the City of Ships

the city across the sea from the island of daybreak. and thanks to BOROSILICATE_IVY it's all Walt

and the art's all Margaret of course

the city will welcome you when you arrive on its shores, though you will not know it. where the river unrolls itself into the sea there is a fence that wraps an area of land the size of Manhattan. It is not closed: it stands a crescent, open to the ocean. its grey wood is scabbed with moss. vast lichens bloom from its planks, strange flowers and seeds in a thick tangle. 

a man rests on this fence. behind him, the clean sand of the shore gathers more of itself and drapes greenery over its hills, and on and up until they are low, ancient woodland mountains, those mountains themselves crouched in worship around a huge plateau of white stone, miles distant, monumental as the sky. 

the man will walk across the sand to meet you.  His feet are bare, his head uncovered. The wind kisses each tussock of his soft hair. From a distance, there is a childishness to him. He moves like a surefooted sleepwalker. When he is close enough, you can see the blood shining scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face and the healthy play of masculine muscle through his clean-setting trousers and waist-straps. When he touches you, you understand. This is not only one man. He is the father of those who shall be fathers. In him, the start of populous states and rich republics. 

"Do you need a city?" He asks. "Follow me there."

If you do not, he will stay and talk with you. His name is Self. He skips stones and rolls you the sweet, dry cigarettes he smokes. He will not talk about the past, or the future. No beginnings, no endings. If you press him on that, he smiles and says as much.

He can give you directions to anywhere on the continent, and the roads you walk under his word run pleasant and true. When you rest, always there is a spring or brook within earshot, and fat rabbits watch lazily from under fruited blackberry tangles. His roads are always six times faster than any other. 

Many people walk these roads with you. 1d20 when the moment calls for it, 1:2 chance they are going your way, though none of them are going to where you are going, nor have they heard of it. 

People you may meet; they will show or tell you these things:  

1. Enjoyers of stormy seas
2. Trusters of men and women
3. Observers of cities
4. Solitary toilers
5. Contemplators of tufts and blossoms
6. Dancers at wedding-dances
7. Kissers of brides
8.  Tender helpers of children
9.  Bearers of children
10. Soldiers of revolts
11. Standers by gaping graves
12. Lowerers-down of coffins

Each of them is the most...

1. stately 
2. solemn 
3. sad 
4. withdrawn 
5. baffled 
6. fond 
7. turbulent 
8. feeble 
9. dissatisfied 
10. desperate 
11. proud 
12. sick  

person in the world , and once you have taken your leave from someone you have met on this road, you will never meet anyone who possesses that quality ever again in your life.  

Each of them is going...

1. to witness their own unrecognized baby-days 
2. gayly, towards their youth
3. to well-grained adulthood
4. to their sublime old age

Of course, none of them is yet where they are going. And none will stay there. They ask if you plan to stay where you are going, and caution against it. However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it but a little while.
 

If you need a city, and say so, Self leads you up from the shore and into the meadow cupped by the fence. There, a single chair, simply made. Chipped white paint remains where the wind has judged it essential. The chair is for you; Self sits on the ground. If your companions sit on the ground beside him, he makes no apology and is glad of the company. 

from the earth around him and from his deep pockets and inside his shirt, he plucks two dozen things and lays them at your feet. 

1.  
1. a narrow hinge
2. a cracked snail shell
3. a blue feather 
4. a bent nail
5. a keycap: the ampersand
6. a dried flower
7. a blade of grass
8. a dog's tooth
9. a pair of scissors
10. a piece of red string
11. a black beetle
12.  a wren's egg
2.  
1.  a white cassette tape
2. the cap of a beer bottle
3.  a fly in amber
4. a mouse skull
5. a grain of sand
6. a lighter
7. a live lizard
8. a small knife
9. X
10. X
11. X
12. X

Self asks you and each of your companions for one thing. Each of the X's should be filled in with something either in a player's pocket or close at hand, their choice.

