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Emotion 365: The Land of Aching, the Capitol Discomfort

The rocky hills of Aching slide. Travelers trip over fields of slate and boulders. Streams crash down rubble cliffs. Glacier water runs grey-white and frigid. Hikers carry backpacks filled with rocks. Workers raise pickaxes and let them fall, striking rocks, tunneling through mountains. The denizens dwell in caves. Stone pillars point up and down. Travelers descend between them into caves and peer through the darkness fascinated by the cold-wet against their skin and the emptiness before them.

“I think I saw the rocks glow,” says Miss Doe Friend.

Miss Emeline Traveler takes off her shoes and dumps out pebbles. She rubs her skin where it scraped against rock.

“I’m so thirsty,” a passerby says. “It was a long walk up and down the shale switchbacks. I tripped and fell many times.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” asks Emeline.

“No, not at all,” they reply. “Nothing but sore feet and bruises.”

The Castle Discomfort sits atop a rubble hill.

"It is not far, but difficult to get approach," says the Guide.

Yet, everyone from aching comes here often. Only in Castle Discomfort can the required permits and passports be obtained. Inhabitants make long queues outside the various gates. The longest line stretches across the rock bridge over the grey moat infested by mosquitos. 

Once inside, everyone must climb uneven staircases with increasingly small steps to obtain the doors of tiny offices and speak with the official centipedes.

"Discomfort has the most original architecture," says Miss Emeline. "Exquisitely intricate and complex."

"The inhabitants love to discuss the castle and their visits to it in great detail," adds Miss Doe Friend.

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