Chapter 1978: Culture Shock

The world no longer made sense.

Up was down. Wicked was good. Night was day.

None of it made any sense to Micheline even after spending several days traveling to the Vale of Mists.

Ashlynn had told them a little about the place they were going during the journey. The carriage ride from Maeril to the Vale had been incredibly comfortable in Ashlynn’s carriage, which she had begun to think of as a sitting room on wheels.

She’d heard of towering stone walls, an ancient fortress, a city rebuilding itself, and a forest almost permanently shrouded in mists. She’d been told that the people were friendly, the rooms in the castle were comfortable, and that if she needed anything, Lady Heila would see that she was well cared for.

All of that sounded like a normal conversation, and a polite invitation from her cousin. If they’d been visiting Blackwell Manor, Ashlynn could have easily said the same things. But saying them didn’t explain the world she’d arrived in.

Vale City wasn’t ’a city rebuilding itself.’ It was a city reinventing itself. The construction projects that Micheline could see from the window of the carriage would have taken years of her father’s budget for public works, and all of them were happening at once. New roads. New sewers. Block after block of new buildings.

And none of it looked rushed or shoddy. Certainly, some of the buildings looked rather plain. A block of narrow, row-houses had a certain sameness to each facade, even when the doors were painted different colors, and the porches were decorated with different baubles. None of them had the sense of... character, Micheline supposed, that came from decades or centuries of repair, renovation and reconstruction.

But the streets were as wide as the grandest boulevards in Gaalen, to say nothing of DuCoumont. The pavers were smooth and flat. The roads were free of ruts. Fountains dotted the plazas, and each one produced streams of cold, clear water without throngs of women fetching water or doing their wash in the basin. It was like the Crown District in Gaaelen, where things of beauty didn’t need to pretend to serve a ’common good’ in order to justify their existence.

The fortress itself was even more overwhelming. Oil lamps everywhere, even in the chandeliers. Masterwork tapestries and paintings on the wall. Beautiful wooden sculptures that almost looked like they could come alive at any moment.

Micheline knew what wealth looked like. Not the showy, flashy wealth of the public areas of the Royal Palace in Gaalen, but the real wealth of a royal family, in their own private chambers where no one needed to be impressed. The art on those walls was meant to be appreciated, not boasted about. The decorations brought peace and tranquility to the mind and a retreat from the pressures of formality and ostentation.

So it was here. Every single detail showed meticulous care, careful selection, incredible craftsmanship... And that same sensibility carried into the suite of rooms that she’d been shown to along with her aunt Maela and cousin, Jocelynn.

Now, Micheline stood in a sitting room wearing a stunning, understated dress cut from the softest burgundy silk she’d ever worn while admiring the delicate silver necklace that Lady Heila had provided to go with the dress. It resembled a pattern of tiny serpent scales and it moved with her body to catch the light in the most striking of ways... and Lady Heila had called this ’something simple’ and ’suitable for a family dinner.

"It’s a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?" Jocelynn said as she watched her cousin preening in the floor-length silver mirror. "I didn’t stay for very long on my first visit, but I never expected the Vale of Mists to be anything like this."

"I was worried," Maela said as she lowered herself into a sitting chair that looked large enough to hold someone like Virve, the bearish witch who served as the captain of her daughter’s guard. "I thought that Ashlynn might have suffered here with the cold and the damp... It seems like she found an excellent place to call home."

"Didn’t she say that the Vale of Mists was still somewhat poor by Eldritch standards?" Micheline said, recalling the multiple occasions on which Ashlynn had apologized that the Vale of Mists was still a bit ’rustic’ compared to the High Fen. "If this is ’rustic,’ then what must things be like beyond the Umber Mountains?"

"Varied, from what she told me while we were cooking," Jocelynn said. "The place where she met the Mother of Thorns, the Briar, is supposed to be a swamp with deadly plants and animals. She said that it was so hot and muggy that they slept in nets hanging from the ceiling because even a mattress beneath them would have been uncomfortably warm, and that they hung fine nets over the windows to keep out the bugs..."

"Truly?" Micheline said, swallowing heavily at the thought of living somewhere so... unwelcoming. "And were those ’nets’ woven from gold threads? Because this..."

"The Briar is nothing like the Vale of Mists," Ashlynn’s voice said from the door as she entered with Nyrielle. "It had more in common with the homes of the fishermen on the smaller isles of Blackwell than it does with anything from the Vale of Mists or High Fen City."

"And you enjoyed every minute of your life there," Nyrielle teased. "Even when you were working yourself to the bone," she chided.

Micheline did her best not to stare when her cousin entered the sitting room on the arm of the Midnight Empress, but she couldn’t help herself.

Ashlynn wore an elegant, tiered skirt with a strange blouse that exposed not only a scandalous amount of cleavage, but had strangely cut sleeves that revealed the full length of her toned arms before closing at her wrists. Around her neck, she wore her only piece of jewelry, a silver necklace formed of dozens of tiny snowflakes, no two of which were alike.

The necklace, however, did nothing to hide the two pinkish points on her neck, marking a recently healed wound from a vampire’s bite.

Next to her, the Midnight Empress wore a slim black skirt that emphasized her lithe figure, paired with a light, lavender blouse that left her slender shoulders completely bare.

Both of them were stunning, and their outfits were clearly well made, but neither one looked anything like an empress. Instead, they looked... Comfortable.

Comfortable, and deeply in love with each other as Ashlynn leaned close to Nyrielle the whole way from the doorway to the sitting room’s informal dining table.

"Join us," Ashlynn said warmly, gesturing to the other chairs at the table. "Nyri says that Master Georg is making something special for us tonight, so you’re in for a treat. Just make sure to save room for dessert," she added with a playful smile. "You wouldn’t want to miss out on a sweet treat."

"Are you trying to butter me up?" Maela said as she joined them at the table. "You know I have a weakness for sweet things..."

"That’s because you spent too much time in the convent with people who deny themself ’unnecessary pleasures,’" Ashlynn countered. "Now, you’re free to eat your fill."

"We’re all free," Ashlynn added, turning in her chair so she could reach out for Jocelynn’s hand, pulling her toward the seat next to her at the table. "Free to enjoy life on our own terms."

"You say that, Ashlynn," Maela said, looking at her daughter’s pale complexion as her brows furrowed in concern. "But you worry me with how hard you seem to be working. You put on a brave act for outsiders, but now that we’ve reached the vale, just look at you." ℯℯ𝘭.

"You’re dreadfully pale," Maela said, leaning across the table to press the back of her fingers to Ashlynn’s brow as she gave her daughter a worried look. "Are you getting enough to eat? Are you even sleeping? Even if you’ve been cooped up in the dead of winter, your complexion is worrying, dear..."