You will wait until nightfall. Everything seems to curve up around you, as though the world was waiting, one whole, to descend into your brain in its folds inside the skull-frame. The white plateau is like the hammer of god. The man Self watches the clouds, watches with joy the threatening maw of the waves, watches the slender and jagged threads of lightning crawl the horizon. He does not get impatient. A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, could not hazard him or make him impatient. As blue twilight comes, his hair begins to stand on end, mad filaments and ungovernable shoots dancing in the mystical moist night air. Shadows twine and twist around him as if they were alive. Then he speaks:

"All the lands of the earth make contributions here.
I love all—I do not condemn any thing:
war, red war is my song through your streets
and the armies of those I love engirth me
but in peace I chanted peace.
Mettlesome, mad, extravagant,
for it the nebula cohered to an orb,
monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care
and my soul hungering gymnastic I devour'd what the earth gave me.

Incarnate me as I have incarnated you!
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.
Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face.
I take no hurt from the fetid carbon.
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings.
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach.
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky.
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones.
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself.
They do not know how immortal, but I know.
Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sun-rise would kill us if we could not now and always send the sun-rise out of us!
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end
I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
and will never be any more perfection than there is now, nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any human hearty and clean
Urge and urge and urge, always the procreant urge of the world;
affectionate, haughty, electrical.
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.

O despairer, here is my neck:
by God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.
I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money.
I give you myself before preaching or law.
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?"

He claps his hands, and it is like a magic trick: you are in the City of Ships. tall facades of marble and iron spring from the earth. the bridge you will need to cross the river is formed. in the harbor the round masts, the slender serpentine pennants of all nations. the gray walls of the granite storehouses by the docks, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high, high growths of iron, slender, strong, light. turbulent, musical crowds, processions by torchlight, theaters and bars, the phantoms endless and incessant, comrades and lovers by the thousands. 

you are still aware of the field, and of Self. Your companions are still there, though they are with you in the city as well. 

everything and everyone in the city is one of those twenty four things . Self holds up each thing in turn as it is mirrored in the city; your perception is all encompassing and complete. You may ask him to select a different item whenever you wish. It would be possible to engineer this; to give Self a box to which you possess the key and visit the bank that is that box. Self would be delighted by this, would laugh long and brilliantly, turn cartwheels in the field and kiss you on both cheeks. 

Here are 20 things that could be in the City of Ships: 

