After a long journey I have arrived at the college.  After a journey of modest Compared to the trips our caravans make, it was not such a long trek, and yet it weighed heavily upon me to undertake.  The gates are not something I am unused to, but there were many in rapid succession, and fewer stays at inns and market squares.  I did not realize how much travel I almost (but only almost) miss traveling with you and Father to sell goods. I will may return soon, provided I am unable to secure patronage for myself as an artist by All Saviors’ Day, as we agreed.


    Vaterin looked up from the dock where the boat had landed.  What I’m going to tell my parents about seasickness I don’t know.  Many of our trade routes are by land, mercifully.  Whoever made the gates between spheres seemed disinterested in the sea.


    With a penknife, Vaterin pricked her thumb and uttered a short prayer.  “Father Supreme, bless this invocation of your Muse of Painting.  Holy muse, gift of the Holy Spirit, please come upon me.  Let the One God shine through the work I achieve through His angel.  In the name of the Christ Savior, amen.”


    Like a coat settled over her shoulders in the face of a cold wind, knowledge and insight settled upon Vaterin’s mind.  Barely noticed, motes of energy flickered over the small wound, consuming the blood and closing the cut.  She looked out over the docks and the tidal mill, seeing in her mind the shades of paint that she would blend to portray them.  But it was not her sight, she knew.  It was channeling the Muse of Painting, the angelic spirit gifted by the One God and made accessible by the Savior to humans, that they might create works of beauty pleasantly depicting Creation.


    It wasn’t that she needed to know how to paint the college that would be her home for the next several months.  It was a comfort thing.  She pulled out her sketchbook, and with a few practiced strokes and a touch of divine intervention, she outlined the island before her.  It distracted her from the countless anxieties besetting her.  If I don’t get a patron before All Saviors’ Day, I go home, I accept my fate, marry the woman whose family my parents would have us seal an alliance with, and spend my days balancing books and weighing measures of silver.  Vaterin shuddered and was distracted from her sketching.  She detested ciphering.


    She walked slowly along the wave-lapped dock, thankful that the rain had let up.  There was a cavern of some kind at the end, but it had been strenuously impressed upon her that she should follow the dock left at the cavern.  It passed behind the tidal mill, an impressive piece of architecture representing the height of post-Loss engineering, hewn from the same pale granite as the cliff itself.


    Beyond the tidal mill, and the end of the dock, was sandy soil.  In it grew sickly-looking barley, the greens and tans of crops ready for harvest blending in her mind.  If I tried to paint that, it would be a blur.  I’m not cut out for scenery.  The other crops looked much like barley to Vaterin’s eye, but she could make out at least two other shapes of greenery.  It’s all green with tan lumps.  Give me a portrait to do any day.  Frustrated with the shape of the cliff she had drawn, which was not borne out by her advancing perspective, she scribbled over her sketch and flipped to another page.


    Is this what I traveled so long to do?  Sketches I’ll mangle, paintings of statuary… I hope not.  If there is one person here with dignity, my angel will let me draw them and show that dignity, and I’ll attract a noble patron before the feast.  And then I will be free from… Vaterin sighed.  They mean well.  They did make the donation to the Wholist Church that secured me my bargain with the Muse of Painting.


    Vaterin’s thoughts drifted back towards her home.  Inland Fief, on the ‘Loon route, close to the very Crown Range itself.  It had taken a long time to arrive where she was.


    Home was always pleasant, misty and cool.  Not so cold as it is here. I’d been through the gate, of course, to the oblong sphere district beyond.  It didn’t rain there, as though the moisture had been sucked from the sky.  So naturally they needed to trade ore with us for crops.  We made a mint selling precious—that’s not my concern right now.


    After that we went through the gate because of the sphere’s acid barrier, but the area beyond didn’t have an element.  They’d broken the runes that powered it, and the land itself was reasonably fertile, fed by a river flowing from the Crown Range, to home, around the miners’ sphere, and—it would be a great travel route, were it not for the barrier walls of the spheres.  Some of them are harmless enough but you couldn’t float a boat down a river through a wall of fire, or get past a solid wall of ice.  To say nothing of the lightning and steel spheres.


