Sonder followed the street as she had been told.
It curved away from the square, and when she turned the corner, the sight almost stopped her in her path.
She could see that, at the end of the road, stood a house draped in wind chimes.
There were dozens of them. They hung from every beam and eave and wall, from carefully placed hooks along the walls, and even from a small wooden arch by the door.
Some were long and slender, carved from polished stone or engraved metal. Others were crude, made from bits of wood, shells, glass shards, or bent wire. Some were clearly expensive, others little more than scraps tied together with twine.
Yet they all hung the same way.
There was not enough wind to let any of them play their melody, which disappointed Sonder.
The house itself was solid. The stones fitted neatly together, and the wood was sanded smooth and treated. The door was reinforced and set straight in its frame.
It was civilized; nothing like Aest's hut perched next to the cliff-side.
Sonder stepped up to the door and knocked.
The sound was firm but polite.
She waited.
Nothing.
She knocked again, a little louder this time. Still nothing.
And she knocked a third time, with the same result.
She didn't want to break into someone else's home again.
She wondered if she had the right house. It must have been with all the wind chimes.
Was the mage simply away?
There was a window near the front door, and she leaned slightly to the side and glanced through it.
Inside, just beyond the entrance, she could see someone sitting in a chair.
They hadn't moved.
She knocked again, this time louder and sharper.
She looked through the window again and saw that the person inside the chair only looked up mildly annoyed.
They could hear the knocks but didn't bother to answer them.
Sonder hadn't come all this way just to be ignored.
"Hello?" She said, and knocked again, and once more.
There still came no answer.
So Sonder continued to knock until it became too annoying to be ignored.
After a few minutes of continuous knocking, in different speeds and strengths, she suddenly heard a scraping from the inside.
A chair shifted, and she could hear light but sluggish footsteps cross the floor.
The door was yanked open.
A tall figure filled the doorway, eyes narrowed, posture sharp with irritation. The chimes above rattled faintly from the force of it.
"Yes?!" The mage snapped, voice unmistakably annoyed. "What do you want?"