Story:Invisible Cities/Vyvara

Vyvara, nightkin city, city of their moon, city of those dreaming of nothing, city of night and goddess-sculpted bones of the neck, sanctuary to the foibles of the flesh. That which transforms in my nightmares and she whom has never known the warmth of her suns. Did you believe for a second - as I did, dear listener, I have no shame to hold - that the home of those with fragile unburnt skin could be anything but the deepest of shadowpits? No, she is not a hole, she is not a valley or a void; she is the greatest shadow, stretching longer and taller than any living city I have ever seen or dreamed. How could I describe the inversion of all there is to see? How would I sketch out the details of what no sun shines upon? How could I show you the intricacies of my dreams?

You have never known a city as quiet as this. The kin of the night rarely have need for words, and when they do speak, it is in whispers. Every home and every dwelling has walls of the hardest metal one could find in the outlying wastes, such that one could never hope to hear within an abode, and the streets are almost completely silent. Every other living thing here sleeps, while they of the night roam, create, die, are born, rise, and rise.

The kin of the night. They without eyes, yet they who still may see. Yet it is not the gaze of the nightkin that I feel as I explore great, ancient Vyvara, but it is the eyes of the city herself. She watches me through the slits in her clouds where the suns should be. She sees me and obstructs my path as I try to map or circumvent her. She is sly, she is coy, she is cruel. I have been here for many years now and every morning I forget there are stars. That a city may end. That I am awake.

You do not sleep here. But you dream.

I have seen what should not be. When there is no sun, there is no life. Secrets spill forth from the dying instead of blood. I have seen the funeral processions that take hours, but never seen where the bodies go. I have climbed the spires of Vyvara's towers for hours and arrived at basements. I have tried to get a number for an estimate of the population here, and have come across numbers both impossibly small and impossibly large. Beings become other beings. Towers fuse and separate and scrape at what could not be sky. You can grow so tall when there is nothing above you could ever reach.

I am unsure of how much of this sprawling supine mistress I have imagined. I have walked her streets and I have seen her sights, all with my vision painted with delirium.

I know why only the horned ones can stand to live in this great, this ancient, this maiden. It is because we lack what one needs to stay here. There is something missing in my perception. Something I cannot comprehend. Something to make up for the lack of light, lack of sound, lack of life. Imagine the task of living beneath the ocean and not knowing how to breathe. Having of no lungs, no slits in the skin with which to insufflate. Imagine having to read without eyes.

She speaks to me. To all of us. But only they can piece out words from the din of the stars.