could remember a time during her teenage years, ten years ago, when the convention had occurred in a run-down hotel where the carpet smelled of dust and the wood veneer blistered on the walls, revealing plywood underneath.  

Around fifty people had attended that year. Now, thousands bunched around the doors to get in, in numbers that daunted her. She hadn’t expected it to be this popular.

Guess I still did underestimate the crowds, she thought, watching with growing horror as large groups started to move away from the front of the convention center. She pulled down her headphones again and grabbed the strap of her bag in two hands, nervously shifting from foot to foot as she waited in the entrance line until she reached the ticket booth at the front, to be confronted by the sign: Sold out.

“Sold out?” she murmured, staring. “It’s never sold out before...”

“Should have bought your ticket early,” the woman behind the counter said, putting feet up and shaking a newspaper as she settled back. Headline said: Discordant Kills Three in Fourth Octant.

“I...  I didn’t get paid until yesterday...” Ayven said. “I have to get in.  Please.  The signing is in a half hour, and—”

“Did you read the sign,” the woman said, turning the page.

“But—”

“What does the sign say?”

Ayven swallowed, holding to her bag straps as several people behind her sighed and flowed away. She didn’t want to impose, but also... A quote surfaced in her mind. I know my orders were to stand down, but I choose to stand up instead.

“Please,” Ayven repeated. “Is there a standby line? Or a place where people sell tickets they’re not going to use? Maybe I could—”

The woman finally lowered her newspaper and turned toward Ayven, looking at her over yellow-tinted glasses of a fashionable variety. Ayven didn’t know her; the woman was probably building staff, not convention staff.

“You going to be trouble?” the woman asked.

“Trouble?” someone else asked, stopping as he passed by behind the counter. A security guard with buzzed hair and drooping jowls. He leaned down and looked through the ticket booth window at Ayven, his eyes noting the colorful patterned “v” shapes on her oversized bag, matched by the patterns on her belt, looped into dark brown corduroy trousers.  

You couldn’t tell if someone was Terris by the skin tone, though browner skin like hers was more common to those with the ancestry. A person’s features weren’t completely an indication either, though she did have both the longer face and taller height as markers. Even the symbols on her strap and belt weren’t a 100% giveaway, as they’d been somewhat claimed by pop culture. However, all three together?

“Terris,” the guard guessed correctly. “Never seen one of you make trouble here before.  Aren’t you people supposed to be accommodating and calm?”

“I mean, I’m not making trouble,” Ayven said. “But that’s also a misunderstanding. People are people, Terris no different.  Harmony himself made trouble for--”

“Sold out,” the woman said, “means sold out, kid.”

Twenty-seven is a kid?  Ayven couldn’t tell if that was just a common address from the woman, if it was in response to Ayven’s youthful features, or if it was some sideways slur.  Either way, they turned from her, clearly indicated the conversation was over.  Heart sinking, Ayven left the counter.  Next, a Survivorist priest—with glittering earrings and a black suit marked by a necklace bearing the spear--presented his ticket and was let in.  

She watched him with envy, cursing herself for staying at work those extra hours.  She could have left, but she’d been close to the end of a project, and her impulse had been to finish it... so she’d lost track of time...

Maybe next year, she thought.  He could be back next year.  Even if he rarely comes to these, because of the distance he has to travel...

She hovered about the entrance, hoping something would change, but more and more people were turned away. Overhead, cars pulled up at the elongated front of the structure. Most buildings were at least two stories in Elendel, even the oldest ones having landings constructed up on the driving level--which was roughly twenty-five feet above the ground level.  All cars—except emergency vehicles—were locked into that plane, unable to move vertically up or down. They hovered, rather than flew, by virtue of their propolsors.

It seemed that up on the driving level, people weren’t being turned away as frequently.  Could she get up there and try again?

They’re not being turned away as much, she thought, because they likely all bought VIP tickets at the higher price. She doubted walk-ups were allowed even up there.  She considered, almost just walked away, but...something inside her wouldn’t let her move. I have to be at that signing, she thought with unusual force. He wouldn’t give up. I won’t give up.

With growing determination, she turned and walked around to the side of the building, back to the worker entrance.  There, she watched through a barred gate, where people came in and out on break to get some fresh air, convention staff badges around their necks.  She knew so few of them these days.  However...

