Torchline reminded Arialla achingly of home. That was why she'd come here: someone had suggested that she might feel better in a more familiar setting, that the coastline of Caido might charm her heart the way the Hollowed Grounds most assuredly had not.
On one hand, it did improve her outlook, to know that not everything on Caido was as horrifically foreign as the Hollowed Grounds and the Spire. But on the other hand, everywhere she looked in Torchline brought her almost to tears with tearing homesickness. She half-expected to hear her father calling to her as he brought his boat in from a day's fishing, to see her little brother run past with a sand dollar in his hand.
Instead she heard a strange cry from what had been locally described to her as a wishing pool, and saw a crowd gathered around it. The only face she recognized was Samuel, but she avoided both his gaze and the other spectators, preferring to hang back a bit and watch alone. She had been thinking of making a wish in the pool herself -- the same wish she always made, in all her prayers and all her thoughts: to go home. But she hadn't found a stone worthy of her most important, most extraordinary wish yet.
On one hand, it did improve her outlook, to know that not everything on Caido was as horrifically foreign as the Hollowed Grounds and the Spire. But on the other hand, everywhere she looked in Torchline brought her almost to tears with tearing homesickness. She half-expected to hear her father calling to her as he brought his boat in from a day's fishing, to see her little brother run past with a sand dollar in his hand.
Instead she heard a strange cry from what had been locally described to her as a wishing pool, and saw a crowd gathered around it. The only face she recognized was Samuel, but she avoided both his gaze and the other spectators, preferring to hang back a bit and watch alone. She had been thinking of making a wish in the pool herself -- the same wish she always made, in all her prayers and all her thoughts: to go home. But she hadn't found a stone worthy of her most important, most extraordinary wish yet.
