To feel the stars

or, Part 1 (of 2) of another fragment of Precipice

A further slice of Precipice has been carved into the page.

If this is your first time here (Hi! 👋) then these posts are each a piece of a larger story, ones that will be some day woven together into a whole. I hope …

Everything so far can be found in that link above, should you wish to venture. In its present form it’s non-linear, so you can dip in and out.

In a post way back in March I gave a little background to this tale¹, which I feel is worth pasting again here. Just a snippet of text. I think Jisa would like it if you held this information in your mind.

Jisa has lived her life in a city in ruin. A city cloaked in rain and darkness and one that has been built upon by another, an upper metropolis that straddles the clouds and allows those within it to live in daylight, pretending that all the ruin in the world below doesn’t exist.

Jisa, like a million others, is trapped in this city below.

---

After their evening together in Siridan, Cloud takes Jisa to a place she has only ever visited in dreams.

That’s my episode chapter synopsis. As tight and spoiler-free as I can make it.

Jisa forced me to write quite a lot here and it resulted in a post length that was getting a little meaty. As such, I’ve split it in two. So this is Part 1 and Part 2 will follow next week.

A somewhat vague imagining of the start of this scene. Image courtesy of DALL-E.

///

---

With skin against glass, I watch all that billows below.

The clouds. The endless mass of clouds.

From this vantage, they are so very different, seeping white into grey into infinite dream, masking all that is beneath. They are a barrier upon which this city was built, pregnant with another’s downfall.

Buildings pierce the clouds, rising from struts that sink deep to Siridan. Before me are blocky edifices, sweeping habitats, curved megastructures that trace the faint outskirts of Vi. I see domes, their insides full of what can only be the greenery of trees, incredible as that seems. I see branching walkways that fan out below, that even at this hour are peppered with tiny figures scurrying like lone ants. I see shuttle after shuttle near and far, floating like sleeping fish or cruising from point to point, transports already ferrying commuters in this near-dawn light. And in the distance, two behemoths chug away at a pace imperceptible until I look again, realise they are that little bit smaller, edging into the outer atmosphere.

I marvel, yet I am torn by emotion. Tears of guilt have streaked the glass as I have sat huddled against this precipice, satiated in awe. I shiver, knowing all that lies below and my lifetime spent looking up in disgust. Yet here I sit, looking out at this spectacle not in disgust but in reverence. Reverence of this panorama, of the craftsmanship, of the interlocking architecture, of the sheer colours and departure from mine own reality. And the black sky—how my senses are shut down to inconsequence when I stare into the beguiling infinity above, unmarred by this planet’s soiled history—that blanket I am so used to. And in that inky firmament, a million, billion stars. They are a sight I have never seen. I could stare at each one, try to count them, try to trace the constellations I have seen only in pictures or read about in books, the ones Warv pushed under my nose as a child. But instead I just gape, paralysed by beauty.

And yet there is more. There is the simple lack of rain. It has taken me too long to realise that that is what catapults this view beyond mere spectacle and into something that tugs deeply at my heart. The window is unmarred by the streaks I am so used to, tarnished instead by my own personal rain.

My thoughts shift to what transpired in hours past, to the man who brought me here. My eyes dart to him as fleetingly as my heart knows this visit to be. He lies there, cradled in sheets, strips of flesh emerging in places. I could go touch that flesh, feel his warmth, caress his mind as I did in hours past. It is a desire—one I am not accustomed to—but the act carries its burdens, already strapped to me in this moment, a bugbear I welcomed all too easily.

The evidence of his infidelity is strewn throughout the room. Subtle things, certainly, but signs no less. But that picture, face down in guilt by the bedside, is as blatant as it is sad. I told Cloud it didn’t matter, and there was truth in that. I do not care for my own actions in such a strict sense—I would be a wrecked girl long gone if that were the case—but now, sitting here at the almost of dawn, I find I care for what I have done to her.

Her.

I do not even have a name. Just a glimpse of a face as Cloud flattened the screen in shame. We share similar hair. How funny that that had been my reaction and not one of scorn or jealousy or guilt.

It didn’t matter. I said these words as I cupped the back of his neck, pulling him to me, as we stripped each other of our clothes and slipped into pleasure. There was nothing primal in our actions, and for that I take some solace. Only a strange sense of knowing, something I am unable to place, something that came from both of us, baffling as it may seem. Perhaps it is this that scares me more than anything else.

Movement breaks my thoughts and I turn from the window to see Cloud standing by the bed, wrapping his lower half in a towel. His torso is exposed and my mind flares, acute memories raw in their proximity.

“Hey,” he says, the lone word floating across the room’s stillness. “How long have you been sat there?”

I smile, though it is wan and fleeting, then turn back and rest my head against the window. Another tear glides down my cheek to coalesce with the glass.

