G.R. Nanda

2200 Blues Chapter 52: Part One

Note to readers: “2200 Blues” is a novel in progress, and each chapter is an early draft in its unfolding journey. Your thoughts and reactions are invaluable, guiding its evolution and refinement. 2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.

Nickel’s head throbbed no matter how long or hard he rubbed it against his palm or the flimsy cot. He tried to remember the words of the Oracle—the confidence she taught him in the face of the mystic visions, the ever-present force of the acht-chi. He wasn’t quite ready to see her yet. Theren had to sequester Nickel inside his sleeping hut to keep him away from Li’s demands for him to be held at the smelting station for interrogation alongside the new foreigner who’d encroached upon Thraíha grounds. While Theren worked out his gripes with Li and with the tribal authorities to deal with the new visitor, Nickel was to stay inside the hut alone as the rest of his cohort were either out hunting like Farrul or dealing with the tumult of the new visitor.

Nickel had stayed in the canyons for five months. Outside of the Thraíha culture, all he’d known were Steve and Farrul, an eclectic duo from far corners of the Ether, as far from each other as they were from Nickel.

He wondered who this new visitor was and where he came from. The first people he’d seen since exiting his hovercraft residence of stasis were all those he’d met in the Atlantic Canyons. The relief he felt with interacting with humans and forming relationships was mingled with an ache for the familiar. He yearned for someone from the U.R. colonies, let alone the colony he grew up on. He yearned for someone who could understand and relate to more of his background—better understand his fears beyond the one of immediate survival. The anguish of losing his virtual hovercraft home and the panic of bare survival had once consumed him.

Now that he had found a reliable roof over his head and food to feed him, his mind had reopened the crevice of longing that had been gaping open when he had been cruising on his hovercraft.

While milder now that he had found company and a regiment, there was more he was searching for.

The visions he’d had, while terrifying and simulating the brink of death each time, had brought him closer to a larger perspective—an openness he couldn’t quite describe or even begin to comprehend. It was a consciousness without a form—a form he desperately wanted to reach, more so after his trip with Theren in the underground tomb.

Nickel had since calmed down from the delirious stupor he’d emerged from the cave in. He’d found the Thraíha culture he inhabited to be more attuned to a spirit world—more conducive to the visions and mirages stimulated by the fog. However, his throat still burned and was scratchy from all the screaming he’d done in the tomb.

Breathe. The Oracle’s voice was crystal clear in his mind. Pump your chest like Father Hawk before a flight. Her words guided him through the acht-chi trance he’d done with her. Breathe slowly and deeply through your nostrils. Reminding himself of her words had gotten him to calm himself, but he still felt at a loss to make sense of the old man at the table, the Last Supper, and the terrifying explosion of the atomic bomb.

He still couldn’t shake the paranoia. When he’d first left the U.R. on his hovercraft, he’d been fleeing from a world order on the brink of collapse. Here in the canyons, he found himself on the edges and outskirts of that collapse. The whispers of a collapsing—or an already collapsed world—teased at him.

He knew he looked like an artificial human to many of the U.R. He looked like the Pan Asian stock of genetically engineered humans, many sent to the U.R. colonies. In the ancient religious rat race, there was always another to fear.

He wanted to eventually escape the canyons, but what answer would he find to that situation—the experiences he held from the past?

Nickel squeezed his eyes, shaking his head and sighing. He rolled over on his cot, rubbing his eyes. An overwhelming anxiety threatened to engulf him whenever he was still or silent enough to think through the reservoir of thoughts and unprocessed dilemmas and experiences flitting through the back of his mind.

He reached over the side of the cot, grabbing at the book he’d stowed away underneath it. He plopped it on his bed in front of his chest as he lay stomach down on the cot. The book was open to a random page.

Nickel began flipping through the pages, scanning the bodies of text and the occasional diagrams interrupting them. He needed to take his mind off of his mind, and he searched for the right thing to do the job.

Nuclear Power Plant Construction Phase: 2099-2111

A gentle shiver ran through his scalp as he perused the starting page of this chapter. He had his finger at the corner of the page, hesitating to turn it over. He realized it was the same trepidation that had put him off opening the book.

From the moment he discovered it inside the temple’s wind tunnels and read its title, he’d known it held answers about the history of the canyons, the Hedonim project before the nuclear accident. It would give him answers he was looking for—help him piece together history and form insights about Hedonim. It would help him find a path to Hedonim besides the supernatural insights and limited geographical knowledge of the Thraíha.

He turned the page, flipping it over, but just before, a familiar voice called to him.

“Nickel,” came an old man’s voice, rasping with an uncleared throat. Nickel closed the book and looked up wide-eyed.

Steve looked at him from across the room in a long, flowing tunic instead of his grubby and stained aerial worker’s clothing. His left arm hung in a splinter of bandaged cloth. His long gray-white beard was even longer than it had been before he, Nickel, and Farrul had crashed Nickel’s hovercraft into the Thraíha compound.

His face was cleaner than when they’d last been together. His wrinkles and lines were crisper. His eyes, though wearier looking with his eyelids closer to one another, were beaming with a warm light. The wide-reaching, fuzzy, and hazy lines of his beard stretched to the side in a slowly stretching smile.

“At least one of us looks better than the last time we met,” Steve called, grinning and letting out a dry chuckle.

Silence followed as Nickel opened his mouth in a small “o,” too dumbfounded to speak. A rush of emotions flowed through him, mingling with surprise, fear, and the memories he’d formed with Steve. Seeing him here reminded him that despite the hostilities, desolation, and alienation of the Atlantic Canyons, it still held a semblance of home—and a familiarity bestowed by the man standing before him who’d given him warmth and care when Nickel had found himself all alone—without whom Nickel wouldn’t have been here, having traversed this far into the canyons or found the Thraíha.

“I was worried about you,” Nickel muttered. He felt suddenly bashful, shied by his fluttering heart and the wave of emotions he felt. A clatter of Thraíha and their hunting gear resounded across the walls of the huts; back from a hunt, though Nickel could barely recognize the source of the clapping sounds and beats of thrumming feet. “I didn’t know when I would see you,” Nickel said, letting out a nervous chuckle. He rolled his legs off the side of the cot, sitting himself up on its surface. “They told me you were seriously hurt, that I couldn’t visit you.”

“Well, the Thraíha really are serious ’bout their quarantine laws, aren’t they?” Steve asked, chuckling again. He shook his head. “They’ve lost their minds in the fog more’n me, Nickel! Believe in spirits and magic hawks, can ya’ believe that?”

The sides of Nickel’s mouth stretched high across his face into a wide grin. He couldn’t stop smiling, looking at Steve. His exuberance was overjoyous, overflowing.

“Well, are you going to stop smiling and come over here to help an old man walk acro—”

He need not finish the words, for Nickel leaped off of his cot, rushing at Steve, pushing the words out of his mouth in surprise.

Nickel grabbed him in a giant hug, wrapping both of his arms around Steve, careful to keep his left arm wrapped around his waist below his left arm hung in a sling.

Steve gasped, staggering back slightly as he shifted his feet ever so slightly. Nickel pressed the side of his face firmly into Steve’s tunic, savoring his presence.

Steve wheezed and emitted soft mutters, slowly inching back on his heels. He didn’t wrap his arms around Nickel in return. Understanding that, feeling a jolt of self-consciousness, Nickel let go of his arms around Steve, taking steps backward to view Steve’s disposition better.

Steve closed his eyes, wincing as he bit his lower lip, expressing pain and discomfort.

“Ohh! I’m sorry!” Nickel exclaimed.

“Ss’ okay,” Steve muttered under ragged breaths. “Good thing you didn’t hug my hurt hand over here.” He wiggled his left arm in the air.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Nickel said, taking steps closer to Steve.

“I know you didn’t,” Steve snapped, grunting as he shifted his weight. He smiled and eyed Nickel curiously. “Remember, I’ve been living in the canyons outside of hovercraft longer’n you.”

They both chuckled; Steve louder.

“I’ve had my share of injuries to go around,” Steve husked.

“What happened to your arm?” Nickel asked. “I ran like hell out of the hovercraft when the Thraíha ambushed. I didn’t see where you went after that—or what happened to you.”

“Ahggh,” Steve said, nodding his head. “Feels like ages ago… But so does yesterday… We split up, remember?”

The night of the Thraíha ambush came rushing back to Nickel, the stark and panicked memories.

“Ohh yeah,” Nickel said. “Farrul and I were supposed to run away together… Where did you run?”

“As far back away from you,” Steve said. “I went around the back of the Thraíha’s walls. Didn’t see a pile of rocks in the dark and—” Steve raised his left arm. “—that’s how this happened. Hurt worse than anything in years. I’ve been real careful to take care of myself here—stay safe in this world of rocks—and what do you know—I broke my arm falling on a pile of rocks.”

Nickel chuckled, and Steve smiled, causing Nickel to laugh even harder.

“Well, at least you got somewhere away from the flagpole,” Nickel said, grinning. “Looks like your arm turned into a pile rocks too!”

“Aaaaaaaaaarghhhhh!” Steve roared, feigning outrage. He took a few steps closer to Nickel, pretending to swat at him with his good arm. “Too soon! Too soon!”

Nickel giggled, walking back a few steps to lean on his cot.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Steve rasped through a grin.

“I’m sorry,” Nickel said through laughter. “But you’re okay, right?” Nickel’s smile faltered as he looked at Steve’s right arm. “Will it be back to normal?”

“Ah, this?” Steve rumbled as he raised his right arm and looked down at it. “This we don’t know.”

Nickel’s heart sank. He pursed his lips, feeling embarrassed for making light of Steve’s injury.

Update: Chapter 51 Part One and Part Two Available Now

I hope this message finds you well.

