The Singing City, as foreigners like Solae called it — fair enough when the humans couldn’t pronounce the proper name of his own home city, he supposed — had streets that were more like the canyons they were built among than actual streets, with the houses on either side growing higher and leaning inward until they almost touched their companions across the way. The close quarters, like his home tunnels, were comforting to Solae, but something still prickled the hairs on the back of his neck as they passed further from the main thoroughfares of the city.
He figured out what it was when they turned down the last street, and he could hear Neddryn and Tazinil’s breath echoing off the close walls. Most human cities were noisy affairs, with the cries of hawkers and children, the murmur of conversation, the thumps of so many feet, and the occasional grunts and squawks of the strange livestock that humans kept, all jumbled together at once in a cacophony that’d make any akor’mar’s head ache. Certainly the dockside parts of the Singing City had been loud, but this place, down among the canyons… This place was quiet. Too much so.
