Aarvo felt something soft against his back. He rolled over on his side and opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a strip of land that stretched before him, afloat in the void. The void wasn’t empty though, but studded with stars—and the mass of dust and stones in front of him didn’t stretch in a straight line, but bent in a very long arch to his left, disappearing from view. He looked up, following the bend, and suddenly an immense ocean of water surmounted by huge clouds appeared in front of him.
Aarvo jumped up and discovered an entire planet in front of him, so close that to see it all he had to turn his head right and left, up and down. In awe, he stared at the vast expanse of flowing colors, at the blue veil that enveloped everything, then finally recognized her: the planet in front of him was Eera, closer than he had ever hoped to see her in his entire life, more beautiful and alive than he could have ever imagined. In front of him, huge piles of clouds plowed through the sky in rows, intertwined in scattered order, or wrapped in gigantic clusters. Their fleeting shadows glided restlessly on the immense fluid expanses of the deep blue oceans below that embraced the planet from side to side. The water, however, did not swallow everything, but left room for titanic masses of dry land, continents covered with forests and ice, carved by rivers and deserts, wrinkled by towering mountain ranges that rose to pierce the clouds.
Eera was so close, so close! Aarvo advanced to the edge of the strip of dust and debris that supported him. A gulf of dizzying emptiness gaped in front of him. He stopped in his tracks. What was he walking on? What was under his feet?
He turned around and studied again the gray strip bending in an endless embrace around the planet. A ring? A ring that surrounded the whole planet? But made of what? He looked down and, in the midst of the dust swaying lazily at his feet ,saw some stones. He bent down and picked one up: it was a dark moonstone, just like the ones he had so often thrown at Eera. But why was it here, floating through the ether? He turned it between his fingers and to his great surprise saw it was engraved with one of the images he always used: his own outline waving from Lissa with his arm raised. What was it doing there? How did it get there?
He bent down, rummaged through the dust and took out another stone. It was another of his moonstones! This, engraved with the image of a projectile traveling in an arch from Lissa to Eera. He frowned at it as a sense of foreboding gripped him.
He dropped to the ground and started digging. Wherever he put his hands, he took them out full of the moonstones he had thrown to Eera. So, none of them had ever reached its destination then… Nobody knew he existed, that he was there! Who was going to help him down now!?
“Hey, hey, help, I'm up here! How do I get down? Help!” he cried out, but the voices below ignored him and kept on chatting. Because now he heard voices below.
“Hey!!!” Aarvo yelled again, but stopped right away—something in his hand had started vibrating. He looked down and saw the moonstone in his hand shaking more and more violently. The vibration started rumbling through his arm with an increasingly painful high-pitched hiss. He tried to drop it, but his fingers wouldn't open and seemed to have become one with the piece of rock. He brought his hand to his mouth to bite it off, when the hiss became even louder and suddenly the moonstone exploded in his face.
Aarvo woke up with a start and pulled back, shaking his hand, then realized he was no longer in space, that it had all been a nightmare. He groaned, rubbed off sleep from his bleary eyes, then realized his ears were hurting and that the ground under him was shaking. He looked around and in the distance, to the north, saw the familiar pillar of dust and debris caused by the impact of a boulder of deep space rising up through the sky. Was that what had woken him up so suddenly? He should have woken up by himself at the first hiss of its approach, not when it had already fallen. If he wasn't more careful, one of these days he'd end up like the dust and debris now rising through the sky.
Suddenly, he remembered he was sitting on his starbridge and jumped up. Was everything about to collapse? He leaned over the edge and noticed that some chunks of rock had come off, but on the whole everything seemed fine. He smiled with pride: he must have done a good job, if his bridge had held up to such a blow.
Nevertheless, he felt like something was off, something was missing… With a jolt, he remembered his starlooker.
He swiveled around and saw the two large slabs of stone that had held the huge lens empty... EMPTY! His core froze and skipped a beat.
He rushed forward, looking around frantically, and after a few moments saw it: the largest lens was lying on its side right on the edge of the bridge, a few fingers from the steep ravine. He grabbed it before it could slide over and carried it away. With his head spinning, he put it back between the two large slabs of stone and wedged it firmly in place so that it wouldn't slip away again. Luckily, the other lens was also nearby, stuck between some rocks.
With his core still thundering in his throat, he turned and looked again at the boulder of deep space that had just come crashing down: the column of dust and debris had now settled and the new crater would soon blend in with the rest of the others that littered the lunar plains. Glowing embers, however, burned on the walls around its crown, standing out against the darkness of night.
Aarvo watched the show in amazement and an idea started to climb up the slope of his thoughts: what if something, or perhaps even someone, that could help him escape to Eera was hiding down there?
Of course it was a crazy thought, crazy! The far side was the den of monsters and ghosts as he knew very well, as his mother had told him over and over when she was still alive.
“What kind of monsters?”
“Horrible creatures of deep space. Monsters that nested under my skin and are eating me from the inside.”
…creatures of deep space… Come here from deep space? How? By flying — there was no other way! Flying like his ancestors? On flying machines? Machines that he too could learn to use?
What if something or someone that could help him escape from Lissa lived there? How would he know if he didn't go there? What if by staying here trying to build the bridge on his own he was missing out on the only real opportunity he had to escape to Eera?
Aarvo ran down Trom Kor at breakneck speed and headed toward the far side.
****
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