Personal
Above the Clouds
The view from this high up was entirely unlike anything Senja had ever seen. Hanging on to one of the many pillars separating the floor and ceiling, she leaned out over the edge, her eyes tracing a path from the slope of the walls below her, down to the clouds, and across to the horizon. “I’ve never seen the tops of clouds before.”
“Not many have, I don’t think. It’s a long climb and there’s not really a good reason to make it.” Jesen stood a respectful distance from the edge, and looked out past her. His knees felt weird when he looked for too long, so he turned back toward safety. “Come on.”
Senja pulled herself back inside, and followed. “Is it much farther?”
“No, just two more floors.” Jesen pointed to an open doorway, where some stairs could be seen.
“Ugh! It’s so far away! Why is this place so big?”
“No one knows, it just is. Whoever built it wanted it this way. And that’s not so far, we’ll be there in twenty minutes if you don’t dawdle.”
“Twenty minutes, sure. And then another half hour up the stairs, and then fuck knows how far to the next ones.”
“Do you always complain like this? How did I never notice?”
“Fuck you, Jesen. You tricked me into this expedition, you never said it’d take a week.”
“Did you not wonder why we brought so much stuff? And two weeks, actually. It’ll take a week to get back down.”
“What?” Senja stared daggers at him. “So we’re not going to slide down the outside?”
“Haha! No way. The walls are too smooth, and there’s nothing to slow you down, except your own calamitous death when you slam into one of these holes.” He gestured at the view. “And I don’t want you losing all my stuff when you tumbles the rest of the way down.”
“Calamitous, nice. You suck.”
Jesen grinned. “Come on, I’ll race you.” He trotted off toward the stairs, his heavy pack swaying side to side.
Senja clomped angrily, her own pack too heavy to even pretend to race. She called after Jesen’s back. “You suck!”
Three hours later, they had climbed the last two sets of stairs, and though Jesen said they had arrived, Senja wasn’t sure what they’d arrived at. The view was much the same, she thought the clouds were probably different, but the sky was the same blue and the sun hadn’t moved at all. It’d be ten more days before it set, its movement across the sky more of a belief than something she could measure.
“So?” she asked. “What now?”
“So check this out.” He pointed to a paint mark on a short column that ended in a frenzy of sharp edges.
Senja thought it looked like the stump of a tree that had been blown over. A black crystal tree that shined purple when light hit it. It seemed dangerously sharp, and Senja didn’t want to get too close. “What does that mean?”
“Well,” Jesen pulled a stick out of his pack. It had a paint mark on it. “Look.” He placed the stick on the floor, against the broken column, the paint mark on the stick lower than the mark on the column.
“What about it?”
“Those marks were the same height when I made them, last time I was up here.”
Senja thought about that. She looked at the marks, looked at the stick. It hadn’t been cut recently, and she couldn’t think of any way to move the paint mark. Perhaps it was a different stick, she thought, but looking at the serious face Jesen was wearing made her think that was not very likely. “So it’s, what? Growing?”
“I think so. Slowly, but yes.”
“This place is weird.”
“Yeah.” Jesen had pulled out a notepad, and was writing something in it.
Senja looked up at the ceiling above the column. There was a large, jagged hole there, and she squinted as she counted the floors she could see. “Six floors.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s with the light?”
“What light?” Jesen leaned over the column and looked up. “There’s no light up there.” He paused. “Holy shit.”
“You see it?”
“There’s a light up there!”
“So it seems, so what?”
Jesen paused, and Senja could see several emotions flashing across his face.
“How much food do we have left?”
“About half. A little more.”
Jesen stared at her. “We need to get up there.”
“What? Why? What’s up there?”
“Well, nothing. I’ve been up there once, the next six floors are completely empty, and the last two have solid walls, no openings, so I never went back.”
“But now there’s a light.”
“Yeah.”
You want to climb for another day, and back down again, to see a light.”
“Senja, this place is dead. This whole place has no life, no plants, no animals, nothing. Except for this column, nothing ever changes. We have to check this out.”
“Six more floors will add two more days to this little jaunt,” she replied.
Jesen put the stick in his pack, and lifted it onto his shoulders. “Yup.”
“What if we run out of food?”
Jesen was already walking quickly toward the next open door and the giant stairs beyond. He laughed, but didn’t turn.
“I guess we can slide down.”
--NFG
[ Dec 13 2024 ]
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