She perked up and waved as, by luck, she recognized someone.  “Les!” she called to him.  “Hey, Les!”

A shorter man wearing an old-style roughs hat turned from a group who were lounging and chewing caffeine gum around a trash bin.  He saw her behind the gate, and perked up.

“Ayvendril?” he called, then trotted over.  “Hey, Ayven, aren’t you going to miss the signing?  I thought you’d be first in line!”

She hunched down, holding her bag straps, and gave him a chagrined half-grimace.  “I didn’t buy a ticket early.  They’re sold out.”

“Sold out?”  Hey, we’re sold out!” he called to the others on break.  

They cheered.  The convention had come a long way from the days when they’d had to ask for donations to pay their hotel bill after Vivenne had thrown up on the carpet of the party suite.  Les glanced to her, then opened the gate, waving her through.  “Don’t tell anyone.  I’m technically not important enough to comp someone a badge.”

Brandon Sanderson

I did a lot of those descriptions based on my home con in Lincoln, Nebraska, one of the first conventions that I ever attended. That was actually the very first. You'll see some choice descriptions of things there, mixed with the Star Trek conventions that I went to, which were my second convention ever, to one up in Omaha, Nebraska.

Brandon Sanderson

Basdrik carefully reached his tweezers into the nook of the small tree’s trunk and gripped.  With a steady hand, he withdrew the squirming beetle and held it to the side for his daughter, Yara to inspect.  At seven, she was still too young for a mask.  The joy of a child was for all to see, a blessing from the Sovereign and his regent.  

“It’s so wiggly!” she said, hopping up and down.  With a bob of brown hair and a bright green dress, she was as if a flower herself.  The grandest of his modest garden.

“This,” he said, “is the hunter beetle.  It is named that because it hunts little insects that eat the leaves of the echotree when it is young.  See the white cross mark on the underside?  It is the sign of a friendly beetle.”  He carefully turned it around so she could get a good look, then delicately placed the insect back into the hollow of the small trunk.

“But I thought all beetles were bad,” she said, frowning.

“Nothing is all bad or all good.  Not animals, not plants, not people.”

She pouted.

“What is wrong?” he said.

“I told Dalak that we were always to squish beetles, because they eat our plants.  I don’t want to be wrong.”

He smiled behind his mask, which he wore--by tradition of his maskline, called hunters themselves--covered the whole face.  The more he’d traveled the empire, the more surprised he’d been by the variety of the masks worn by the different peoples.  Everyone did them differently, which was a thing a man from a small village like his had never imagined.  How could they all be so very wrong?  Or was he the one who wore his incorrectly?

“Come, let me tell you a story,” he said to his daughter as they moved along the planter to the next young tree.  His yard was not enormous, but was so overstuffed with plants, flowers, and even a stream that it felt vibrant.  Better to be full than to be large.  

Overhead, the sun was comfortably hot, and each breath was humid and thick; an air full, with its own invisible blood, unlike those cold lands to the north.  They had their charm, he now believed that, but he did not miss traveling them.  

At the next sapling, he began picking carefully, lifting leaves, looking at nooks in the trunk.  “There were two neighbors, once, who encountered a strange weed on the border of their property.”

“Do I know these men?” Yara asked.

“Yes.  One was your grandfather.”

“Which one?  Grampa black mask, or grampa white mask?”

“White mask.  My father.  Now, you’d have liked this plant they saw because it was bright red, and looked dangerous.  You like dangerous things.”

“Especially if they’re wiggly,” she whispered, leaning down and looking up as he found another beetle and checked its underside.  

“Just don’t leave any more snakes in the kitchen.  Your mother will have my mask.  Now, this dangerous-looking plant, your grandfather thought he recognized.  ‘That is a simberry plant, I think,’ he said.  ‘I’ve heard of one by that description.  It is bitter to the taste, and the berries themselves are poisonous.  We should search the area and pull any we find, so they don’t spread and threaten the animals.’

“Now, your grandfather’s neighbor, he was a man who always liked to be right.  He saw the plant and said, ‘No, that’s a ballberry plant.  It’s perfectly harmless.  The goats like to munch on them.’”

“Doesn’t everyone like to be right all the time?” Yara asked, pointing out a beetle for him to check, her little head twisted to the side as she stooped almost to the ground.

