Le Rue Felix

[Vylle Fyrrialt]

On the evening of Jaedaxia's surrender to the Empire, the government had changed the name of calle Bourgogne to rue Felix, in honour of Felix Arkdun, the Arkduni leader known as a friend and ally of the city before he was usurped by an Imperial puppet government. Of course, the Imperials instantly reversed the move. Few things would have been as disastrous to them as leaving a symbol of defiance for the people to rally behind. By changing the name of the street, to calle Coronae, they erased a part of the people's history – change all of the names and eventually the people will forget the old ones, and everything they represented.

But the residents of rue Felix were not so easily cowed. Rue Felix was painted on brick walls from one end of the street to the other. Businesses had renamed themselves to reflect the name change, like “Café Felix” and “Boulangerie sur Felix.” Not a single calle Coronae street sign stayed up longer than a single night until, at the peak of the Resistance, the Imperials stationed a guard at every signpost. Thus the name survived the worst of the Occupation.

The street cut a diagonal through the Ponts arrondissement, and there were several footbridges along its length. It was an area of the city to itself, with its own character and liveliness. It was densely populated with a combination of students, thanks to its proximity to l'universitie Socrates de Ambergois, local bohemians, and several foreign and ethnic communities. The houses were a motley of two-to-three story townhouses, made of grey bricks or wood brightly painted in yellow, blue, or red. Unique to rue Felix, though, were the curving iron staircases on the outsides of all the houses, a building practice developed to save money during the Jaedaixan Rennaissance, between the end of the aristo-wars and the day the gates opened to the Empire. Since then it had become iconic of rue Felix.

Most of the shops, cafés, pubs, and the small market on Felix were on the blocks near its intersection with calle des Arbres. This was where some of the most eccentric individuals could be found hanging out any time of the brightening, lively from about mid-morning straight through to a few hours before dawn when it quieted down, leaving only a handful of cats lounging around, slinking through the shadows and chain-smoking. Everything had its flair. Most of the cafés were small and intimate, some of them designed for high-brow academics and the poncy artistic type, others more interesting, like le Café d'arome, where every table was a chessboard with pieces, and Mezzanine, a two story café connected to a student pub called the Arkduni, which put local avant-garde paintings on display and regularly held poetry slams, readings, and hired minstrels. Mezzanine was also noted for their dessert tray: majhoub.

There were bookstores, more pubs, bakeries, and the farmer's market, held daily, which mostly just sold breads, meats, cheeses, vegetables, firewood, and coal. Artists' ateliers (studios) were also a common sight on rue Felix.

On the north end of rue Felix was the parc Felix, four square block green space with a cobbled centre around a fountain. This was where the chansons de rue (buskers and musicians) gathered to play for spare change, where the residents came just to hang out, and largely known as the safest place to score for qaifa or keif in the city. Across the street from the far end of the park was a large abandoned villa, rumoured to be the residence of the mysterious ex-thane Kiredis Thayron before he moved into the Thanal Manor. Thayron was never seen in the public during his whole tenure as Thane, having appeared out of nowhere on the political scene, and was never found or arrested by the Imperial Legions. Many insisted that he was a devout Borthanist, although so little was known about him nothing could be proven.

Southeast of the Felix-des Arbres area on the rue and its sidestreets was the biggest Esh'lahier area in Jaedaxia, known as Petit Ethgan'tor. The Esh'lahier composed the majority of the Elven population in the city, as Jaedaxians had come to accept them – though this had perhaps contributed to the very small community of Silrosian and Medonian Elves. Esh'lahier cafes and restaurants continued the Felix-des Arbres commercial district, and were the neighbourhood's cultural centres.

Further along the rue past Petit Ethgan'tor was another racial ghetto where the Katta lived. Although most of the significant Katta population lived spread throughout Defiance, Freeport, and Ponts, they'd congregated into their own neighbourhood in an area called Sud Bourgogne, after the street's old name. Most of the Arakmatans who wound up in Jaedaxia, through business or migration, also went to live in Sud Bourgogne, finding the Katta familiar, and there were a few traditional Arakmatan coffee houses and, for those in the know, qaifa dens and keif cafes.

Every month or so the people on rue Felix found some reason to decorate their houses and throw a street festival, whether for a religious celebration specific to the Esh'lahier, Katta, or Arakmatans, or because of the student population. This was the energy that drew Jaedaxia's most eccentric characters to the neighborhood.