Violet Odyssey: The City of Brass
It had been unseen for over nine years, and the tenth was drawing to a close with the flight of the fireflies and the last gasp of spring's chill before the rough heat and humidity of summer settled over the kingdom. The paling blue hue in the sky looked ordinary and wonderful in every way from the tops of the shrugging hills, where long grass swayed among lightning bugs. But the lights that flickered and danced across the yawning stone-and-metal meadow below radiated anxiety and enterprise. They told a story of opportunity and apprehension. The "ordinary" blue sky above abandoned its pleasant ruse without violence or alarm. Rather, it seemed almost playful as it shed its cloak of deepening black and indigo. The clouds rolled over and shifted into clear but luminous vapor. Where their ghostly outlines had been fading into the coming night, they took on solid form, tracing the shapes of the impossible. Meanwhile, the light reversed course, and color blushed back into the ...