I am in a brightly-lit, verdigris-covered foreign city. One party studying abroad and one part visiting a friend I met online. I cannot yet read most of the signs.

  At a gnce, it would seem to be a city of canals, but in truth it is a city of high towers covered by a great flood so that now only the top handful of levels remain dry and habitable. For all of that, it is a grand and beautiful pce and its people have adapted well, having built up sprawling courtyards and swooping awnings in the spaces between the towers. The waters, clean and clear, are full of life. Stand atop a bridge and look down over the edge; you will be treated to a view of a marine chasm within which all manner of fish and turtles and radiodonts swim through their multilevel channels, heedless of the world above.

  The attempts at terrestrial gardening and farming atop the towers have been far less lively, with a certain *sourness* to the soil. Even the birds have been increasingly sickly and erratic these past few years. As I learn when I find a featherless hatchling hidden under the ice of my sweet pink drink.

  I encounter an issue during the move-in process to my apartment. It seems that when I changed my name not all of my documentation was properly updated and I am being refused a key to my new mailbox unless I can provide a specific code that I cannot recall. Thankfully my friend intervenes and smooths things over.

  Since my friend was a young child, there has been an ongoing government project to pump out, waterproof, and rebuild portions of the levels just below the waterline. During my stay I am lucky enough to be there when this project finally opens to the public. Most of this new space has been made into, of all things, a shopping mall.

  I wander the mall and its delights, taking in the vibrant sights, sounds, and air of revelry that hangs over the people. More than once I pass by an old mystic. She is neither from this nd, nor the nd whose "ancient arts" she purports to practice. If anything, she seems to be from my own homend, out of pce as I am, yet without the good manners to humbly acknowledge her outsider status.

  Still, as I pass by her stall yet again, I found myself giving in and allowing her to do just one reading on me.