flowerbox

Tir Tairngire was a city that didn't exist. Well, it existed, but it existed in a space sort-of in-between dimensions. It was grounded in one, but used another as a veil so it remained hidden from the occupants of the first. It was a masterful piece of magical engineering, really--it had taken a decade to lay the foundation and a century for it to really settle, for them to really understand it.

Of course, that didn't mean hiccups didn't occasionally happen. Especially given Tir Tairngire was a city that didn't exist in a space straddling two dimensions.

Its residents called it the Tir. It had begun as a tiny settlement on a spit of nearly uninhabitable land, in the middle of the ocean, reachable only by ship or the inter-dimensional passages Shunters had managed to create. Now it was a city of almost a half-million people. The only city in the world where magical and non-magical folk lived openly, without hiding from one another. It had started as an experiment. Now it was evidence of an impossibility.

It spread out across the ocean, connected with branches of bridges and canals, supported by the underwater pillars and basements that housed the magical-science facilities and the kelp- and fish-farms. The bulk of the city was on the surface, sprawling in five precincts, four of which were named for each of the Cradles of Magic. Ireland. Africa. China. Australia. Each of them was characterised by a soaring turret that looked more like a centerpiece than a defensive object. The centers of those precincts contained most of the housing; the outside stretches contained the docks and harbours, the fisheries and surface-level farms.

The central spire contained the political centre and public services. The schools, the university, the entrance to the underwater facilities. Surrounding the spire, on that little spit of land from which the city had spread, was the Fiddler's Green, the Tir's only park. The residents were still cultivating it for produce. Flowers, they had managed. Some small trees. Bee-hives too. But the main attractions to north and south respectively were the statue of the city's founder and the etched memorial of names belonging to all those who had been killed as a result of Mevolent's war a century ago--mortal and magical both.

Corrival Deuce stood there and looked up at it, at the names in various languages and scripts recognising the dead. He reached up and touched a name of a friend not long dead, and Eachan Meritorious shimmered into existence beside him. Not the real Meritorious, of course. Real enough to look at him and smile, to even have a facsimile of recognition in his semi-transparent eyes, but he was less than an Echo. A manufactured ghost.

Meritorious hadn't died during the war, only after it. But Serpine had killed him. It counted.

"We could use you, my friend," Corrival said to him. "Not that Morwenna and Descry don't make good Elders, but there are tensions rising, and you've always been good at soothing ruffled feathers."