I am writing to clarify a mistake in a recent blog post title. The post published today was mistakenly titled “Chapter 50 Part One” in the email sent to my subscribers. This was an error, and I apologize for any confusion it may have caused.

To clarify:

The post previously titled “Chapter 50 Part One” is actually Part One of Chapter 51.
I have also published Part Two of Chapter 51, which you can now find on my blog.

You can read these chapters here:

I apologize for any confusion. Feel free to ask any questions and share feedback on my chapters. Stay tuned for Chapter 52 next week!

Best regards,

G.R. Nanda

2200 Blues Chapter 51: Part Two

The corrosive weight of sitting slithered around his hips and up his spine, seeping through his body like he had been seated for an eternity—another mark of the hovercraft.

“Thousands of years of the second,” the old man said, pointing two fingers in the air, “most powerful technology, religious dogma.”

A cataclysmic shattering reared through the earth behind the table. The sky was nearly comprised entirely of dust and rubble, an ocean frothing at the very height of Nickel’s vision.

“Undone, denied by the sins of fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers’…………….”

The body of flying dirt rippled over, joining the skyline entirely. The curtain of dirt grew warmer, its color lighter as a brightness began to grow at its center.

“The rape of the soul gone too long, we replaced the technologies of the mind with technologies of the eyes.”

As the growing light behind the curtain of dirt spread throughout its thickness, silhouettes of rectangles and squares formed across the dirt, wrapping around its curvature.

“Nickel, let’s go!” called Theren. His voice came from the far right, a dull noise. A pale halo of light grew around the old man. It was a beam of light coming from a hatchway that Theren was slowly opening from the far right corner of the cavern ahead.

The growing light dulled the image of the old man and his seated accomplices, grazing Nickel. He cowered, cringing at the pale light touching him.

“Come on!” Theren shouted. He was just barely visible against the thickening wall of light he stood against in front of the hatch that he opened. “What are you waiting for?” he called helplessly.

“Will you leave me?” rasped the old man. Looking away from the pale light at the hatchway, the image of the old man resumed its resolution, becoming clearer to Nickel once again. Who did he want to disappoint?

“I don’t know,” said Nickel. To whom did he want his resolve to matter more to? His young Thraíha guide or this phantom of a Thraíha ancestor?

“You’ve been invited to my private mass,” the old man said in a lower voice. He took a sip of his blood-dripping glass. “The authorities of history have let you in here— let me in here. Will you not honor my Eucharist?”

The wall of dirt fizzed like bursting chemicals, compounded by the force of the bomb rearing the earth apart.

“The quick deaths fueled the empire of dreams,” the old man said. “That’s why the slow death of the soul is preferred.”

The glowing rectangles curving around the wall of dirt grew brighter. As they brightened like ascending suns, they appeared like the screens that Nickel had been used to viewing in his hovercraft, but inverted; instead of curving inward around him, they curved outwards, against the wall of dirt that had neared the dining table so much that spittle of flying dirt shot out at the old man and his accomplices’ heads. A clump of dirt dropped into his wine glass of dark red blood.

“The forces of nature and desire denied so long were stripped from their bondage, and their abundance turned into a new bondage!”

The light of the bomb’s explosion made the ephemeral hovercraft screens glow even brighter.

“They made a whore of Mary Magdalene!” the old man screamed. A large flowing streak of wispy light emerged from the halo-like screens, flowing like a serpent, as wispy as smoke.

“The burster children of men sucking the lurid milk of her bosom— the milk of Hedonim!”

The light grew brighter, tinging more of the flying dirt, now cascading over the shoulders of the men, coating the table in a shower of dirt and rubble.

The accomplices unfroze, shouting at one another, their pre-existing argument resuming. As more dirt splashed against their faces, they whirled around to face the oncoming waves, gasping and crying out in horror.

By then it was too late. The atomic blast sheared through the table, making its seated inhabitants and food disappear in a blinding flash of light that soon overpassed the hovering screen-like images.

The trailing wisp of smoke burned hot in the oasis of exploding light, morphing yet again into the familiar image of Nickel’s dreams: the singing sorceress. The seductive enigma of her form materialized out of the smoke. She was long as a boa constrictor, as large as a beast, and as shapely as the women of Nickel’s dreams.

A shearing pain erupted inside Nickel’s chest as she locked the burning pits of her eyes with his. She swam towards him, her naked body writhing in the air.

Her jaws opened, growing as wide as a dragon’s, sinking over him as everything grew to an unbearably hot and blinding light. The screams that had become deafening were all Nickel could sense when the light finally faded.

The remaining of his senses returned bit by bit. The screaming had subsided, save for one, though to whom it belonged remained to be seen.

Nickel sat on a chair like he had before, but the table before him was broken in half, its cleaved halves— the shards of their edges meeting below at the middle of the rock floor. There was a fallen metal cross, stained by black marks with only remnants of embossed patterns remaining on its surface. There was no pitch black as the contours of its rock surfaces were clearly visible.

Sitting across from Nickel, in front of the shattered remains of the dining table, was a skeleton, wrapped in withered rags around its arms, torso, and pelvis.

On its lap, sitting on bone and withered cloth, was a large tome. Its pages were yellow, crumpled but torn at the edges, streaked in dirt. Its leather binding and jacket were equally withered. Embossed face up on the cover were the words:

HOLY BIBLE

A burning sensation rippled through Nickel’s throat, making it unbreathable. It was then that Nickel realized that the last screaming voice he heard was not another’s— but his.

2200 Blues Chapter 51: Part One

They emerged in a dark room. As soon as Nickel started walking behind Theren, the humidity of this space hit him. It was a far warmer feeling of wetness than the viscous moisture of the fog he was used to, fleeting whispers of moisture. The space around him reeked with a dank and soggy scent hinting at a body of water.

“Two Thraíha visiting me, rruh,” crooned the old man, his voice quieter but sharper, more immediate, closer to Nickel.

Theren turned to look at him, just barely discernible under the circle of illuminated light coming through the opening in the ceiling. He put his fingers to his lips to silence Nickel. Then he whirled around and stepped forth into the darkness, disappearing entirely.

The blackness was omnipresent. Nickel turned his hands over, flicking his wrists to see what contours and edges of them he could in the fading light. He stumbled forward to stay closer to Theren, whom he couldn’t see. His footsteps thumped in the dark, their dull echoes broken by the narrowness of the space. In just a few footsteps, he disappeared, every remaining line of his body melting into the all-consuming black. The humming clamor of the fighting Thraíha disappeared from far above as he walked further into the darkness.

Fear coursed through him, jolting the nerves throughout his body. He could no longer see or hear himself—not his footsteps, not the gentle ruffling of his robe against his bare skin. He couldn’t feel the book he’d kept close against his body under his clothes with great discomfort. But the fear frazzling his nerves kept him moving. He could feel the thrust of muscles and limbs he could not see, taking steps at a time. The fear moved him, and the fear was what he felt buzzing at his soles where he could no longer feel the slightly bumpy surface of the rock.

Don’t leave me, Theren. Nickel kept moving, electricity moving up through his legs, down, pushing on to the earth, moving him to satiate the fear of being left behind in this cave that threatened to engulf him.

“Why do you pass through the sepulchre of forgotten dreams?” rasped the old man. The voice was like a gust, buzzing and threatening to blow Nickel over. He felt blood rushing to his side before a jolt of nervousness pushed the momentum of his legs back to the left side.

“Don’t say anything,” whispered Theren. The voice seemed not to come from a specific location in the space but from all around, stemming from Nickel’s mind, only heard in his mind.

The rush of vertigo continued, ebbing forward, impelling Nickel forward. The silence was as pitched as the surrounding darkness. The darkness and silence were a void pitching through Nickel’s eyes and ears. The buzzing fear was a vibrating presence within him, but it had no center or focal point. He couldn’t tell where his eyes were—if they were closed or open, it wouldn’t have made a difference. It was like he didn’t have eyelids to begin with.

“I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe,” the old man hissed. “Things that would stop you dead. Things you don’t know I carry through my ages but that can still hurt you!”

A slithering noise reappeared, chiming like a rattlesnake. A shudder swept through Nickel’s consciousness. He felt tremors without feeling their physical focal points, like he was a rippling wave of air.

“The brothers of Abraham have been dead for almost a hundred years!” screamed the old man. “So I ask you,” he bellowed even louder, “WHY DO YOU PASS THROUGH THE TOMB OF BROKEN DREAMS?”

A shattering scream came from the right, losing its point of impact almost as soon as it appeared, turning into crisp cracklings that crackled through space with no clear direction.

“God is dead!” screamed the old man. He emitted a wheeze that crackled through the air like a gust of static. “He died between the Mediterranean Sea and—and the Jordan River!”

Screams erupted from everywhere. Human voices joined in shrill cries. They buzzed in a panoramic swarm, intensifying, resounding as if from within Nickel and from without.

“Yahweh! Mohammed! Jesus!” screamed the old man. “Killed in a bout of anger! Lying dead, wrestling in their arms!”

The screams turned to a hollow rendering, echoing and rising in volume. In these moments, Nickel only knew pain—a terrible crushing pain without a center, upon which he felt his body being directly crushed. It was a pain as familiar as the lurid trappings of the Ether. He felt the pain he felt whenever he’d been ensnared within the Ether, alone in his hovercraft, the pit deepening through his chest. Except instead of the rush of sensory thrill he’d felt before, he felt a hollow anguish engulfing him.

“Brothers and sisters killed by the texts!” the old man crooned.

The folding of air before a fire billowed before Nickel. The bright spark of a flame shot through the space, long and silent, wickering at the ends of a candle. The flame was smaller than what the volume of the billowing indicated.

