Aeron Zambrano
The First
M A E N A
"There is a spell. But it is hard, lady, and dark. Some would say that death is cleaner. I learned the way in Kr'ylland, and paid dear for the lesson." - Nomad Force-Healer, Maena, ABY 848
Days, and days, and days.Until escaping the Fire, Lathe had never been above her home-level. And even then she hadn’t strayed far. Just enough to escape the worst of the heat, the worst of the revelers, sightseers, and religious freaks that flocked to Level Death.
And now, slowly but surely, she was going up.
Not alone of course. No - she had a Herald, of all companions, walking silently to her right and slightly ahead of her at all times. She was more than okay with his lead. Others seemed to clear from his path if they managed to hear the distinctive rattling of chainmail as he passed, and if not by sound they removed themselves from the red wake of his approaching silhouette. Lathe hadn’t made up mind about him and truly wasn’t sure whether any amount of time would allow her a solid conclusion, even though the quoted estimate of travel to Kr’ylland might about do it.
Lathe was the only one Keruli said he could send, that could judge the quality of the things he needed and return with them.
But she couldn’t make it alone, or so he said.
So there was Essar, who’d meant to make the journey anyway.
That Lathe felt a bit like cargo - sometimes talkative, over-inquisitive cargo - could not be understated. At first things had looked familiar, the hours transferring between 300 Levels yielding much the same atmosphere. Of course, no one was wrong when they said the 600 Cities each had their own personality. No two were exactly the same, like ash-flakes. Even so, she recognized many of the same customs and sensibilities in those sections they had to walk to to transfer to other lifts and transportation. But as they got higher, as they breached the 200 Levels, she started having questions.
She’d wanted to know why people seemed to take offense when she looked at things they were holding too long, why they gave her dirty looks and turned their backs to continue their conversations. (Because it’s not okay to sell black market merchandise as openly.) Why were there more visible droids patrolling the streets when they were an intensely rare sight ‘back home’? (Because the Maenan Security Bureau actually does their job here.) Can we stop here? Hungry. (Just ate.) But there was so many things she wanted to try. She’d never heard of cotton candy.
And that was how she spent most of the 200 Levels, collecting questions as she trailed behind Essar, spun sugar melting on her tongue.
The culture shock grew uncomfortably pervasive once they breached in to the Upper 100. Here the sky still didn’t exist but the hue of the city lost something of its gritty neons and gave way to a loud cacophony of pristine light - still neon, but slick instead of dirty. The brilliant shell layer of a rotten city. The questions came thick and fast but she was afraid to ask them, afraid that if she opened her mouth the perfectly drawn-on faces of the flawless people walking the street would all turn and notice she was there. She stuck closer to Essar, close enough to catch hints of leather, dirt, and sweat off him as they strolled.
Days, and days, and days.
The Upper 50 and she wanted to turn back. Those things in her books seemed fanciful now. The desire to see snow had long since been buried under the fear of the unknown. She didn’t voice a single hint of those worries to Essar, finding his visage void of comfort, but he had to see it in the set of her young face.
Level 15, and she caught a glimpse of the sky.
It was far away, a round glimpse marred by metal walkways and ships lowering and rising as they transported people through the top tiers of Maenan society. But she saw it nonetheless, a bright blue color she'd only seen in pictures. She wouldn’t know it of course, but this was a rare and spectacularly cloudless day free of stray ash. She stood there, head back, mouth agape in wonder as she stopped and stood motionlessly. Someone tagged her shoulder harshly, giving her a nasty look, and it was only then that she noticed Essar had gotten quite a bit ahead of her.
“Wait! Hey, wait!”
She purposely didn’t look up the entire time they climbed to the very top of Level One, heading for landing pads with airbusses that would traffic them down to the ground outside the City.
The ground outside the City.
She looked up.
And terror overwhelmed her.
This high up there were no criss-crossing walkways to break the view, no distance to make the volcano’s mouth seem smaller. There was nothing between her and the vast, endless expanse of sky - a slight lavender hue indicating approaching dusk creeping along its edges, though of course, she wouldn’t know that either. Stars were just beginning to shine, the sun hanging low enough to be unseen over the lip of the volcano’s height.
It was too big.
Too big.
She looked down, away from it in the hopes to regain some sense of her size, and realized that was an equally gargantuan mistake. The world dropped away from her, a view of the top fifteen levels of the city broken by one large central expressway through the middle seemed to take her equilibrium, an intense ringing gouging her hearing. Everything was too open, too much space. She wanted her claustrophobia back, to be pressed tightly and sure of oneself among hundreds of thousands of other beings vying for space.
Down there she’d always wished she could be smaller, that she could curl up in a corner and have some space to herself.
Now she felt too small, microscopic, frighteningly infinitesimal.
The sky was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
And she couldn’t go any farther.
Up until this point she'd approached Essar like a stable but unquestionable bomb, rumors and tales of Herald savagery when provoked scrolling through her mind whenever she realized she was asking too many questions or needlessly prolonging an already long journey. Thus far he hadn't given her reason to believe she was approaching that sort of fate but it paid to be careful, as experience with other dangerous people had always proven. But standing there, her skin feeling too tight as panic threatened to white out her senses, she took three steps so that she was pressed up against one side of his back, peering at the world she'd only read about from just over his shoulder on tiptoes.
That it was a complete violation of what was most likely coveted personal space didn't even occur to her. She needed closeness, to feel less small by extension of crowding.
“I don't think I can do this,” she whispered, maybe even unheard over the noise from the airfield. Some part of her, the brave and inquisitive part, cried out that it wanted to see what was outside. What about snow? That side was hard to ignore. “I feel like I'm so small I'll disappear.”
[member="Essar Ibis"]