“Yes they do.  It’s human nature.  So, they argued.  Is it a simberry, is it a ballberry?  Back and forth and back and forth, until they almost hit one another.  Isn’t it a silly thing to want to hit someone over a disagreement so small?”

“I suppose,” she said.  “But who was right?”

“Well, the neighbor, he couldn’t let the argument go.  He went to the big town, you know the one.  I took you there to buy a dress last year.  In it, he went to the grand school with a leaf of the plant, and talked to the expert there.  The professor said that it was called the ballberry: a deadly plant that would kill all of the goats who tasted it.  So, the neighbor, he came back to your grandfather and thrust the leaf in your grandfather’s face and said, ‘I told you I was right!  It’s called the ballberry.’”

Yara moved with him to the next, and last, of the three saplings he was cultivating here.  She considered, and he could see her mind working.  “So...they were both wrong, and they were both right.”

“Indeed,” he said.

“But it didn’t matter if the neighbor had the name right...because it was still deadly.  So grandpa white mask was the most right, even if he got the name wrong.”

“This is,” Basdrik said, “the tactic of the frightened and the unconfident.  They must be right, and so they will ignore the meaning of an argument in favor of the small details.  Do not be that person, beloved.  It is not how right you were, but how right you became, that matters.  It is better to find you are wrong, than to continue to be stupid.  And always remember to focus on what is important, not what is trivial.”  He held up a beetle.  “What do you think of this one?”

“It has the cross on the bottom.  So it is a good beetle.”

“Does it?”  He turned the bottom side toward her again.

“...no.  No!  That’s just a white line, much more fuzzy.”

“This is an imposter beetle,” Basdrik said.  “They have evolved to look like the hunter, but they are smaller, and they eat leaves.  They are the liars of the bug world.”  He took out another pair of tweezers and squished the beetle’s head, giving it a quick death.  “These, we kill.  But always be careful that you actually know what you think you know.  If you do not learn, and be smart, you could kill your garden by destroying the hunter beetles that, in turn, eat the tiny insects we cannot remove.”

Unlike adults, she never him asked why he cared so much about the garden, or grew his own, when there was a public one to visit down the road.  She just looked up at him with wide eyes, and nodded solemnly.  In response, he lifted his mask to smile.  Emotion, projected exclusively to her.  Before he could take her to the check the water level on the dorstferns, however, a shadow fell across him.  A car, directly above, driving off-roadway.  

His smile faded, and he slowly pulled his mask back down.

“Daddy?” Yara asked.

“Go and look through the bushes by the fountain, beloved.  I believe I saw a snake in there earlier.”

“Oh!  I won’t put it in the kitchen.  I promise.”

She went scampering off, and he tracked the car--black, with tinted windows--as it stopped near his home.  He didn’t have a vehicle of his own, nor did his home have a cardock.  That wasn’t uncommon out here in the countryside; the market was close enough to walk, and busses were available for any other travels.  

The car slowly lowered own out front.  It was here for him.  He walked inside and quietly washed his hands, while Rara--his wife--came to him with mask up to show her fear, wearing a white dress with red blossoms all along it.  

“I thought you said you were done,” she hissed at him.  

He dried his hands without comment.

“We will pretend not to be home, yes?” she said.

“If it is who I think it to be,” he replied, “he will not knock.”

The door opened a moment later, and a few figures in red maroon under black jackets slipped in, checking for any dangers.

“Why don’t you go,” he said to his wife, “and play with Yara?  She is trying to find a snake to use in scaring you.”

She squeezed his arm, and met his eyes.  In response, he lifted his mask and kissed her softly, before lowering it and nodding toward the backyard.  She glanced to the men in black and red before doing as suggested, slipping out the back.

Basdrik carefully got himself some juice to drink--squeezed from the fruit of one of his own trees--as the door opened again, and a short figure stepped in.  Assemblyman Dlavil wore a mask unlike any that Basdrik had encountered in his travels.  His was of a unique style that his guards, and a small--but growing--cult around him preferred, a mask you could not raise, as it seemed to be grown into the flesh itself, with the mouth cut out so you could eat.  

When he spoke, there was a faint accent to his voice that Basdrik had never heard from anyone else.  “Are we alone?”