The candles stood on a small silver plate, illuminating the gaunt, withered face of the crooning old man. His hair stood out over his scalp in sparse wispy strands. His jaw was angular, sharp despite the folds of sunken flesh just above his Adam’s apple.

Above his sharp, hooked nose were large eyes, creased at the edges by age but widened by receding eyelids so far back as if his eyes were about to fall out of their sockets.

Two blood-streaked, bulbous eyes were trained on a plate before him, slowly rising to meet Nickel’s sight. A thrilling tremor threatened to erupt in the air—and Nickel’s consciousness.

“Welcome to the Last Supper,” intoned the old man, the air rushing out of him like he was gasping. More sparks of shooting flames emerged to his sides, revealing candles and men seated to his right and left, positioned in various poses, looking in different directions and wearing various emotive expressions all trained upon each other. They were reacting to each other—in the middle of conversation. But they were frozen as still as marble statues, unblinking.

“We’ve eaten from the carcass of righteous flesh, torn asunder from endless pillage, rape, and conquest,” said the old man. He and his frozen accomplices were dressed in tunics lined in silvery patterns, old-fashioned attire like those worn by Templars of the twenty-first century. “We’ve drunk from the blood of countless enemies just to try and get a seat next to God.”

In the span of a blink that never occurred, the men surrounding the old man morphed into angry expressions. They were seated in aggressive postures, pointing fingers at one another, leaning into each other’s faces with wide-open mouths frothing with cries unheard, leaning away from assaults. Frozen in time.

The flames wavered, the candles next to the center blinking out before rippling up the air into existence once more.

The old man took a sip from his glass, letting its contents of thick, steely red blood stream through his lips. A soft buzzing appeared from the table as a few flies flitted over the dried, ragged meat of human flesh heaped upon the plates. They were heaved, torn apart, filled with gaping holes, entirely missing holes where they’d been carved out by knives and forks. Cracked and crisped at the edges. Cooked by war.

“You’ve walked upon the Last Supper of the United Republic’s grandfathers and their bastard brother of the East,” crooned the old man. “But you’re late to dinner!”

A gusty wind shrieked, sending a chill and blowing the baggy tunics of the men to the left. The candle flames rippled and wavered, still holding on to their longevity.

“Nearly two hundred years late!” the old man rasped. He glared at Nickel under two frowning, viscous eyebrows. His eyes were still bulbous, unfolded by his eyelids.

“You’ve died a hundred deaths to get here—thousands,” said the old man. “MILLIONS!” he continued.

Gunfire ricocheted behind the long dinner table. The faraway haze of fire and explosions drifted on the horizon. Missile fire rained down like slow lightning bolts.

“We stole the powers of God while seeking his salvation,” moaned the old man. His voice shook, his expression delirious. His chest heaved up and down. “We made a sacrilege of history and religion—all while fighting for them!”

A blinding flash of light grew like an exploding sunrise over the horizon. Only the ball of light grew into a pillar, expanding over the earth, growing and ever-expanding. A mushroom cloud darkened and rolled over the heavens.

A thunderous crackle ripped through the earth, louder than anything Nickel had heard before, crushing the world as shock waves of rubble and dust roiled over the earth.

“We killed God!” screamed the old man, his shrill voice just barely audible over the earth-shattering tumult. “Found new gods in his image, fought over them as the brothers of Abraham slipped into oblivion!”

The table was shuddering violently, the plates clattering in vibrating blurs. The cloud of dust rippling across the ground was nearing, increasing in height behind the table like an oncoming ocean wave.

“We abandoned our ideals, ripped the wombs out of our women! Castrated our men! Made the body a damned vessel for our politics!”

The dust billowed behind, blowing high into the air like a hurricane sweeping through.

“Come,” the old man said, patting the table before him, motioning towards the chair that materialized before the table. “Join me for the Eucharist of the future, condemned by the past!” The old man’s face stretched into a sickly smile, his cheeks and his gums widening across his face, splitting its sides.

He lifted a platter of dried, bloodied meat, carrying it over the table all the while continuing to stare at Nickel, unblinking. He placed the plate on the table, causing a soft clink of surfaces still audible over the roiling chaos.

“Come eat from the Last Supper of God before the Messiah of our dreams comes to kill us all!”

Momentum pushed Nickel through the air; the weight and strain of flesh returned as the force of momentum flashed through his limbs. The pain and horror of physical consciousness returned to him. The insecurity and shame of stumbling towards another human returned. The hatred of self and the sense of inadequacy he knew so well in the face of the other.

The other sat in front of him, looming, wrinkled, a waxing cursed body waiting to become a corpse. The old man’s body was taut with a domineering tension, waiting to spring upon Nickel, expressing his curse as he collapsed in the throes of death. The familiar nylon of his piloting uniform crinkled over Nickel’s skin. No longer in the Thraíha tunics he’d entered the cave in, he found himself in his jockey outfit worn when he was still living in his hovercraft. He crashed onto the chair, twisting his torso around its frame and sprawling his legs across the front of the chair.

2200 Blues Chapter 50: Part Two

“Come on!” husked Nickel’s companion, tugging at his wrists, letting go to trot away. Nickel followed, and they snaked around the crowd and threw an alley in-between two stone huts. They climbed up boulders at the end of the alley, moving behind a building carved out of the rock. They crawled through a niche in the rock that was slightly depressed.

The niche darkened as they scooted further into it on their butts. The din quieted as they sunk into the cool darkness of the niche.

Nickel’s feet nearly hit the man as he stopped. Nickel splayed his feet out against the sides of the tunnel and pressed hard against their surfaces with his hands, to keep them in place from ramming into his guide.

“Wait,” muttered the Thraíha. A clattering sounded dully against the rock as Theren’s feet dropped through. He gracefully slid through the opening in the floor. He let the lower half of his body disappear through the hole, holding his torso above the hole with his hands he used to push against the floor of the tunnel next to the hole. He craned his neck to look around at Nickel, not appearing strained at all.

“Be careful,” he said, “don’t land too hard on your way down.”

“How far down is the bottom?” asked Nickel.

“Ahh, you made it down here,” came a voice from inside the cellar.

Nickel’s eyes widened and he frowned at Theren.

Theren shook his head.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “not bad company.”

“Are you standing on the bottom?” Nickel asked.

“Yeah, just hop down,” he said. “But we can’t stay long to talk or look around,” he added. “This is a short cut to get you back to the eastern quarters and your hut back in time.”

“Hey, watch where you’re coming!” bellowed a voice from below, within the underbelly. Theren froze. A gentle trickling emanated from the room below. “If you don’t come down here with a good reason—.” The voice was a loud baritone like that of an old man “—then, you’re coming down here to pay!”

“Don’t mind him,” Theren muttered under his breath. Nickel wanted to ask him who that man was, but felt paralyzed by a fear he couldn’t understand.

“The evil spirits are calling me!” crooned the old man. His voice warbled as he spoke, sounding like a moan. “If you come down, they’ll come through me! To you!”

A sharp squeal of swiveling hinges cut through the room below the cavern floor, the noise sounding flat against the stone floor. Dead silence followed; the old man’s voice muted completely. Only the faint dripping resumed, quieted by long and slow intervals.

Nickel choked on his questions and fear, unable to voice them.

“Just follow me,” Theren said, shaking his head and signaling at the stone floor. “I forgot about him. I haven’t been down here in a long time. I honestly don’t know what it’ll look like down there……………but my legs are still standing on the ground below, so that’s a good sign.” He chuckled, turning his head slightly as to wait for Nickel to react.

Nickel said nothing, finding himself unable to lighten up. He didn’t know if Theren was serious or not. But his nonchalance and forced dry brittle cackling of forced laughter seemed to tell him otherwise.

Theren gave a soft grunt, heaving himself on his hands, sliding them outwards as he allowed more of his torso to slip through the opening. His feet patted the floor of the room below in dull thumps, muffled by the barrier of the tunnel, but sharply sounding amidst the rendered silence of the room below.

“Stay close by my side,” Theren wheezed as he slid his chest down through the hole. “Don’t stare at anything too long,” he added. “And you’ll be fine—”

“Why can’t we just go through the courtyard above ground?” complained Nickel. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“The other Thraíha are on to you Nickel,” Theren said. “Looks like the fighting up there is because we have a Cast-out in our midst.”

“A Cast-out?” said Nickel.

“The visitor—or intruder,” Theren said. “They’re going to look at you the same way until they sort it out. I can’t be seen with you either so this is the only way I can get out too. Just hurry up and follow me!”

Theren slipped out through the hole entirely. Nickel put his legs through after him, extended them on the floor to slide out along his back.

2200 Blues Chapter 50: Part One

Coming down the canyon cliffs from the entrance of the temple, the surrounding spires were illuminated in their ghastly skeletal forms through the bright orange of the morning fog. It was early enough in the day that their colors were more visible in the fainter orange of the fog. They were stark white walls and cleaved towers stripped of their surfaces and anatomy. Belts of disused fueling panels wrapped around the white and gray surfaces patched with rashes of bloodred rust. The cemetery of nuclear infrastructure quickly disappeared as Nickel was prodded along, traveling quickly down the cliffside, leaving the structures far from sight.

Theren left them with a wave, disappearing around a bend in the cliff consumed by the orange. Finding their way down was easier than climbing up, notwithstanding the dimness of the early morning they traversed to climb up. Following the young man across the short plane from the cliffs to the stone huts bordering the encampment, many dark silhouettes formed between the huts, drawn to the sight of Nickel and the man he followed.

“You haven’t met the missionaries yet, have you?” asked the young Thraíha man. His voice was a crisp sound against the gravel crunching under their footsteps in the dead air.

