Re: [ The Spiraling City, King's Year 197, midautumn ]
[ .....that's doubtful. I mean look at it all. Extremely doubtful. ...isn't it?
He moves among them, keeping that minimum of personal space between him and the others, trying to quash the rising self-consciousness of how obviously not-them he is; his own garb dull, plain in contrast to the grandeur around him, in building and personage and everything else.
Ceremonials. He'd always hated the whole thing. Whether he was a part of or outside them, it was the same; never felt like his place.
Stepping gingerly over a leg belonging to a particularly distracted gentleman, and swerving around another animatedly discussing what sounded like the merits of Cygnian stone in the precise perfection of some monument or other, he enters the palace and....
...realizes that he's probably going to have to talk to one of these people about where to go. ]