Work Text:
Text (literally; the images are of iPhone text conversations)
Kublai: So what is there to do around here?
Marco: Once a year there is a market day in Amira. Banners unfurl around the grand port building, five stories tall and full of booths and stalls waiting to be filled to overflowing.
Kublai: Awesome!
Marco: Ships with tall masts line the harbour three deep, rowing in bundles of goods. Caravans crowd the access roads from the south and east.
Marco: And the inhabitants of the city, starved and hollow, haunt the edges of the scene, gnawing the husks of last year's dried bread and waiting for the gates to open.
Kublai: Less awesome.
Kublai: So when does this market day happen?
Marco: Last month sometime.
Kublai: Worst. Tour guide. Ever.
Kublai: Staaarving omg
Marco: Lunch?
Kublai: Totally where should I meet you
Marco: At the intersection of two avenues, to the east of the town, buildings rise above one another like boxes, stacked precariously into the sky. Their gleaming towers hold within them everything anyone could desire.
Kublai: All I want is a burger dude
Marco: You will find much else beside. This city holds within it much that men seek, but more that they would prefer remain hidden.
Kublai: Whatever so where should I meet you
Marco: [Surreal map that has a Google location mark next to a building labeled Love/Hate/Nonsense]
Kublai: I don't even know why I still talk to you.
Marco: [Photo of houses suspended in air]
Kublai: Sweet photo! Wheres that
Marco: Octavia, the spider-web city.
Kublai: Thats a big fuckin spider dude
Kublai: Yo Polo where you at
Marco: Oh, just a little place called Atlantis.
Kublai: Nfw
Marco: The city of drowned dreams is as alive and vibrant as anything above the water. Its flooded plazas and sunken palaces are covered in bright corals and shining white sands, amongst which shining fishes dart and flicker.
Marco: Lovely women with sea stars in their hair swim hand-in-hand with their darkly handsome lovers; its waterways bustle with dolphin riders and crab sellers hawking their wares. No city seems to me to be less lost than this, which is so very complete in itself.
Kublai: How r u txting underwater
Marco: Seriously, I'm in Atlantis and that's what you want to know?
Kublai: Is there anyhwere you haven't gone dude
Marco: No
Kublai: that was retiticak
Marco: ?
Kublai: er retiticak
Kublai: r h e t o r i c a l fu autocorrect
Kublai: what abt the North pole
Marco: Yes, no cities there though.
Kublai: what abt el dorado
Marco: Guatavita is what the natives call it. In that floating city whose golden spires rise from rush rafts, canoes navigate ever-changing streets from building to shining building, carrying diplomats and craftsmen, athletes and undertakers about their daily business.
Marco: Fragrant smoke rises from censers at all hours of the day to drive off the biting flies, mingling with the rich scent of roasting fish. No city smells quite like Guatavita; after visiting, the traveller forever remembers it as the scent of gold.
Kublai: You are totally makin this up aren't you
Marco: No.
Kublai: How come you never bring me anything
Marco: [Image of t-shirt reading "Marco Polo went to El Dorado and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"]
Kublai: fuck youuuuuuuu omg