City Of Pensan

There are places you travel through, and there are palces you travel to. And then there's Pensan, a city whispered of in song, scribbled in margins, dreamt of by those who have never even seen the sea. Nestled where the Pensan Rainforest meets the cliffs of western Belerion, Pensan spills like silken skirts down the hillside towards its bay. White sails bob beside crumbling docks, fruit carts rattle through stone alleys, and wild vines creep over balconies where five languages might echo in a single conversation. The scent of smoked fish, sugarwine, and wet earth clings to the air. People dont' pass through Pensan, they arrive. And when they do, they often stay. Scholars come chasing the lsot texts said to be buried in its root-laced ruins. Poets arrive hoping the find new metaphors in its mist. Pirates, preachers, exiles and mystics all call the city home: or at least a temporary haven. In a land torn by politics and past wars, Pensan remains strangely, stubbornly neutral. It is a place of reinvention, and of rest. Some believe the rainforest sings to people in their sleep; that it draws in the lonely, the broken, the misfit, and offers them something like peace. Others say it's simply the last stop before the Shark Tooth Isles and every end needs a beginning. Whatever the reason, every year the same ting happens: someone packs a bag, stares at the western sky, and whispers "I need to see Pensan". And then they go. Some never arrive; shipwrecked, waylaid, or changed en route. Others arrive and never leave, lost to the rhythm of tide and mist. Pensan doesn't ask you to stay. It simply opens its arms and lets you fall in. They say the jungle knows your name before you speak it. That the cliffs remember every footstep. That no one leaves Pensan unchanged, only softened, or sharpened, or set free.