Nickel frowned, looking up at the young man. He didn’t turn around. Nickel could only see the back of his neck, thick and wideset, with locks of hair spilling over his skin. He was beefy, large, another anathema to Nickel, Steve, and Farrul among the Thraíha.

“Missionaries……… no, who are they?” Nickel muttered. The young man kept walking ahead of him without turning around.

“I don’t know what else you’ve seen of the canyons,” the young man said in a quiet voice, huskier than before. “Or who else you’ve met.”

Nickel’s breath nearly caught in his throat. The dark silhouettes grew in number against the nearing horizon of huts. Nickel frowned in confusion, startled.

“Who else have you met?” the man asked.

“Your friend Steve and Farrul sure have been living here,” the man said. “They can’t be the only ones who know how to survive,” he said, turning his head to eye Nickel with a smirk. He turned back around, never missing a beat in his steady footsteps.

Nickel chuckled, looking down at the earth.

“I’ve met them. We help each other survive,” Nickel said. “I’m not so sure they were surviving that much before they met me.”

Now the man chuckled, still watching ahead.

“Just another collision—a bigger collision with the Past,” he said, stopping short of what Nickel surely thought would be followed by “World.”

Nickel gulped.

“Me or them colliding?” he asked, looking up at the man’s back.

“Both,” he said. “A bigger wave from the Past hitting what stranded from the Past.”

“Oy! Háthrouu ná chuurhá. Nickel háth gáth jurrá?” called a distant man standing at the edge of humans in the fog. He stepped out of his line, waving at the man.

Theren laughed, returning the wave.

“Ná, háth ní thraumun jurrá. Háthrú háthú há houu, thraá háthrá Farrul!” he yelled back, cupping his hand to his mouth. The Thraíha standing far away began to disperse, falling behind away from the huts.

“Everyone else is going to expect you to follow us,” the man said. Nickel opened his mouth to respond, feeling an uncertainty of words and thoughts weighing on his lips, causing them to hang open. “Everyone else sees only the part you can play for Thraíha.”

“I see more, though,” he continued. “I’ve paid attention to who you are and what you do. Farrul wants to leave us, that’s clear from how often he dismisses our practices.”

“You want to leave too, but I see what you do, Nickel. You follow our customs, but we all know you itch for the Quest.”

“What do you mean?” asked Nickel.

“You look for what you seek. You don’t leave us like Farrul, but you’re impatient for Hedonim.”

“I haven’t talked about Hedonim in a long while,” Nickel said, chuckling. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t have to talk about it,” the man said.

“I haven’t even heard anyone say the word Hedonim,” Nickel muttered. “Until now, why did you bring it up?”

“Easy, Nickel, no need to come on so strong,” the man said in a light-hearted tone. Nickel hadn’t even realized that he’d raised his voice.

“Are you sure it’s… Hedonim you care so much about?” Nickel implored.

“You talk this much to your Thraíha elders?” the man asked, laughing as he spoke.

“No,” said Nickel.

“Didn’t think so.”

“That’s because they feed me.”

“Oh! And I only take you on hunts—or away from them when you’ve earned it!” Theren turned around further than the first time, looking Nickel directly in the eye, a glint of amusement shining directly over his. He turned around, leaving Nickel to face the back of his neck and his silky, tousled black hair once again.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” he said, speaking without nearly missing a beat. “I know the real reason why you went slipping inside the wind tunnels behind the priests’ backs.”

Nickel froze, clutching the side of his robe once again. His eyes ceased blinking, watching as the young man continued walking, moving further away without noticing Nickel.

“What are you talking about?” muttered Nickel. “It was an accident.”

“You were looking for secrets where you were told not to look,” the man said.

“Told not to—” started Nickel. “No one told me not to go in the wind tunnels!”

The man turned to respond but looked away, far ahead of him. A commotion had broken out within the courtyard. Two darkened figures stood close to one another, standing opposite to one another in the middle of the yard while children ran around them.

“Ay Ay Ay,” the Thraíha man muttered. “You’re part of the chaos, Nickel.”

“What?” Nickel gasped, flustered. He gripped his book tighter against his chest, looking up at the man. The Thraíha man still didn’t turn around to look at Nickel. Instead, he just held out a beefy hand towards Nickel as if to hold him back.

“The Huntsman’s chased the rooster out of the pen,” he muttered. “Spirits are loose today,” he said, finally turning to look at Nickel with a wide smile. “You’re looking for forbidden fruits from the sky… and we have a new visitor.”

Nickel squinted at the man. Forbidden fruit? It seemed the more he talked to Theren, the more his speech sounded like riddles. The commotion was rising.

The figure of the two standing off in the yard with his back to Nickel and his accomplice shoved the person facing him. More children emptied from the neighboring nursery building. They ran out, many screaming as the fallen figure rose up and lunged at his attacker. Men standing off at the corners of the buildings closest to them rushed to the sides of the man who had pushed the person who must have been a violent heretic to the Thraíha—or an intruder?

“Is that one of the missionaries you were talking about?” Nickel asked, pointing in the direction of the altercation.

Theren didn’t respond right away. After a long moment, he cleared his throat.

“I don’t know, Nickel,” he said. His voice was lower-pitched, more even in tone, having lost his aloof playfulness. He exhaled sharply from his nostrils. “I didn’t think this would be this violent.”

Shouts of the men rang through the courtyard as they huddled, frantically advancing upon the outsider, whoever he was.

“Should we go back to the temple?” Nickel asked, squinting at his guide, his mouth hanging open. He couldn’t help but also consider restoring his book to the wind tunnel and the possibility of discreetly ridding himself of the object marking him a culprit.

“No, no, no,” his guide said, shaking his head. He stooped ever so slightly, groping his waist where the belt was with one hand. He pulled out a dagger from a small, narrow scabbard hanging from his belt, so dark as to blend in with his robes. He held the blade out, its very tip visible past the gentle billow of his robe.

“They won’t let us in. Priests work. If you’re not on the hunt, you have to attend the mass.”

“But it looks pretty bad,” Nickel said. The children had dispersed, and the mass of men clustered closer against each other, shouting at the intruder. They rummaged against each other, pushing further into the throng.

“You have no choice. We have to help them,” the man said. “Stay close at my side to my left but keep behind,” he said. They crept through the outskirts of the Thraíha encampment, walking around rock and stone. By the time they’d reached the encampment, the crowd of men had been pushed back towards the smelting station where Nickel and Farrul had been initiated mere hours ago.

Women carrying stone pitchers of water from the western grounds stopped around the scene, calling to various men caught in the frenzy.

“Where did he come from?” one of the women called. She was unheard over the din.

“The rat!” shouted a man emerging from the crowd. His clothes were rumpled, and the bindings of his robe undone. “Vramung sent him!” His long hair cascaded all over his head, disheveled by the tumult.

“This is Vramung’s doing!” shouted another man.

“Spirits are loose! We never should have brought him in!” a woman shouted, pointing at Nickel.

2200 Blues Chapter 49: Part Three

“What are you doing in there, boy?” asked the man. He leaned back and stooped his head through the opening and the shaft, directly facing Nickel.

“Nothing!” Nickel said. His heartbeat was a metronome, its palpitations coursing throughout his skin. His eyes were wide with fear, but he purposely relaxed them, breathing through his mouth. “Nothing, I just got lost in the dark, just slipped because it’s hard to see in here.”

The man scanned the interior of the wind tunnel, shaking his head.

“Hurry up,” he said, waving his hand at Nickel through the opening. He stepped back, pulling his head away. “I wasn’t supposed to wait for you, but I did,” he said. “Everyone else left for the hunt.”

“Are they going down the platform?” Nickel asked, ducking under the opening of the wind tunnel and following the Thraíha back out onto the ringed roof, now awash with more sunlight than when Nickel had entered the narrow tunnels.

“They’ve left the temple,” the Thraíha escorting him out said sharply. “I don’t know where you were when they called after the omen.”

“The omen,” Nickel repeated, attempting to show understanding. “Where did it go?” he asked. “The machine.”

“We’ll find out later today,” said the man in front of him.

“Or this morning,” came the voice of another Thraíha man walking in front of the men Nickel followed. Seeing him and his trailing scraggs of brown hair trailing over his neck, Nickel recognized him as Theren.

“Have you seen the other men?” asked the man facing Theren.

“Our men have all left the temple,” Theren said.

“That’s what I thought,” said the man facing him in a dejected voice. “Why are you still here then?”

“I could ask the same of you,” Theren responded coolly.

“I stayed behind because I escorted him,” the man said, waving at Nickel. “Shouldn’t you be watching the hunt?”

“Akela granted me a special provision,” Theren said. Nickel stood behind the man facing Theren, standing at his side.

“Special provision?” asked the younger man. “The hunting masters agreed to—”

“The hunting masters have been granted a shorter watch,” interrupted Theren.

“By whose orders?” asked the young man.

“By Akela himself,” responded Theren.

“What about Farrul?” Nickel asked.

“Your friend, Farrul, has shown great disinterest in our affairs,” Theren said.

A sinking feeling dripped through Nickel’s chest, coupled with a guilt-laden feeling of triumph and relief that Farrul wouldn’t hinder Nickel’s path.

“And great aptitude for other tasks,” finished Theren.

Nickel’s eyebrows raised, feeling genuine surprise at what he heard.

“Farrul will stay in our farm,” Theren said.

“He’s not out on the plain for the next hunt with the rest of the men?” asked Nickel.

“He has been taken aside,” Theren said. He walked closer to Nickel. “Before you can join the first ranks of our hunters, you must learn to pole the canyons.”

“Pole the canyons?” Nickel asked.

“Yes,” Theren said. “And in order to do that, unburdened by walking, you must reveal what you’ve hidden inside your robes.”

