Port Olni

We spent the night at the gate of Port Olni. Forty five wagons with their bosk teams arrived too late in the evening to be provided passes of entry. I did not mind. The routine of arriving at a chosen site to camp, putting the women to work raising the tents and gathering wood and such while I wander off with Tasta for a look around has already started to settle in with me. As she makes the choice which unfortunate beast will serve as her supper that evening, the slave girls back at the camp hurry about making things habitable. It is comfortable. Some nights there is lively conversation. Other nights a girl might dance about our camp. It is really just a way to wind down for a few ahn before retiring into the tents. It is good to be in a city again, however. The city is situated on the banks of the Olni River and like many port towns, the structures, business, residential and even administrative, seem to crowd the water's edge. Less turbulent than the Vosk, the Olni is a beautiful body of water. There is little doubt as to why men would endeavor to be close to her. She does not smell of Thassa, being a fresh water body, but there is a romance to the river just as there is to the sea. She connects one point in the world with every other place far and wide afield. In a port town, one can taste the Tahari at the supper table right alongside the cuisine of far flung places like Kassau or Turia or even the Schendi Interior. The markets of port towns are always filled with the goods of the world as well. Raw silks, fine platters, bina and bana and spices and such. You can get these things in Ar, of course, but it is places such as Port Olni that these goods are traded.Supper. I am going to put the pen aside and find a table to sit behind. The women, too. I will bring them along. They should be bathed and prettied up by now.