Livia stared coldly at her older brother Andrei, as if she wanted to turn her gaze into tiny knives and cut a few lines across his clean, rugged young face.
Andrei asked helplessly, "It's already been three days, and you still won't say a word to me. What did I do this time to make you unhappy?"
"You made me unhappy. You know perfectly well why, but you still come here and ask me? What, am I supposed to praise you?"
"There was something wrong with that statue."
"Dad bought it. What right did you have to throw away his property?"
"It doesn't matter whose property it is. If it threatens our family, it should be destroyed. Livvy, you've met too few people and seen too few things. You don't understand the dangers hidden behind the light. Dozens of people vanish in Waterdeep every day. In corners you can't see, crimes are happening all the time. You should believe in kind gods, such as the Triad, Goddess Waukeen, or Goddess Sune, not some…"
"The High Tower King," Livia shot back in a sharp, brittle voice. "You don't understand Him, and you understand me even less."
"You? How could I not understand my Livvy? My dear little sister, you really know how to hurt people. How could I not understand you? I'm so much older than you. I watched you grow up."
Livia was so pressed down by Andrei's words that she could barely breathe. Her face became whiter than porcelain. "Then what do you think I need? Since you understand me, you should know what it feels like for someone to be trapped at home for fourteen years… See? I knew you couldn't imagine it, because you're a big strong man. You don't start panting because you walked up the stairs. You don't get a fever because you stood on the balcony a little too long. You don't dislocate something because you fell down. I'm trapped, Andrei. I don't want to be here!"
"Livvy, I already apologized."
"So what? That means you can make decisions for me without asking, deny my goal, and force me to stay naive and ignorant? Then when I'm older, Dad can arrange for me to marry some bald old man, and after one illness I'll die in my husband's home. After I die, I'll be thrown into the City of the Dead, and even my epitaph will have to be written by all of you. This isn't a human life. It's livestock. Compared to a parrot, I'm only in a prettier cage."
"Calm down…" Andrei could hardly believe these words had come from his sister. In his memory, Livia was a soft-spoken, quiet, clever girl, like a sparrow in the rain, always sheltering beneath the canopy of a tree.
He had never realized she was a bird waiting for the rain to stop. Although all her feathers were soaked, she had been preparing to spread her wings and fly all along.
Livia kept panting. She leaned back against the chair, expanding her chest so more fresh air could pour into her lungs.
Andrei was afraid she might have an asthma attack, so he said nothing, standing there like an obedient bear in a circus.
Livia still wanted to say something, but her strength had already failed her, and that made her cry without expression.
Andrei could not bear the sight of a woman weeping silently. When he was still a child, he had seen the same expression on his mother's face. It was during the days when their father had gone south for business and vanished. She had cried alone at night, lamenting the injustice of fate, that a frugal woman's husband should meet danger, and that a gentle mother's child should be so unruly.
After that, Andrei slowly changed from the spoiled son of a merchant family into an upright young man. The priests of Tyr spent all day urging young people to return to the righteous path, but with little effect. His mother's tears were probably more useful than magic or miracles.
Seeing his younger sister cry hurt even more. It felt like the time he had been training at the City Guard barracks and had been rammed by a runaway warhorse, leaving him unable to breathe.
"All right. I brought you a gift." Andrei took out an emerald pendant and put it around Livia's neck himself.
The green gem adorned the girl's reed-thin neck, casting a faint jade glow over her face, but the stubbornness in her expression did not soften.
"Livvy, before I knew it, you grew up." Andrei sat down beside her. "There are some things I never said before because I thought you were still too young to understand. Now we can talk about them. I know your weak body makes you pessimistic about the future, but we are all by your side. I will be by your side.
"When you're a little older, I'll take you outside to exercise, or we can move south. The North is too cold, and the seaside is too damp. We can move somewhere warm, raise dogs, tend goats together, and you can drink more goat's milk to build up your body. Then you can go wherever you like, make female friends, and meet boys you like. In the future, you will not marry a bald old man. I promise."
Livia stared at him coldly for a while, then suddenly burst into laughter. "You look so stupid."
Andrei let out a long breath. He tried asking, "Then you won't believe in that…"
"The High Tower King."
"Right. You won't believe in him anymore, will you?" Andrei was not even willing to say that divine title.
"Andrei, we will have to part someday."
"At least as long as I'm in this family, you must not believe in any heretical cult. Livvy, you don't have nothing. Our family has money, and we have the ability to let you live the life you want."
Livia stood up. "I want to rest."
"Promise me."
"…Fine."
After that conversation, the youngest daughter of the Miko family gradually returned to normal. She no longer threw herself into books like a madwoman, nor did she mutter about lights inside the skull or the silver-cast road. She had become completely normal. Even Andrei, who had been the most worried, lowered his guard, believing that the warmth of family had finally soothed his sister's anxious heart.
That night, Livia once again entered the strange dream.
She stood halfway along the silver-cast road. Behind her, six candles had already been lit.
The girl sat down cross-legged and gazed at the Tower of Tomes in the distance. The heaven-piercing wonder was reflected in her eyes until her chest filled with courage. Then she struggled to recall the books she had skimmed through during the day. What she had read concerned the exchange-rate fluctuations of common currencies across Faerûn. For a merchant's daughter, this counted as family learning.
There was no unified currency system on the continent of Faerûn. Since the decline of that glorious ancient magical empire, the regimes of different regions had all chosen to issue their own coins, and differences in precious-metal content also created differences in value between the currencies of different systems.
Finance contained complex mathematics. Livia wrote and drew in the sand with her finger.
Gradually, she became absorbed in it, immersed in the clean, precise logic of numbers.
Sparks of thought slowly gathered. Her brain felt as if it were soaking in warm salt water, faintly stinging, yet extremely comfortable.
"What are you writing?"
The sudden voice startled Livia.
"Ah!" She turned her head blankly and looked toward the source of the sound.
A half-grown boy had appeared not far from her. His eyes carried the slyness and fierceness of someone who had mixed with the streets. He stood on another silver-cast road, separated from her by some distance, but he kept craning his neck and peering around, taking in all the equations Livia had written in the sand.
The boy crossed his arms, looked around, then asked Livia, "What is this place? And who are you?"
"…"
The girl also crossed her arms, but hers was a shrinking, defensive posture.
"Mute? I can't read either. Great, now we have nothing to talk about." The boy thought for a while, then suddenly walked toward Livia's direction. But the instant he stepped off the silver-cast road, he vanished.
Livia breathed out. She guessed that this person had also entered the dream after being called by the High Tower King. However, she was not Skyl, so she did not explain anything.
Andrei's words surfaced in her heart. Heretical cults would always use every possible method to recruit new followers. That boy should be the second one, and there might be even more in the future.
The thought of having to deal with so many people made Livia feel sincerely afraid for a moment.
She looked toward the tower again. The road wound onward, as if it would never reach its end.
Was continuing down this road truly worth it? If she reached the tower and discovered that everything her brother said was right, and what awaited her was truly a fiend, what should she do? If everything Skyl said was a lie, what should she do?
Right now, she had no worries about food or clothing, and her wealthy family made her future bright. There was no need to abandon everything for a possible hope, especially when danger might be hidden beneath that bright, beautiful wrapping.
Everything returned to the original question, for an ordinary person in this world, why be unwilling to remain ordinary, abandon a stable life, and set foot on a road shrouded in mist? Knowing it is an adventure, why still go forward without hesitation?
Livia sat there blankly for a while. Then she stood, walked off the silver-cast road, and left the dream.
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