Alarm jolted through Nickel, sending him buzzing with fear. He smacked his lips, opened them, moving soundlessly with fear.

“W-what do you mean?” stammered Nickel.

“The material sticking out of your robes,” Theren said, pointing at the lump protruding from Nickel’s left side against his tunic and his robe. Looking down, Nickel observed that the lump was bigger than he’d first thought. The furry folds of his robe formed against the protrusion of the object, enlarging the protrusion.

“Ah,” exclaimed the young man, turning around to stare at Nickel, frowning. “So that’s why you were in there so long!”

“No!” exclaimed Nickel. “I wasn’t looking to steal anything in there!”

“So, let’s see it then!” said Theren, smiling. He walked closer to Nickel, standing still a few feet from him. He crossed his arms in an expectant pose. The flaps of his sleeves fluttered gently in the breeze.

“Let’s see it,” he repeated, raising his eyebrows. Nickel stood, awkward and undecided on what to do, or reveal from under his clothes, if he should reveal anything at all.

The younger Thraíha man turned on his feet, facing Nickel closer. “Let’s see it, Nickel,” he added in a softer tone, frowning and crossing his arms as well.

“All right,” Nickel husked, chuckling nervously. He rubbed his sleeves, distracting from the hidden book with nervous motions. “I didn’t take it from the wind tunnel.” His own lies smarted as he said it. He suppressed a wince as he felt one arise.

“You came with naught but your ceremonial garb,” intoned Theren in a bellowing voice. “Take it out!”

Nickel’s fingers shook as he buried them underneath the folds of his robe, hiding their fearful shivers as he wedged them under the fur. Not the book. He dared not touch the book pressing across his ribs. It was hidden, concealed by the folds of his robe billowing wider around his hips. He grabbed the knapsack whose edge stuck out at the front.

He pulled the sack out, staring at its brown leather surface instead of Theren or the younger man.

“Hmm!” Theren stepped closer to Nickel, his bulky forehead and his scraggly strands of brown hair looming over Nickel. Nickel met his eyes only after Theren had swiftly removed the article, pulling the small pouch of stone tools out of Nickel’s grip.

Theren squinted at Nickel, thumbing the pouch. He knows I’m hiding the book too.

The younger man scoffed.

“Really?” he asked in a voice of dull disappointment. “Nickel, I didn’t expect you to be thieving. I thought you were the Past Worlder we could count on.”

“Disappointed, but not without indication,” muttered Theren. He smirked lightly, tossing the pouch into the air, catching it, then clutching it close to his chest. He turned away.

Nickel pressed his left elbow deeper into the book pressed against his chest. Wedged just above his hip, where his tunic was tucked into his waist, it was yet to be noticed, or noted upon by either of the two Thraíha.

“I don’t know if I can trust you, or if I should,” Theren started. “But the hunt is not ready for you.”

A mix of feelings rushed through Nickel. He was disappointed at losing the prospects of joining the hunt, but his stolen book went undetected—a priest’s book at that.

“Am I losing my hunting privileges?” Nickel asked.

“Not just your hunting privileges,” Theren said, “but your right of quest—temporary probation period.”

Nickel’s eyes widened.

“But the quest!” he exclaimed.

“The quest can wait,” Theren said. “When I tell the priests—” he waved the pouch that he carried, “you won’t be allowed back in here until you’ve learned your lesson. No rites will be done for your quest until the priests have agreed to it.”

Nickel felt resigned, unresponsive to the news. He slowly pressed his arms closer to his body, together, making sure to conceal his book. He felt a crackle of nervous excitement coursing over his disappointment. Leaving the hunt behind, if he was sent back to the encampment, he could safely hide his book underneath his cot.

Theren started to turn, slipping the pouch under the folds of his robe. He walked across the roof towards the elevator hatch.

“Farrul will do,” he said, turning his head to look at the younger man standing across from Nickel.

“Farrul?” the younger man exclaimed. “He’s to take Nickel’s place?”

“I know Farrul couldn’t tell hawk from an unfriendly Thraíha, but we need a witness from the birthing ceremony. The Huntsman has taken the shape of a gazelle this morning. New beginnings await.”

“If I’m beginning with that boy, I’d rather begin again,” the young man said, turning to follow Theren.

“Enough said,” Theren replied, stepping over the elevator platform, his footsteps thudding and echoing loudly with each step. He bent his knees, squatting next to a lever, pulling it towards the floor. “Lead him to Oreve,” Theren said. The grating of the chugging elevator chains ensued, echoing from below the surface of the roof. “I don’t have time to teach him this lesson, but she can. Be quick, I have a hunt to attend to.”

2200 Blues Chapter 49: Part Two

The rest of the Thraíha hurriedly followed a procession around the bulky shafts crisscrossing the open-air roof, heading back to the pulley platform. Farrul was nowhere to be seen, likely hidden amongst the bustling Thraíha.

“Chung jurra! Chung jurra!” shouted many of the Thraíha. Their voices were lost to Nickel as the sound of wind chimes filled the air, clinking in a delicate but frenetic melody. Inside the gaping maws of the rectangular shafts, chiming trinkets sparkled in the rising sun.

Nickel ran over the roof, passing the twisting shafts snaking around it. He ran along a curving wall formed by the shafts, his ears tingling with the sound of wind chimes flitting from the gaping, pockmarked openings. He barely noticed their intricate shapes and patterns, welded to form letters of a cuneiform Nickel assumed to be of the Thraíha language. The trinkets were held together by string and rope in weblike matrices, spinning with the trinkets as points of cohesion, supporting the structures.

“Chung jurra! Chung jurra…”

Nickel found himself at an intersection of two lines of shafts meeting at a narrow opening. A bulky protrusion in the shafts on the right stuck out where Nickel stood.

“Hurry!” rasped a distant voice. “We must meditate before the hunt!” The winds thickened, and the chimes jangled around Nickel in a swarming melody.

The Thraíha were nowhere to be seen. Nickel ran around the protruding shaft, searching for them. Stepping into the narrow opening, he found himself in another open space surrounded by interweaving tunnels, their encircling rectangular plates punctured by more gaping holes, jagged along their edges, filled with melodious trinkets, their sounds lilting from one octave to another, often playing against each other in a rippling rhythm.

The trinkets were bright flashes of reflected light amidst the darkened, rusty shafts. He paid more attention to their patterns and shapes. Sharp protrusions ran along their tops. Their faces were inset with patterned marks of colors, flashing and darkening as they flitted away from the sun, revealing finer details of their engravings and embossed patterns. The rough edges of a crumbling texture spoke of a handicraft that Nickel could only imagine in the Thraíha.

The faces flitted to and fro, shaking in the wind, brightening and darkening as they shook on their pendants, jiggling the chains and beads hanging below, creating gentle but fast music.

Nickel found himself a few steps from a large opening in the shafts. He ducked under the jagged opening, avoiding the sharp edges of the cleaved metal. The delicate tremors of the instruments hanging beside his head chimed in his ears. Several strings of beads brushed his cheek, forming a flatter musical note as the beads slithered against each other on Nickel’s skin.

Expecting to feel the oncoming wall, Nickel was surprised at the length of the gaping hole in the shaft. More darkness beckoned where he expected a surface jutting in front of him, creating vertigo that threatened to topple him.

New clusters of jangling music emerged in the darkness, unseen but resounding from various points within the shafts, hanging diagonally to Nickel from the right and left.

Nickel stepped in that direction, walking to the right, stopping when he felt the pain of remonstrance at not finding the Thraíha. Where did they go? Nickel turned around, finding another opening tucked away in a corner before him, spilling light onto the edges of the wind chimes to the right. More pressingly, what was this place? And why was Nickel drawn here?

He stepped closer to the new wind chimes, despite the growing alarm at leaving the Thraíha behind. A tingling sensation and a patch of goosebumps rose over his flesh. The tingling slithered over the nape of his neck, even after the chill of the goosebumps had settled.

He hadn’t had that lingering sensation since his dreams of the singing sorceress. A growing flare of constriction rose through his chest, threatening him with the fear of becoming overwhelmed by another vision or similar trance. Yet nothing came, no vision sweeping him away from the earth and the dank atmosphere of the foggy canyons. Even as the tingling sensation remained, slithering over the nape of his neck, threatening to course over his spine but never going past mild tremors that started to slide down his neck onto the small of his back, but never actually making it down.

The music was a collection of islands in space, rippling with a rising timbre, lilting and soft, before jangling in a loud crashing note, deep and striking. The notes fell at different paces across the darkness, each cluster of hanging wind instruments finding their way to the crashing sounds at different times.

The wind instruments closest to Nickel to the right were beginning their expanding rise in their music as the beads and chains expanded outwards on their strings, driven apart by their resounding crash just moments prior.

Nickel could discern the features of one of the trinkets holding the musical matrix together, the largest in fact; a large copper pin. It was carved with a round head and two large wings stretching outwards to the left and right. Narrow depressions were curved along the wings so the viewer might discern feathers.

Father Hawk.

The beads and trinkets withdrew into one another, sliding over each other as their strings and chains brought them together.

Rough footsteps scraped outside the opposite end of the shaft, sending skidding echoes through the faint opening behind the wind instruments. Shadows formed outside the opening, causing the faint light coming through to withdraw, darkening the wind instruments further.

The razor-edged echoes of grunts and murmurs sounded at the lip of the opening.

“Where did he go?” came the voice of a Thraíha, a deep voice heaved through the opening, only the initial words heard before the rest were obscured by another crashing melody of the wind instruments’ trinkets rustling against each other in a loud, chiming melody.

