Eighty-Three: North Market

The North Market wasn’t what Lilith had pictured, her expectations like paper lanterns shaped by Japanese fantasy and a thin grasp of Lamter’s bones.

She’d thought North and South would mirror each other, a seaside bazaar scattered like coral along a shore.

But she was wrong; the place felt empty, a dry riverbed with no crowds, and the shopfronts weren’t the easy, street-fair kind she’d imagined.

If she hadn’t checked the street sign—a lone reed before they entered—she would never have linked this quiet spine to the North Market.

“Did we really not take a wrong turn?” Unease prickled Lilith like sand in a shoe as she asked the Black Dragon.

Heat pressed down like a kiln, and Nidhogg, copying Lilith, tied her long hair into a swaying ponytail, two dragons with the same tail.

“No mistake. This is the North Market,” Nidhogg said, eyes flicking to the map like a pressed leaf. “We just haven’t reached the center, so you won’t see many people.”

The Archbishop followed behind, her hand settling on a wall like a palm against old bark, nostalgia warming her face like dusk.

“Ah, I remember this house,” she murmured. “When it was renovated, one plank was something I conjured with a spell. Let me find it.”

“Here—this one.” Like a child pointing at a hidden pebble, the Archbishop showed a shadowed board; Lilith traced the finger’s path and saw it.

The wood had aged to a lifeless gray-brown, a dead leaf pressed into stone, indistinct amid Lamter’s gray walls unless someone named it.

“Is this street really that old? I thought the North Market only developed in the last few centuries,” Lilith asked, her brow like a drawn bow, memory tugging at Nidhogg’s lessons on Lamter.

She remembered: the North Market rose after the Plant Magic Revolution, sprouting like shoots after rain.

“The North Market is young,” Nidhogg whispered at Lilith’s ear, her breath a cool thread. “The Archbishop watched it grow from nothing, then missed later seasons.”

“This street, though, isn’t young at all; its years could outweigh the three of us combined like stones in a river.”

“That’s right,” Mio added, voice smooth as river clay. “When the first elf from Kuri’s central dominion claimed the mountains and valleys for elven lands, this little street bore witness.”

“You could call it Lamter’s beginning; countless Lamter folk started here, seed by seed, brick by brick, raising the city.”

“Elves won’t forget their past,” Nidhogg said. “They restore and tend this street for memory’s sake, like gardeners pruning a lineage.”

“It isn’t used for anything else; it’s a narrow thread from the city’s heart to the North Market.”

“That means Lamter hasn’t dropped its faith in nature,” the Archbishop said, pleased as a mother seeing her child stand.

“Elves came from plains to peaks, but they remember their roots; even as they step into new places, they carry their old faith like a talisman.”

Nidhogg lowered her brows like closing shutters, wanting to speak yet saying nothing, her silence a knot.

“Let’s keep walking. Time to see the North Market,” she said after a long hush, leading them north like a bead string tugged forward.

Lilith was exasperated; she heard Nidhogg winding up for riddles again, annoyance fluttering like a trapped sparrow in her chest.

She wanted to jump and punch her so she’d cut the riddles, but out here that would be messy, so she saved the storm for later.

“Agreed. Lingering too long here isn’t good,” Mio said, and they walked from one end of the old street to the other, a breath through a reed.

Waiting ahead was a huge arch, opulent as a crown, its stones gleaming like polished bone.

“This… what is that?” Lilith froze, her mouth open wide enough for a duck egg, surprise bobbing like a buoy.

“The North Market’s arch.”

“McDonald’s?”

“Huh?”

Nidhogg and Lilith spoke at the same time, their voices crossing like birds in flight.

“What’s that ‘M’ you’re talking about? Another odd thing only you know?” Nidhogg asked, casual as wind, used to Lilith’s stray words falling like coins from another purse.

“Explain it when we get back,” she added, soft as a side note.

“The arch was built the last time I visited,” Nidhogg said, glancing at Mio. “Wasn’t it your mother who proposed it?”

“Yes,” Mio nodded, her memory clear as glass. “She wanted a landmark obvious enough that travelers and locals could spot North Market at a glance.”

“Someone designed this arch—eye-catching, but not too pricey—and it became the North Market’s mark, a banner carved in stone.”

“Is that so? I’d never heard,” the Archbishop mused, age like moss hidden beneath smooth skin. “Seems I really have fallen out of step with the young.”

“Young folks don’t know it either,” Lilith muttered, her heart a small, lonely drum; she felt like the most pitiful one, always a step behind.

They had either come long ago or decades back; only Lilith was truly here for the first time, a blank page in a library.

So annoying. She would make Nidhogg tell her more, peel the riddles like fruit and taste the truth.

Lilith made up her mind, resolve setting like lacquer.