When a walker travels a long time through the wild regions, he feels the desire for a city.
The desire grows until he forgets why he has become a walker, what it was he walked from. When you’ve lived with the city’s voice all your life you learn not to hear it. But when you enter the beast’s lair for the first time, you hear every little growl, every yawn it makes, every second of the day.
It growls and burps and farts and snorts and does everything it can to drown out your lone voice in the crowd. Yet alone in the wilderness - with only shadows of faces, smoke and mirrors for company - he forgets its faults and desires its company.
The city of his dreams holds a thousand faces, each with its own to key to let free its seven magpies free. It holds a thousand souls, all at rest, each free to pass their time as they see fit: in conversation, in reflection, passing each minute generously around, guarding each second frugally. It feeds him, rests him, smiles at him, jokes with him, leaves him be when that is what he needs. Indeed, this city of his dreams is all that he desires: the only place he can be walking to.
He finds the door to his city of desire - open, inviting, refreshing - and he walks into its heart.