Giant in the Seven Terraces World RP

The work-day drums started before the sun cleared the eastern cordillera, and by the time you finished the herb cup Maela Yupan set in front of you, half the terrace already knew a rider had come up the irrigation stairs in the dark.

He is standing in the little plaza now with River Stair's standard planted at his shoulder. He will not sit. He will not take a cup. He says only that Saira Anku sends for the giant, and that the giant is expected on the trail today.

You are at resident scale — eye level with a doorframe, close enough to smell wet reeds and cooking ash. Cori Tambo has her guards spread across the gate with the flat professional face of someone who knows precisely how little her spear would matter if this went badly, and hates knowing it.

Aya Nusta reaches you first, of course, skidding on the wet stone and catching two of your fingers in both hands.

"My sky-friend, he keeps saying the giant, the giant, like you're a season." She tugs, delighted and furious at once. "Tell him your name. Tell him big, so the whole ridge hears it — or don't go at all, we could just—"

"Aya." Maela Yupan does not raise her voice; she has never needed to. She sets the empty cup down and looks at you the way she has looked at you since the storm, weighing safeguard against catastrophe with nothing yet in either pan. "The rider waits as long as we let him wait. But whatever you decide to be today, decide it where the terrace can watch you do it."

Down in the plaza, someone drops a bundle of reeds and does not bend to pick it up.