The Inn In Sehala

Fire Time, IX. 

Four stories of mortared stone.

Another eight of adobe.

A central court with garden and pond.

Balconies from every room.

Covered ramps from the court.

Battlemented flat roof.

(Ishtarian residents need sunshine for their symbiotic plants.)

Rooms for human beings.

Heavy walls for insulation and defence.

The building has stood for more than a thousand years.

Its entrance faces down a slope to a broad brown river.

There are docks, warehouses and ships.

Shouts, thuds, creaking wheels and cables, booming rolling barrels.

Sehala, not a city, has fields, not streets.

Not what we expect although it follows from what we have been told.