We arrived at the Eastern Seat the evening before the presentation.
The city was older than I'd expected — not the administrative newness of something built to house an institution, but the specific age of a place that had existed before the institution and had simply been chosen by it. Streets worn smooth by centuries of use. Buildings that had been repaired so many times the repairs had become part of the original. Root systems running beneath everything in the dense connected patterns of urban pre-settlement network that had been growing for longer than anyone currently alive could verify.
I felt all of it through my feet the moment we dismounted.
The city knew I was there.
Not the way the valley had known — the valley's recognition had been warm, personal, the specific frequency of
