Prompt:
Like Monte Carlo, Calypso rises from the sea like a mirage in salt flames, its white-washed buildings stacked upon one another like blocks left by an idle giant-child. If you approach the city across the bright waves of Greater Thalassa, Calypso seems caught between the aquamarine sky and the vivid green sea, a white illusion whose shapes change with every cable-length your ship progresses. Flags are everywhere: long banners, short pennants. Ten thousand gulls scream. The harbor is a nearly closed circle of weathered stone, crowded with vessels of all sizes, from tiny fishing smacks to grand merchant ships. Their masts are a forest of wood and rope, swaying gently with the wave, wind, and tide. At the narrow harbor gates, white marble sphinxes forty meters long crouch with lovely faces, broad wings, opposed across a deep blue strait. Narrow streets wind from the port, each turn revealing new wonders. Bougainvillea spills over wrought-iron balconies, petals fuchsia on alabaster walls. The air is scented with salt, jasmine, and grilled fish. On the southern side Garden Quarter is the ornate Casino, never slumbering, never closing, whose bank has seldom been broken, where fine men and women are at Cascades tables until dawn. Above its seawall grow carob trees and canary palms, and sometimes below lie the bodies of ruined gamblers.
At the city’s peak stands the Pharos, a hundred-meter lighthouse marble-clad. Its steady beam sweeps the sea at night. On each face of the Pharos is an ancient poem in bronze letters a meter high, in languages no longer spoken anywhere, around any star.
Calypso is known as the City of Clocks. There are either seven score and seven or seven score and eight clock towers in Calypso—no one knows. Many rise from private residences around the Pharos, others from public markets, guild halls, and temples. The five official clocks in the Great Forum never agree, and the people of Calypso have stopped trying.
Artist