Nickel swallowed, slowly testing the ground he walked over, gauging its surface for a reasonable path towards the light, free from any unseen obstruction. He wasn’t Farrul. He couldn’t leave them behind or make them search for him. If Farrul was as unreliable as he was, Nickel could only see him continuing to be. He had to show the Thraíha that he, Nickel, could be relied on.

Nickel walked faster as the ground proved itself to be smoother in the darkness. He couldn’t hear his footsteps amidst the cacophony of crashing music behind him.

Did he want to leave Farrul behind? The thought sent a pang of guilt through him. No, he wanted to distinguish himself from Farrul.

A loud grunting of sounds came through the shaft of light, rendered indecipherable by the crash and melodies behind him, erupting in a jangling chain reaction of music.

Why did he want to distinguish himself from Farrul to the Thraíha? To prove he was better and more fit for the quest to Hedonim? No, no, he reassured himself, feeling unsure of his own footing, physically and mentally.

Running through the shaft, he felt like he was rushing to the afternoon bell from recess during his long-ago school days. But he wasn’t. That was then, before he’d left the Ether. He was running back to the Thraíha, not the proctors of the engineering corps he’d once belonged to with his father.

Yet, he had to compete. He had to show, or else his labors would be for naught. And after losing everything, becoming a recluse on a hovercraft, and finding unexpected shelter and harshly defined social rules and routines within the Thraíha, Nickel couldn’t let the social ladders slide past—

A sharp flare expanded over the toes of his right foot as it hit a rising object that blended into the darkness. Nickel closed his eyes, feeling a burning sensation grow all over his feet. His knees buckled and Nickel found himself falling to his toes, grabbing a hold of his right foot. He clamped down on the foot, sliding his fingers away from the front of his foot awash in its throes of bristling sensitivity.

The shrill sound of the grunting Thraíha language echoed around the walls near Nickel, warbling and resounding across their surfaces. He was closer to the opening of light within the shaft but only saw darkness through his closed eyes, pressed onto his knee.

“If you don’t come, Nickel, you’ll lose your hunting privileges!” came the sharp deep voice of the Thraíha leader. “No quest, no extra food!”

The rising melodies of music had fallen, allowing for the Thraíha’s words to become audible. Interrupted from all thoughts, Nickel could barely brace himself to hear the import of the Thraíha’s words. He tried very hard to make it through quick enough, with only a bruised foot to reward him.

Farrul had probably left down the shaft by now. Farrul couldn’t go on the hunt without Nickel. The thought seemed to drag his left leg across the floor as he extended his knees. He’d lead the Thraíha astray just as he was trying to lead Nickel astray. He needed to come out on top, lead the way as he couldn’t at the engineering corps.

His foot continued to throb and ache, flashes of pain that distracted from his thoughts. He fed himself consolations, trying to understand where his thoughts were coming from, where they were going.

He shifted his weight as he walked, slowing down to readjust his motion.

Staggering on his left leg, it hit an object lightly, pushing a part of it away from him. The object fell off the one below which only shifted slightly. Nickel stepped back, frowning. He stared at the ground as a clinging noise echoed from down the roof, weakly drumming outside the shaft wall.

“Gthu, rrororoh!” shrieked a Thraíha far across the roof.

“Kfff mmhuh jurrah aí!” responded another Thraíha with a deeper voice.

Were they leaving without him? The shafts of light coming through were warmer and brighter, illuminating the interior walls of the ventilation shaft, wrought with its rusted pallets and protruding lines. Fuzzy protrusions of ice coated the walls inside the shaft. Nickel would be able to see the rest of the men as they traveled down the temple in their elevator shaft. The light was now strong enough. But would he be able to see how they went down the shaft?

If he was left alone up here, he’d be stuck without a way to—

His left foot hit the objects again, sending them shifting away. A soft clattering and gentle fluttering caught Nickel’s ears, prompting him to look down.

He’d hit a collection of books and binders. The books had been stacked on top of one another, but they’d fallen, now strewn across the floor, a few lying lopsided against one another.

God knows what those are.

There was a clanging noise of metal objects hitting one another, one after the other. The elevator platform, no doubt. Nickel couldn’t tell if it was being summoned from the depths of the temple or if it was being lowered into the lower parts, carrying the Thraíha without him.

Either way, its sounds and their raised concerns were a dull chatter playing at the back of Nickel’s mind. The dusty leathery surface of the books before him caught his attention, reveling in their mystery.

Why were there books inside the shaft? Books were from the Past World, from Nickel’s world. The Thraíha were an oral culture, speaking from inscriptions in stone and loose collections of parchment made from leaves. That was all that Nickel had seen of them inside their encampments and huts.

Nickel squatted, bending his knees, ignoring the pain as he pressed on his foot. He extended his right foot, letting it rest on the heel, keeping his left leg bent, situated on the floor. He grabbed the first book, closest to him, rubbing its cover, feeling the weathered indentations running over the surface, the engravings torn at the edges, caked in grime at certain parts.

Footsteps started outside the shaft. Sitting low, Nickel could see two men standing outside the opening, one with his back to the opening, standing a few feet outside while another stood in front of him, several feet away from the shaft.

“Eeerra, muhkakee,” rasped the man several feet away.

“Hussé, huusse, muhreé,” responded the man with his back to Nickel.

Nickel’s heart began to hammer. He looked away from the men, back down at the books, rubbing the spine of the one he held, moving closer to the books and the wall, to conceal himself from the two men outside, blending in the darkness.

His fingers quivered, feeling the rough worn surface of the spine, its leather filled with bits and pieces of crumbling material, chewed by the weathering of air, wind, and time. The last time he’d seen a book was before he’d been plugged into the hovercraft. Before the Ether Realms equipment had been integrated. He was seven or eight?

The time and age seemed negligible to him. Fear and awe struck at him, his eyes unable to leave the cluttered books. He shifted his left knee further into the pile, stooping over them. He found artifacts of a pre-Ether time, a time he’d known, but was slipping away in his memory as that past in his early childhood moved further away.

What was this temple, this building? Nickel cracked open the book in his hands, revealing pages darkened by stains, elsewhere filled with countless words, more words than his mind could process at once, line after line in a sea of text.

These words. English. His own language jumped out at him, an oasis of inscribed words, line after line.

He scrambled through the pages, finding more of the same.

These artifacts, the building itself. The architecture was unlike the huts and stone structures of the Thraíha encampment. They all climbed the canyon rock, high enough to meet the skyline of empty, broken spires and walls that loomed over the West of the Thraíha encampment, “barriers left by the Past World.” Yet the temple was isolated amidst the rock outcroppings. Nickel had seen it wasn’t a peak, but a rusty appendage of a building wedged inside the rock. It was only at the elevation he was at that Nickel could see a vast emptiness of air around it below the roof.

What was this building? Nickel picked up another book lying to the side, letting the first one fall off his lap, cluttering on the floor next to the rest of the books. A title was embossed on the cover of the second book:

“Nuclear Energy.”

“He’s inside the wind tunnel,” rasped the man standing farthest from Nickel outside the shaft. Startled, Nickel’s fingers loosened around the book and he snapped his head up, staring wide-eyed at the light coming through the slanted diagonal opening across the shaft wall.

The man standing with his back to him shifted on his feet, turning around, looking over the wind tunnel, his gaze drifting below to Nickel. The wind instruments chimed louder again, their freefall of music broken.

“What are you doing in there?” he called to Nickel in a quizzical tone. Nickel started shifting his legs, rummaging the books on the floor. He stooped over, pushing the books against the wall, trying to hide them. “Are you trying to lose your hunting privileges?”

Nickel grabbed the book with the “Nuclear Energy” title, gripping its narrow spine and shoving it underneath his robe.

“We can still see you in there,” the man called. “The hunt will start without you.” Nickel ripped open the collar of his tunic, letting the string clasps pop free.

“I’m sorry!” Nickel called. Bending over more, Nickel squatted on both feet and started to stand up as he shoved the book inside his tunic, against the bare skin of his chest. “I got lost in the wind tunnels.” His voice echoed dully against the wind tunnel walls.

“You mustn’t go inside the wind tunnels!” said the man standing directly outside the opening. He started walking closer. “It’s a sacred space only for priests.” Nickel tried to bring the opened edges of his tunic together again, reconnecting with their string clasps. But they had already been quite undone. He pressed them as close together as he could. When the strings still stretched unbound, he tried pulling at one of their hanging strands, only pulling it looser, falling even further out of the clasp, loosening his tunic even more.

“You’re lucky Murrak didn’t see you in there,” the man said, stepping even closer to the opening. Nickel shoved the book further back around his ribs, pushing the book from the outside of his tunic.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Nickel said, as unassuming a tone as he could muster. He stood up, still leaning against the wall of the shaft.

“He’d have your hunting privileges revoked,” the man said, standing just outside the opening, his frame blocking the light coming through. His head was cocked to the side, peering down at Nickel and frowning at his movements.

Nickel frantically rummaged the two folds of his tunic hanging loose, the sleeves of his robes tucked underneath. He still bent over, barely stepping over the edge of the shaft’s wall and floor. He slipped a leather pouch on his belt through the edges of his tunic tucked around his waist, slipping it underneath his tunic, around his rib cage, next to the book, to make the lump under his tunic less defined. Feeling the gaze of the man, Nickel tucked the two ends of his robes together as close as he could, tying their leather clasps together, close enough to his chest to cover the protruding objects as best as he could.

Please leave a comment or question about any character, dynamic, setting, or other story element that intrigued you, as your feedback inspires me to add greater depth.

2200 Blues Chapter 49: Part One

“If you look, you see mountains.”

Large looming structures stood out in the distance, shadowed but shimmering with a crystalline reflection. Their tips were glowing lines, snaking across their edges and protrusions in reflected starlight. Below, snaking around the lower halves of their bodies, were pools of orange fog, sinking to the depths below like clouds shrouding the glaciers.

