Nostia is a city of shadows and memory, its denizens are blind or going so, and the blind from other places migrate here assured of sympathy among the sightless citizenry. For these reasons, Nostia is the most treasured of all cities. Those going blind look upon her their last time as if seeing her their first time... faces, places they will not know again, consummations that will never taste as sweet. They will look at the simplest thing, the yellowing curl of a dry leaf, and they will see in it expressed all the sorrow of the world cupped in its curve, the passing of time, memory.



There are cities within cities in Nostia. Closed, lost worlds, systems of thought, language, gesture that fade from the consciousness of the citizenry, who nightly close their eyes on things long past, or things that never were, images already darkening or wearing away. New worlds also, for every sensation of Nostia, every touch, scent, sound, is pregnant with association. Many are those who will sit for long hours in revelry, when the sound of a flute or the soft murmur in a voice, puts them in mind of warm afternoons and quiet siestas.



These are fleeting, fading syllables, and the images will never seem as real. The words savor of bitterness, turn to ash, bile on the lips, holding one meaning for the sighted and another for the blind. Another name for Nostia is "The City of Trifles", for memory is an uneven thing, and the most insignificant pittances catch in it.