    So it was by land we went.  Not the most straightforward path, because some of the spheres are uninhabitable.  There was a constant wind in the next sphere, and I remember the caravan master told us it was because they never sealed the gate to the eastern sphere which was full of hard vacuum.


    A man with dark brown skin and hair in severe cornrows, dressed in black wool and a stained white smock, called to her.  “Are you Vaterin Lime?”


    Vaterin had re-seated her sketchbook in her satchel, and was lost in thought, meandering slowly past the acres of plants.  She knew the college rested at the plateau of the cliffs, but that trek was as yet not before her.  It took her a moment to register her would-be guide, and then nodded and approached.


    “I am Father Sulfur Sauer.  I’ll take you to your dormitory.  One of the students will help you learn the routine in the morning.”  Vaterin tried to listen, but the split consciousness of communing with her muse spirit and reflecting on her trip made it impossible.


    Then we finally made it to a sphere which had a gate to the coast.  Of course, that wasn’t at all close to Tourmaline Isle, so we loaded up on provisions and set out, hoping for the best.  And that is when I found out I get seasick.  I suppose it’s just as well that Fief is cut up into spheres, I’d be even less enthusiastic about taking over the family business.


    You know, he’s got dignity.  Him I could paint.  I wonder if he’d let me.  He said “one of the students” so I’m assuming he’s a teacher here?  The black wool brings out the color of his skin and matches well with his hair.  I wonder if he’s in mourning or just likes to dress austerely… You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    Those were half of her thoughts as they walked.  The other half amounted to recollection.  Those were long and miserable weeks.  The weevils in the hard tac didn’t help after the third week.  Going up to get some sun and being drenched in freezing ocean spray.  Eugh.


    And now I’m here, and one hurdle yet remains.  I have to climb… Vaterin looked up at the towering cliffs.  Surely only a few-hundred feet.  She paused to consider.  Still plenty to kill you if you fell.  She had reached the foot of the switchbacks, there was no more postponing the trek she had to make up them.  Surely they could have hewn some native birchwood into railings?  Couldn’t they?  They get labor out of the students, that seems like the sort of mindless, repetitive task that you give to someone you’re not paying.  Like checking the books the accountant already checked, making sure nobody is mistaking sevens for ones or whatever.  Ciphering.  One more thing I can look forward to if I don’t get my butt up these cliffs.  Taking a deep breath, Vaterin reached out and touched the cliff face.  Looking up, the perspective was dizzying, the knowledge of how to paint it one more thing outside her grasp.  For whatever reason, even blessed with a muse, perspectives such as this one defeated her, for all that it was an impressive view.  I bet the view from the top is even more impressive.  Eh, legs?  Eh?  Shall we move?


    Her legs seemed to be slogging through mud for all the alacrity with which they moved, but she put one foot on the first step of the switchback, and then another.  The first switchback bore east, and so it was her left shoulder which brushed claustrophobically close to the cliff face, an irony lost on her when opposite was the massively open space of the air.  You know, I bet if I fell, I’d have enough momentum to drop me off the second switchback down to the first.  Even more so from higher up.  If they’d made these steps wider, the fall would just… ulp.  Break your arms and legs.  Nothing a good earth sorcerer couldn’t fix, I guess.  Unlike dying.  One more thing to suggest they put their free labor to.  Vaterin paused.  It took the Father an uncannily short time to notice the lack of her footfalls and turn back.  He raised a single imperious eyebrow, and with one corner of her mind Vaterin watched how it moved shadows across his face even as she froze with terror at the thought of being the free labor which hewed a new switchback and installed birchwood railings.  I will not be suggesting that to the Mother Superior.


    “Are you coming?” The Father’s voice seemed coldly indifferent, but Vaterin realized she was merely misreading his reserved demeanor when he added, “Are you afraid of heights?”


    She managed a small nod, even that motion of her head giving her dizzying vertigo.


    The Father turned on the steps, something Vaterin felt ill to contemplate, and extended a hand.  “Here, I’ll walk with you.  I’m used to the switchbacks, I’ll catch you if you lose your balance.”