Nickel had strayed far from the path he thought he’d find himself on eventually, far from the confines of the student account his hovercraft was running on.

“Are those mountains?” Nickel asked, turning to face the husky-voiced Thraíha, only to find him gone, having blended into the pack of Thraíha leading themselves back into the pulley platform they’d traveled.

Nickel turned, looking for Farrul, finding him missing amongst the Thraíha stationed around the roof. Thin wisps of light arose from the flat, rusty turrets encircling the roof.

Starlight gleamed like watchful eyes, pouring an awareness onto Nickel like none he’d ever felt before. He felt watched, a rawness like he’d never felt before under the starlight. Countless stars dotted the sky, tremors of light stilled by the cosmos. They appeared like thousands of hovercrafts, frozen by time.

The orange fog was a lake, slowly swirling around these mountains of ice looming in the distance under a cosmic sea of suns Nickel knew he couldn’t reach. The days of spaceflight and voyages to the stars and neighboring planets were long gone.

Nickel’s ancestors, humans across time, had turned Earth into an unknowable alien planet. They created vistas and frontiers of pollution and escapism, from the orange fog to the hovercrafts of the Ether.

The Past World.

Nickel turned around, looking to the Thraíha grouped together in a broken line behind him. They wore multicolored necklaces of kupernacle leaves, chanting.

There were other Thraíha tending to the wisps of light—flames emergent from candles that they carried and pushed across the floor.

“We joined the Huntsman tonight,

Seeking light and the strength of might,

Show us the constellations Of our present,

hiding From our shallow selves.”

The chanting continued, turning into mumblings of the Thraíha language that were incoherent to Nickel. These people lived outside of the Ether and had been living so for generations. They were healthier, stronger than many Nickel had known to live in the Ether, including himself.

Their lives were more meaningful in the tapestry of their religion and mythology. Yet, several of them wanted to attend to Hedonim.

“The wretched soul catcher of the Past World!” Nickel remembered the words of Akela and the priests he’d seen. It was a repressed dream. A dream he hadn’t had since arriving at the Thraíha encampment, yet his presence brought the very visions he’d had to the Thraíha.

Quest to Hedonim.

What was Hedonim except for a vestige of the Past World, the ocean of orange fog far below, and the Ether that Nickel now found himself free of?

He’d found refuge within the Thraíha, refuge from the numbing reality of the Ether. Now, many of them wanted to return to the Ether with Nickel.

“I thought they were going to ask us to do something for them.”

Nickel whirled around to see Farrul behind him, dark hair rolling over his forehead in the wind. His eyes were pale and gleaming over the shadows that stretched down his face.

“I think they’re doing this more for them than us,” Nickel said, nodding towards the line of Thraíha who were kneeling, whispering with eyes closed, bringing closed palms from their chest to their chins, back and forth.

“Bringing us here?” said Farrul.

“And living,” Nickel muttered.

“Living?” rasped Farrul, clearing his throat.

“They live for themselves, not for a token,” Nickel said.

Farrul squinted his eyes.

“I’d rather look for a token if it meant I wouldn’t die in five years,” Farrul said.

Nickel frowned.

“That’s how long they live?” Nickel asked.

“That’s how long they have to live,” Farrul said.

“What—”

“When I found Steve,” Farrul cleared his throat, “or when he found me… He told me that the expedition craft he sailed was searching for the meridian where the storm breaks.”

“Breaks?” Nickel’s frown deepened.

“When it breaks glaciers.”

Nickel turned around, studying the shapes of the looming structures gleaming with starlight. The gleaming light looked brighter, shinier than what he’d expect of a large mountain. Not just around the top, either. They formed below, fainter and smaller, yet still present, losing color to the omniscient orange, joining its dull darkness.

“Those aren’t mountains, are they?” Nickel asked, a foreboding feeling rising over the back of his scalp. He sniffed the air over the rusty turret flat he leaned over. The flat-scented air of their high elevation invaded his nostrils. It still held a sliver of humidity, a chill feeling of dampness that coated the insides of his nostrils.

“No,” Farrul said, “they’re glaciers… and they’re going to break in five years.”

Nickel turned around to Farrul, his eyes and mouth wide with fear.

“Five years?” Nickel exclaimed. “Steve never told me that.”

“Steve’s mad,” Farrul said. “He can’t even tell his left foot from his right.”

Nickel just looked at Farrul in disbelief.

“I told you this, Nickel,” Farrul said, sighing. “That’s why we said we could jump ship, drop him off somewhere… but here we are… and you don’t have a hovercraft anymore.”

The import of his words sank into Nickel’s mind, conveying the distrust and accusation leveled by Farrul’s words. Nickel found himself struggling to process his actions, finding himself struggling to find a mediated response.

“You don’t care about the Thraíha,” Nickel said, nodding.

“I want to—”

“Or Steve,” Nickel said, raising his voice. The feeling of isolation that he thought he could leave behind on his hovercraft returned, slowly creeping down from his chest to the pit of his stomach. Yet, he didn’t want to lose it.

“What do you care about, Farrul?”

Farrul’s face became stony, resolving to a grim expression.

“Fall in!” called a Thraíha man. “Fall in, fall in.”

Nickel rushed past Farrul, eager to leave the conversation behind.

“We prayed, now we fall back,” called one of the Thraíha.

The Thraíha began to glow red. The light of the sky grew behind Nickel, crawling the edges of his fur sleeves. Turning around, the burgeoning sunrise beckoned to him.

It was a warm orange ball of light cascading over the glaciers, the yellow fire shimmering over the mountains of ice like rippling waves in an ocean.

A churning grinding of metal echoed across the space from the far left, reaching far around the temple. As the growing sunlight dipped over the horizon, it touched a giant sphere of dilating metal shapes shifting over a silvery surface of antennae and metal arrays, pockmarked by netted grids and flashing lights.

A gasp rippled through the Thraíha.

“Omens of the Past World!” called the deep-throated Thraíha leader.

The young Thraíha man who had brought Nickel and Farrul up the rock climb staggered out of the amassed Thraíha, the ends of his robes whipping past his legs.

“Did you bring that beast here?” he called, pointing at Nickel and Farrul.

“No!” Nickel shouted. He hadn’t called anything here. That machine—he took a better look at it, leaning to the side to look at the machine, the first real one he’d seen in a long time—since leaving the hovercraft.

“You brought the spirits here!” the young Thraíha rasped.

“We wouldn’t even know how to!” exclaimed Farrul.

“I don’t know how to control probes!” Nickel said.

“Probes!”

“Probes.”

The Thraíha repeated the word, speaking it like they were testing it for the first time, trying to make sense of it, like a foreign incantation.

Just when it seemed we were getting along.

“He speaks truth!” called the husky-voiced Thraíha. The rest of the Thraíha quieted. The man knew him, he seemed to know Nickel from a previous lifetime, understanding more of his perspective than the others of the Thraíha. He walked around the huddled mass, the young man watching him with a craned neck. The husky-voiced Thraíha walked around and put his hand on the youth’s shoulder.

“Calm, Jovik,” he said, “the machines are a sign of crossing paths.”

“With us or with them?” Jovik said, motioning his hand towards Nickel and Farrul.

“The machine—them,” the husky man said, motioning at Nickel and Farrul. “—All brought by the same winds that brought our forefathers together from the Past World.”

“I hope they leave the Past World behind on the hunt!” called another Thraíha from the crowd. Murmurs of agreement resounded through the mass of Thraíha.

“We’ll make them hunt the Past World out of them!” said another, receiving more noises of agreement.

“Do we hunt for machines or for souls?” asked the husky Thraíha. Jovik said nothing, and the rest of the Thraíha quieted.

“We hunt for the Hawk,” said the husky Thraíha. “For Father Hawk,” he added.

“Just leave as dawn sends the stars away,” said the deep-throated Thraíha. “Let us not leave the sight of our squabbling be the last thing the Huntsman sees of us.”

“His constellations are disappearing,” Jovik muttered, almost in a whisper as he stared up at the morning sky.

“Did you chart the stars?” asked the guttural Thraíha.

Jovik turned to look at him, mouth open, unanswered. His eyes lingered on the deep-throated Thraíha’s hairy face, then darted to and fro, as if he was looking for the answer.

“Well?” asked the older Thraíha.

“I did,” said Jovik, “but I missed the southernmost ones.”

“Why?” grated the guttural Thraíha.

“Because I was distracted by the omen.”

The omen chugged on by, churning in its vibrating frame. It passed closer to the edge of the roof, whizzing past the turrets in front of Nickel, Farrul, and the Thraíha, drawing their looks as they turned to look at it, many of the Thraíha flinching as the machine passed the roof in its wake.

Narrow spindle-like extensions protruded from the body of the satellite. They were arm-like robotic extensions, circling the air out of gyroscopic sockets sticking out of the spherical body like bulbous eyes.

The arm stuck out, hovering over the turret of the roof. Nickel and many of the Thraíha gasped, jerking back in unsteady steps. Was this the world that Nickel’s father helped create? He remembered the empty flagpole he’d first seen in the canyons—his first look at the corroded wasteland of an environment, which reminded him of his father’s industrial complex premises, the infrastructure it helped create in the world.

The spindly robotic arm plopped on the surface of the turret, causing a loud clank and scraping voluminously over the surface.

The Thraíha took further steps back, exclaiming about the machine.

“Omen!” Many of them shouted.

“Demon! Demons under the Huntsman’s watch!”

The scraping arm created bright sparks against the turret, shooting out from its surface, a stark contrast to the slowly brightening color of the sky and the scenery before the glaciers.