“They’re really out there, somewhere,” I say, finger tracing the wetness in a small circle. My voice is vacant, as though it is being sucked from me and out into the impossible dawn.

Cloud walks over, placing his hand on my shoulder. The feel of his touch on my skin, the reminder of our actions, his mere presence beside me now. For the longest moment he says nothing and we both simply stare out and down, connected in the fading night.

A moment passes before he speaks.

“Are you sure it is what you want, to find them? To see them?” His voice is weak, broken-sounding like mine.

I let my own pause drag out, pulling the blanket, one I stole from the sofa, around me a little tighter.

“Yes.” (No.)

I am not sure. For so many years I let it go, letting the pain and questioning drive and fulfil me in my life, letting the anger push my young soul into acts of reckless idiocy. I was not so self-aware then, relying on a notion that it was fate, that there was no different path and there was no turning back; no seeking nor longing.

They had reasons, incomprehensible to me. Even if it were my greatest desire, I have no way to find them.

Or so I thought until last night.

I turn and stare into those green-inked eyes, asking him if this is the right decision.

He moves and takes my hand into his, clasping it as though my fingers were a bird that might escape. I accept it without recoil, wondering at how I feel such trust incubated from so few hours.

“I will do it for you, if I can. If it is what you really want.” Cloud’s thumb strokes the top of my hand as he speaks, and I gaze up at him as another well of tears seeps from my eyes. He has opened something that through two decades I have kept locked away, barred up in some emotional dam. I could curse and embrace him for it, in equal parts.

The moment is broken as the apartment shudders, a morning transport of some kind heaving past, deep ripples sent out through the air from its engines.

Cloud lowers himself to sit beside me. He wears nothing but the towel, his upper body taut, composed, but carried without pretension. His arms show the traces of sinew that had been all but hidden under his evening shirt. Below his right nipple a long scar runs halfway to his bellybutton. I touched that scar, hours earlier. I traced my finger along it, though I dared not ask its origin.

“I lost my sister when I was seventeen,” he says from nowhere, almost choking on the words. He releases his hands from mine and looks down at his palms, inspecting them as if they may hold some answer he has long searched for.

“Your sister?” I pause, and cogs turn in my mind, move over each other until they clunk into place. The mechanism of a larger story suddenly connects. “You mean—”

“Vo,” he says, looking up at me again. “Vosila. Little Vo. I used to call her that, tease her. She hated it.” He sighs. “She was fifteen when she went, though you wouldn't know it. Always acted like we were the same age. I think I forgot that, that she wasn’t, that even with those few years I should have looked after her more. I—” he starts, but trails off, looking out of the window as yet another vessel glides past, this one entirely silent. Dawn has broken. Tendrils of lights creep across clouds as traffic scores the skies.

I hesitate, take his hand back into mine, worry that it may be him that recoils from my touch.

“What happened?” I ask, but quickly follow with, “You do not have to say.”

“She … she vanished, Jisa. She ran away. She was taken. She was murdered. She killed herself. She is just hiding, playing some long game at my expense.” The words tumble from him in a flurry. “I do not know,” he adds.

I squeeze his hand ever so tighter.

“I have spent my life looking for her.” Cloud swallows hard. “There were signs, things that led me to believe something wasn’t right before she disappeared, but fool I am I only saw these after. I was …” he scrunches his eyes. “It burnt me, Jisa. It—, it—”

With this he looks at me and I feel sickeningly, guiltily, close to him.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t unload this on you,” he manages.

I shake my head, baffled. “Sorry? Why?”

“You don’t need to hear of my woes or listen to me break down.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth.” The obscure half-parallels of our lives play constantly through my mind. “Is this why you left Siridan? Did you move to look for her? Or—”

“Or run away from it?” He asks.

Stupid. Stupid words. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

“It’s OK, Jisa,” he smiles. He uses my name so often. I never realised there was such power in that.

“I did run, for a while. I ran so I could search, or I searched so I could run. The reality of it is probably both.”

“What held you here then, in Vi? Did you find something?” My voice trails into a question, but the answer has already precipitated on my tongue. Her. The woman in the picture.

Cloud’s head drops and he closes his eyes. Then he turns to stare out of the window.

“Tess.” The name leaves his mouth and settles on the glass, as though her name wishes to linger.

Tess.

I let it draw out in my mind.

Tess.

It is just a name, but what weight it bears.

“It’s OK,” I say, not for the first time this night. This morning now.

And with mornings comes guilt.

… to be concluded next week.

---

—x

Thank you, dear reader. I love that you’re here, finding the time to read this. That means a lot.

Your comments and thoughts are, as always, a balm for Jisa’s woes. If you enjoyed this and know someone else who might, you can use the share button below to spread word.

1. That post even contains a specific paragraph now in this scene, as though it had been stolen from the future …