    Vaterin nearly lost her head at the mere concept of losing her balance, and peered over the edge of the switchback.  It soothed her to realize she was still on the first flight, and it was a fall of maybe twenty feet into the sandy soil below.  Resolving not to look down again until she had made the summit of the cliff face, she took the Father’s hand and the two of them walked slowly and steadily up the cliff.  Vaterin’s painter’s eye noted the wrinkles in the wool the Father wore, the way stretching his hand behind him bunched the fabric at his shoulder.


    “The island curves on itself,” the Father was saying, “and the switchback was carved here for a particular reason.  It shelters against wind from east or west, making it so that there aren’t breezes trying to blow you off the cliff face.”


    I would appreciate if we didn’t even attend the notion of being blown off the cliff face, but thank you.  Thinking it was all that Vaterin could manage, her tongue seemed to be tied up in her mouth.  To think, normally I babble when I’m nervous.  I suppose that’s the difference between nervous and terrified.


    Having attained the summit with the Father, Vaterin surveyed the plateau.  She heard a spring over the dull roar of the ocean, deadened by distance.  Visible over ferns and wildflowers was the pre-Loss Chapel of the Power of Ariel, the patron angel of art which had given the island its dedicated purpose.  But that was not where the Father was leading her.  Westwards was the adobe building of much more recent construction, the College of the Art of the Divine.  Here, she would pray and paint, paint and pray—and do upkeep of the college as a practice of obedience and discipline—to deepen her connection with her angelic muse and hone her talent.  It was two storeys tall aside from the bell tower, and shaped like an “L” facing the north.  The bell tower, evidently something desirable the pre-Loss chapel had lacked, was at the bend in the L.


    Inside, the Father led Vaterin down halls painted with murals and bearing busts and more abstract art on pedestals, directly to the womens’ dorm, standing at the entrance but not going in.  “I will see you tomorrow morning at services.  That is not permission to neglect your evening prayers.”  Without waiting for a reply, he closed the door.  Stern fellow.  So serious.  So pious.  Nothing wrong with that, though.  He’s clearly a nice enough man, he noticed that I was afraid of the switchbacks and offered me his hand.


    Tired from her journey, from seasickness, from the switchbacks, and from the very strangeness of a dormitory after a lifetime of having her own room, Vaterin set about unpacking her few belongings into the trunk at the foot of the bed.  It was not a large trunk; students were not expected to take a vow of poverty but neither were excesses or shows of status encouraged.  Her knapsack contained a few changes of clothes, a smock, and a small supply of paper and ink.  While the college would provide art supplies, she had packed a set of brushes purchased when she had first shown an interest in pursuing art, before it had been an interest strong enough to concern her parents.


    She looked up abruptly at a knocking on the doorway, the door open.  In the doorway stood a woman with skin the brown of earthen hummus, and dreadlocked hair cascading off to one side of her head.  Her clothes were an afterthought to Vaterin, arrested by her warm eyes almost golden in the candlelight and waning sunset, but they were simple and sturdy, bleachable white or stained by many colors of paint.  The wool, her trader’s eyes noticed, is from sheep well tended and well fed.  It would fetch a dear price in the right market.  Perhaps Icefjord.  She herself was slender, graceful even in leaning on the doorframe.  “Orth to blondie, anyone home?” the woman knocked again.


    “Ah, yes.  Hello.  I’m the new—you know who I am.”


    “I know you’re the new student, but that’s all I know.”


    “Vaterin Lime, of the mercantile Limes of Verdantfield.  Painter.”  I wonder what color her eyes are in sunlight.  I wonder whether I’d rather paint them there, or in this golden twilight.  What color would I use?  I’d have to mix it myself… I’m woolgathering.  She stood up, dusting her hands on her pants despite the absence of actual dust.  “Nice to meet you.  And you are…?”


    “Marble.  Marble… Bitumen.”


    “Of the noble Bitumens?  My family has bought gemstones from your mines.”


    “Those mines are exhausted now, but yes.”


    “A pleasure, my Lady.”


    “No ‘my Lady’ing here.  We’re all students of Ariel.”


    Vaterin made an intentionally comical bow.  “As you will.”


    “It’s getting on towards bedtime, but I’ll be the one showing you around tomorrow morning and I just wanted to say hello.”


    “Hello.  And good night.”  Yes, I do believe I will find someone to paint while I am here.  Perhaps a patron is not so far-fetched a notion after all.