Inhabitants walk from pool-to-pool in Remorse in peering into the waters and looking for what they have lost. Brittle grasses poke from the yellow soil between the grey-blue pools.
Inhabitants live in huts made of the stiff Remorseful grasses. They eat the Remorseful grains milled into Remorseful flour. They pat the sticky doughs into flat shapes and bake them hard. Their hands are dry and dusty with flour. They wear long aprons when cooking and long hooded cloaks when walking the marshlands. They listen to the cries of loons. Waterbirds fly over the land and dive into the pools looking for lost loves.
The birds of Remorse mate for life.
Visitors enter Remorse from the surrounding lands, walking down mountainsides and along the pathways into the marshlands crying and weeping.
Within the pools of Remorse gleam colored stones when the waters are still or reflections of lost lovers’ faces when the waters are rippled. Everyone looks in with longing. They stand gazing in the cool, windy Remorse.
The capitol Regret is a circular city of huts gathered beside the marshlands. The inhabitants maintain the paths and ponds of Remorse. They make rules for the Remorseful. They weave a tapestry of lost things and reasons. They tell the history of this place. Rules were broken once. Wars were fought. The Remorseful did terrible things. They said words that cost them. There were actions, too. The bakers of Regret make these into the flat breads that are eaten by the Remorseful.
"It was terribly bloaty bread," said Miss Doe Friend. "I never felt hungry the whole time we were there and I never felt sated either."
Nothing lost is ever found in Regret.
"It is a city without Solace," says Miss Emeline Traveler.
In the center of Regret is the Remorseful land’s largest reflecting pool surrounded by fighting cranes.
"There are lessons to be learned gazing into the pool, but the cranes are aggressive cranes and most can't come near," says the Guide.
Miss Emeline Traveler, of course, looked in and learned. She knows how to move and dodge in crane-style.
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