Alerar's beauty was an aquired taste, not to be easily grasped by the Coronian peasantry, accustomed as they were to green fields and forests. Sun-bleached grasses grew tall across the steppes, and bare patches of hard red earth dotted the landscape. Strange, asymmetrical rock formations jutted from the rolling plain in the distance, the earth's striation ranging from mud brown to burnt orange, and every shade between. Bursts of violet and crimson seemed to explode across the land, the wildflowers of the steppes out in full bloom, and a herd of wild horses trampled a path through the blossoms.
Dark lines stretched parallel in a slow curve toward a distant speck of darkness on the horizon, the dark, heavy cloud hanging overhead marking it as the Alerian capital, Ettermire. Clouds gathered over the roaring engine running those tracks, as well, swelling as if to burst. Flashes of light danced through the sky, threatening a spring storm.
Sweeping across the Alerian steppes, the iron horse chugged, snorted, and choked as it sped along the rails, Leon atop the smoothed-iron roof of one of its cars. He reclined against the cool metal, taking in the view, such as the monks could replicate it. Rushing wind carried the scent of the distant flowers to his nose, and it only smelled barely unlike the musky sweetness of the real Alerian blossoms in spring. It wasn't home, but it would do in a pinch.