They walked along stone-paved streets laid with such precision that not one blade of grass emerged in the seams between stones. The buildings, though crumbling, still stood majestically, columns, arches, porticoes all pushing toward the sky. A spire in the near distance towered over all else in the city.
“What happened to the elves who built all this?” Osric asked.
“No one in the Fellowship knows,” Lavender said. “The city was already abandoned when the first of my people arrived at the Ornament Tree.”
He noticed she carried a sling bag over her shoulder. It bulged and distorted the fabric, shifting with her movements as she flew along.
“What’s in your bag?” Osric asked.
“Apples,” she said, taking one out and holding it toward him. It was the size of a cherry from his world, shiny and pale pink. “Would you like one?”
“I’m afraid of what it might do to me,” Osric said. “Everything in your world appears to be magical in some way.”
“What your world ignored and destroyed, ours embraced,” Lavender said. “The fruit will do you no harm.”
“Thank you, but no,” Osric said. “Perhaps later.”
“As you wish,” Lavender said. They walked toward the spire, Lavender’s wings sounding like small bells as they carried her along. They reached the edifice below the spire, which stretched into the sky higher than the Ornament Tree. Osric guessed it was either a palace or a temple.
“We have arrived,” she said. “The treasure we seek lies within.”
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