If Nickel returned to the student account, finished the engineering program, he’d be struggling to make and maintain more of those probes, engender the satellites, and clean up after the ghostly remains of their larger apparatuses.

As the arm scraped over the surface of the turret, it caused the spherical body of the machine to wobble, pulled by the force of the arm’s friction. The sphere slowly revolved to the left, even as it continued to move forward, around the roof.

“Kill it!” shouted a Thraíha behind Nickel.

“Calm yourself! Have you not seen elements of the Past World before?”

If Nickel returned to the path still waiting for him in the Ether, he’d be a reject, too unfit for its engineering corps, left to clean up after shoddy probes like the one floating before him, barely functional and wandering another one of Earth’s wastelands. If he traveled to Hedonim, what then? Would he just be going back to the Ether?

If he stayed with the Thraíha?

The glaciers poking over the horizon glowed a fiery yellow, their upper bodies appearing aflame under the bursting sun. If he stayed with the Thraíha, he could live without the Ether, but he’d face the flood with them in five years.

Even Chickel and Arolé would have to run for their lives with Nickel.

He’d have to—

“Nickel!” came the booming voice of the guttural Thraíha. Nickel whirled around, facing the impatiently waving man who was waiting for him to come.

Please leave a comment or question about any character, dynamic, setting, or other story element that intrigued you, as your feedback inspires me to add greater depth.

2200 Blues Chapter 48

Nickel’s feet caused a noisy ruckus on the metal he walked on. metal.

“Is this a hovercraft?” Nickel blurted out.

“Shhhhhh!” Hissed one of the Thraíha.

They don’t know what that is, Nickel remembered. He sighed, following for what movement he could discern through the dizzying darkness.

The shafts of light created shards of illuminated pockets within the cavernous space.

Vertigo threatened to dizzy him, the unknowingness of what lay a step ahead overwhelming him. He didn’t want to hit anything by mistake, but he wanted to make it to the end of his initiation process before dawn broke.

“Where are you?” bellowed Nickel.

“Would you be quiet!” hissed a voice, A different Thraíha. Too deep to be Farrul.

“Where am I supposed to go?” Nickel asked in a quieter tone, his voice still echoing and resounding through the space. “I don’t know where any of you are. I thought I had to be up for the stars before the sunrise!”

He spoke that last sentence with an agitation and anger that surprised him. His head pounded as he desperately tried to orient himself in the darkness. His chest roiled with a growing knot of outrage.

Why was he angry? He’d come this far with the Thraíha after falling into their encampment by accident. He’d met with Steve and Farrul by accident too. But they were helpless, two crazies stuck in the canyons with no larger goal than surviving the next day. Only when they’d met him had they wanted to go somewhere else, to Hedonim to escape.

“What then?” Nickel muttered under his breath.

“Then what?” asked a man he couldn’t see.

Nickel, startled, doubled back. The surprise melted some of the rising anguish, tapering the bubbling outrage. It still fizzled in him, choking through his lungs, gulping for air.

He breathed heavily.

There were solid thumps on the platform, ricocheting through the frame. Nickel turned to the right where he heard them come from. The metal was a disorienting anomaly, reminding Nickel of his time in the hovercraft in the flimsy floors of the military decanting stations.

The darkness beckoned him, an empty shell of what he’d once known, walking over the hovercraft.

“Without real answers, you can’t get anywhere,” said the husky Thraíha.

“What does that mean?” asked Nickel.

“The Huntsman points the way,” said the Thraíha, gently pulling Nickel’s wrist. Nickel started after him, looking for the way out he was being led to, not finding it.

They walked in a humdrum manner, climbing over leveling platforms, dappled by shifting rays of light. They reached an inclining surface of a platform, held by a long pulley chain that clinked in the gentle air of the darkness, it’s surfaces glinting with the reflection of starry light shining from above, through shafts of opening light as minuscule as the drops of moving air itself.

The Thraíha had let go of Nickel by now. Nickel followed him and the huddled mass of Thraíha onto the platform. They grouped together, a large huddled mass of men, the edges of their fur robes brushing roughly against one another.

“Will I ever see my hovercraft again?” asked Nickel. “Or leave the canyons?”

The husky Thraíha man with the straw beard turned to look down at him, a strange glint in his eyes and an upturned smile on his face.

“Pull the ignition!” Shouted the younger Thraíha from the farther edge of the huddled group.

“The ghosts of the past world have finally led us here,” muttered another Thraíha.

“And they will lead us out,” muttered the hollow voiced Thraíha from behind the Thraíha standing to the side of Nickel.

“Ignition?” Nickel muttered, looking around in awe and surprise. “What’s being ignited?”

“A skeleton of the Past World,” muttered the husky voiced Thraíha man, “showing us where the ancestors of the Past World searched for stars.”

Four Thraíha men standing at the corners of the platform started to pull the chains holding it causing them to grate against the mechanism of the platform.

“The Past Worlders tried to create the power of the stars on earth,” whispered the husky Thraíha, stooping over to speak in Nickel’s ears. “Now we move through the skeleton of their dead star, moving where we were always meant to shine— under the stars of the Huntsman sky.”

Nickel frowned, looking around at the darkened space. As the chains kept grating and the platform kept elevating, they passed walls and jagged protrusions sticking out against the walls, emerging out of the shadows.

They passed a large pattern of bright colors splotched across the rustic bronze and copper of the walls surrounding them. It was a patterned strip of yellow rectangles, interspersed with black, arranged diagonally on top of each other.

“How long has this building existed?” Asked Nickel. “Before the Thraíha?” The black and yellow pattern was faded, cut off, splotched with rusty streaks, yet still distinct.

“This is the world we inherited,” said the husky Thraíha. “Before humans found the way of the hawk.”

They passed a large metal ledge hanging across from them. As Nickel and the Thraíha passed the platform, similar black and yellow patterns encircled the edges of the platform. Elevating higher, Nickel could make out the words embossed on the platform:

WARNING TOXIC WASTE

There was something else scribbled below it, but it had largely faded away.

“As to your first question,” said the husky Thraíha. “There are many ways in this world. We live and pay for the sins of the Past World, living with it orange embers around us.”

The platform jerked to a stop, causing the chains to jangle against one another and the platform to make a clinking noise. The platform wobbled slightly and more Thraíha men walked out from the group, moving towards the Thraíha pulling the chains, rushing to their side to assist them.

There are more Thraíha here than I came with, thought Nickel. Now closer to the gaping shafts and the ceiling, the mass of huddled Thraíha was further illuminated.

There were Thraíha already inside of this building, waiting for Nickel and Farrul. Thraíha living and working here? There were at least seven more Thraíha standing apart from the ones who’d escorted Nickel up the canyon impasse. They didn’t all wear moccasin fur robes like Nickel and the Thraíha who brought him here. Many of them, including the ones pulling the chains, wore long leather vests donned like aprons, hanging over their torsos, dangling over their legs.

“We pay for the sins of the Past World by searching for the grace of the Huntsman’s light and we are blessed with vision and crops by mother Hawk, enriched by our toil,” said the husky Thraíha.

The pulley started up again. They passed a wide window made of cracked glass. If not for the swarming Thraíha behind the cracked glass and the adornments of multi-colored leaves woven into shrouds and adorning the space, it may have looked like a control room on a military station.

“We are blessed in the canyons,” the husky Thraíha had told Nickel. “Mother Hawk blesses us through the fog, her warmth as radiant as the sun. On this morning, we will now show you the blessed natures of the cosmos, where Father Hawk carved a world for us.”

“Will there be fog?” asked Nickel.

“The perch is the only part of the canyons where you can see the cosmos without the orange embers, said the Thraíha. Where only the stars of the Huntsman shine through.”

There was a loud banging and scraping overhead, a thunderous cacophony that threatened to break Nickel’s ears drums.

As their platform lifted closer to the ceiling, one of its chain mechanisms hit a separate pulley embedded in the ceiling, creating a louder rumbling as entire plates in the ceiling came apart. It was an unraveling of metal plates, clanking and twisting as a starry space beckoned them, opening wider and wider. Nickel’s breath caught in his throat and he squeezed his eyelids without closing them, bracing against the chilly wind that wafted through the widening opening in the ceiling. Where am I going? thought Nickel. The chains wobbled in the cacophony, jerking the platform.

Nickel scrunched his limbs, holding his arms tight against his sides. He grabbed the arm of the husky Thraíha in an instinctive grip, tightening his fingers around the thick layer of fur and the stringy arm underneath.

“Where are we going?” Nickel exclaimed. The grip he held felt like a last anchor against the searingly dark clearing emerging above him.

Nickel heard no answer in the growing din of the ceiling. He didn’t dare look around him to see the Thraíha’s reactions. The expanding clearing of stars was like a blanket of clear cold threatening to smother him.

Months in the hovercraft’s screens and later in the orange fog had not prepared him for the vista of nature he was being raised to.

The speckles of glowing white peeked at him, one by one as he moved closer to the ceiling and its metal plates moved apart. He’d seen them before. Clear as day, wrenching the memory of a starry sky that he’d visited or that had visited him in a large grassy expanse. A meadow he’d run through as a young child. The bespeckled face of his father looming over him like a moon, his glasses glinting in the night light and his beard wide, dark and enveloping.

Each hair as pitch black as the night sky blanketing the stars. The shadows of a past before the Ether splayed out in all their clear darkness over the sky, threatening to engulf him.

Had he seen stars in a real meadow? Or was it the Ether? Nickel’s heart hammered in his chest, only becoming noticeable as his throat began to clamp onto itself. The thunderous dismantling of the ceiling was so close it was like a looming ocean wave threatening to crash onto him. Nickel was about to get closer to seeing if that memory was real or not. The real nature of what he remembered was awaiting him just mere feet away.