Continuing flash series! I’m going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.

Before This story.

Late Autumn, 315 Post-Conflict

For the entirety of my decade as a scholar in the Tower, I studied Ancient Cultures. The Ancients division of the Library is one of the largest, and it is an intensive field of study.

However, the problem with Ancient Cultures is that, almost to a one, they are Ancient and thus gone, lost in the Conflict or long before that. One can read about them endlessly, theorize, study, hypothesize, but one can not actually visit these cultures. In many cases, one cannot even visit their ruins.

However, in the branching study of Emerging Cultures, one has quite a bit more room for exploration and study. The isolated nature of the population pockets after the Conflict means that, in the past three centuries, many different cultures have evolved.

Some, such as the Wild Tribes, are not currently open for embedded exploration, the way the Tower’s Scholars prefer to study. The Tower has attempted such. Every single attempt has ended poorly, indeed, fatally.

(I must admit I was still tempted. A one hundred percent chance of death is no deterrent to knowledge!)

Instead, I have acquired myself a position in one of the canal towns, a port from pre-Conflict made over into the shape of the new world. It is a benign and placid place, no more foreign than my mother’s farm.

But I have learned, to my eternal joy, that several grouped family units of the so-called Wild Tribes visit this town regularly to trade. I hear I will meet the Kybelii next week!

Finally, I shall begin to learn the truth of Emerging Cultures!

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