1. Cabaret as Narrow Hinge: heavy, rusted steel doors opening into a long, low concrete bar. A girl behind bars takes your cover fee and winks at you. The music squeaks and groans and shrieks; girls fold impossibly backward and sway hip sockets mechanically. Everyone you speak to is half-ajar; open just wide enough on uncomfortable vulnerability, a junked up view into their marriage, their relationship with their mother, their debt, then swinging shut again. 
2. Bathhouse as Cracked Snail Shell: floors of cool, cracked brown tile, mottled like leaves in a pool of dark water. the room you're in is always empty. Muffled talking through thin, pearlescent walls, so delicate one can almost see silhouettes. One must walk through each room to reach its heart, but somehow nobody ever passes through your room from the outside: you only ever see bathers as they leave, soft and stripped of all defenses, somehow naked even after they don their clothes. 
3. Newspaper Stand as Blue Feather: constant motion, the wind catching the edges of the sky blue awning. the leaves of the magazines always threatening to take flight. The shopkeeper, tall and thin, stands still in the fluttering commotion. The awning is too thin; the rain presses through it, owner and wares equally bedraggled.
4.  Museum Curator as Bent Nail: everything he hangs is a little crooked. Life has not kind to him; he gives the air of someone who has been recently beaten over the head. Wants to be more than he is. He struggles to finish sentences, leaves thoughts protruding in the air, always threatening to come back to them, never doing it. His hair was once red, now only a rusted streak in his flat, iron grey hair.
5. Old Woman as Ampersand Keycap: used to be a secretary, someones assistant. Used to being part of a machine, always expects to be told to do something, always asking if there's anything else she can do. Even idle wishes are interpreted as commands. One hand is curled in on itself, thumb stuck between middle and index finger. 
6.  Car as Dried Flower: old, well cared for. A soft, faded pink. Smells dusty and sweet inside. The leather of the seats threatens to flake away. They're low, your head further from the roof than you expect. Looking out its windows makes you feel like a child again. 
7. Bakery as Blade of Grass: clean, soft green walls, straw-gold chairs and tables. The flour in the air threatens to make you sneeze. The bread is coarse but always fresh and tastes more like its grain than you're used to; unsynthesized, somehow. 
8. Pharmacy as Dog's Tooth: shabby. Medical white stained brown with filth. Hot, humid, stinking. The cardboard boxes on the shelves are spotted with mildew. The staff is sharp, impatient, unkind. 
9.  Fire Escape as Pair of Scissors : sharp edges; the railings could cut your hands if you're not careful. Sways alarmingly, always threatening to somehow fold in on itself or to bend outward across the street entirely to meet its mate, who clings to another building. Kids hang out here, cutting chains of paper flowers from newspaper while their fathers darn their socks. 
10. Private Detective as Red String: easy to spot, but dedicated. thin red tie, flexible morals. Likes to deliver fake packages as an excuse to get into people's apartment buildings, always does leave an actual gift. More thoughtful than you'd think. Believes in a sort of divine synchronicity, spends a lot of time chasing false leads. Easily flustered if you pick on them, and not easily soothed once they come apart. 
11. School as Black Beetle: bumbling students running into you on the sidewalk. the constant buzz and hum of children's chatter.  Shiny shiny black shoes that the students take great care to polish; the air smells of boot-black and pencil shavings. the building itself is oval and covered in a shell of tinted windows. over the central courtyard, a glass dome that protects a greenhouse where the kids eat lunch and watch the rain splatter itself in sobbing bursts. 
12.  Diner as Wren's Egg: small, close, cozy. Warm wash of white light on a freckled countertop. The girl behind the counter darts between customers, whistling. The plates and cups are tiny, more for dolls than people. But the portions spill over their edges and the coffee is topped up again and again. This is not a place to bring anything hard or heavy; the peace here is fragile, and sacred. 
13.  Mugger as White Cassette Tape: odd outfit for crime. White jacket, white jeans. round, black sunglasses. A perfect, but small capacity, memory. Sings a few parts of a song to himself again and again, tuneless. It doesn't even seem like he knows he's doing it. 
14. Church as Beer Bottle Cap: nothing special. a low, round concrete building with sheet metal roof.  almost garish; cheap stained glass in primary colors. Nobody comes here for the building; it's just a means to an end. They don't treat it with reverence; cigarette butts under the pews. But people are happy to be here. You can see their shoulders relax as they step through the door. 
15. Murderer as Fly in Amber: Stuck in a moment she doesn't understand. Bristly black hair and eyebrows, bronzy skin, eyes sunk far back into her head. She moves like something out of time, like a prehistoric predator. It's not her fault that her environment doesn't fit that. When she's not moving, she's absolutely still, and you can tell that she doesn't know where she is at all. 
16. Community Garden as Mouse Skull : the beds are decorated with little bones. People bring dead pets, roadkill and bury it in a little graveyard a few yards from where the planting happens. The fence is white and thin and fragile; sometimes it breaks and when it does it takes a long time for anyone to fix it. 
17. Zoo as Grain of Sand : all the cages are empty now, but for one, which holds a single monkey. Horribly sad, she scoops up sand and lets it trickle through her fingers again and again. Once you've been here, it's hard to get out of your mind; all empty places are as empty as that sad sad zoo. 
18.  Man On the Street Who Believes He's God as Lighter: it's really tempting to believe that it's true. He repeats the same mantra again and again, and his voice is deep with a rasping authority that flares high and loud. His eyes are bright, so bright that it hurts to look at them for too long. A little crowd gathers around him; not believers, but an audience. "Say that part again, man" they say, and their voices are earnest. "Say that part again."
19. Spice Shop as Lizard: warm and dry and sleepy. wooden shelves the color of sand. the air is filled with a cloud of scented powders; things break, spill, and are cleaned up slowly, without complaint. Dried herbs dangle from the ceiling, brush against your face unexpectedly. The shopkeeper drinks her iced tea slowly, with great relish. She licks her lips a lot. 
20.  Construction Site as Small Knife: easy to miss, tucked into an ally, but here it is. Men scaling thin, shining scaffolding that looks barely wide enough to fit one. Some sit idly at the base, carving their names into planks, little workman's autographs. It's hard to say if this new building fits into the neighborhood, whether it cuts with or against the grain. It feels too sharp, too modern, maybe, but useful. It's easy to imagine how it might fit once enough hands have touched it. 

The entire world as you know it exists beyond the city. When you leave it, by road or by ship, you become aware that you are no longer in the field with Self, that you are only where you stand. When you return to this place, the City of Ships will welcome you once more, but this time, you will know it, and Self will call you by name.