Mirrors for a River

The nearer you draw to Esandoros, the more the light behaves. Rivers cross and reconsider, willow forests hold the breeze like a breath they refuse to waste, and the capital sits in a circle of water as if the land wanted to study its own face. I came for glass and left with a different kind of clarity.

Prince Athelion rules by consensus, which sounds like a lullaby if you’ve never been part of one. In the Council of Mirrors, merchants, diplomats, and priests align what they want with what the river allows. Law emphasizes restitution and public honor; wrongdoers stand before reflection pools to confess before they are restored to the shape of civic trust. The first time I witnessed it, a cutpurse admitted to more thefts than he was accused of. “The water remembers,” the presider said gently. I’d heard that in Neyvaria on a gate; it felt different here, less like guard and more like guide.

Esandorian conversation is art with rules you don’t resent. My host wore pale silver and blue and spoke like a slow river, glassworker’s hands glass clean. He took me through the Hall of Reflections where family stories are etched in mirrors, lineage carried in light instead of ink. I saw a wedding recorded as a swirl of intersecting lines, two currents becoming one. I’ve never envied a stranger’s ancestors until then.

Coin here is a mirror, literally polished on one side, merchant’s mark on the other. We struck a bargain with Mirror Coins, their bright faces doubling our hands. Treaties in this city are negotiated under a suspended mirrored sphere, as if the room must look at itself before it can agree to anything. The effect is sobering and a little holy.

I crossed a bridge where the river carried starlight like a message too elegant to translate. A student of Lumin showed me how astronomers chart those reflections to predict weather and, with a modest smile, the fortunes of marriages. “Illumination is the most practical magic,” she said, apologizing to no one. In Esandoros, illumination isn’t a metaphor you chase—it’s the surface you practice holding still.

On my last morning, the Great Reflecting Pool held the sky like it was born to the work. The princely creed carved by its rim says the world begins anew in every reflection. I tried to catch myself as someone better and nearly believed it. When I left, I understood why this realm survived by being neutral: it’s not that they refuse to choose; it’s that they choose to keep choosing, a patience sharp as glass, soft as water.