The city and its farmlands were wedged into a thin crescent of fertile soil. The interior curve of this crescent was the coast, sparkling under the sunrise each morning; so blue that the horizon was uncertain by mid-morning. Beyond the sand was a hundred feet of tidal shallows and beyond that an unfathomable drop off into a deep oceanic trench.
Opposite this coast were the escarpments of granite which kept them hemmed so close to the sea.
The mountains had proven impassable for three generations – had taken those who’d tried to prove otherwise and given no trace of their fate in return.
Their snow-capped peaks pierced the clouds. Their sheer faces were blank and indomitable. The chasms and passes within them crooked and shanked and jagged until you were led to the vertiginous edge of a precipice, or thrown up against a towering wall of stone.
From these sentinel peaks rivers flowed through the fertile lands. They ran swiftly in summer, slowed through autumn, trickled in winter, and in spring became engorged torrents of snow-melt that broke the banks and spread across the floodplain until the rivers were hidden and the fields were ankle-deep bogs.
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I’m still considering the characters that could populate this place, and the plot that would bring an eventful story… perhaps some intrepid exploration across those mountains and into the exotic wilds beyond?
