Pale Fragments

paradise

It was pretty much a paradise. The Tall Ones had developed virtue within themselves, and had apparently spent all of their spiritual strength doing so, for it was relatively quickly after their death, when their legacy had already been forgotten and passed away into murky legend, that their children quickly proved that paradise must be prepared for.

There were about a hundred people living on the Grove at any point. One thing they had remembered from their far more technologically advanced ancestors was population and birth control; children were not born by accident.

Each night the leaves fell, and each day they grew again on the Herculean branches, blotting out the constant light of their sun. Daylight wasn't what you would consider the same; it was more of a burning glow with pinpricks of light here and there; it was not unlike what the Greeks believed your night sky to be: a blanket or sheet pricked through with a needle in places to let through the light which lay behind it.

And each day the people of the Grove raked the leaves to the outside of their village, where created was a great pile, what they called the Wall. There were stairs, now ancient, cut into the side of the first and oldest leaves raked away by the Tall Ones, which they walked in line with bags full and tossed over their shoulders, all the way to the top where they threw it upon the pile which fell at an incline very far down, as if it were a hill. They ate the fruit they found among the deep piles, and were hydrated and fed.

It was a miracle of Life, perfect balance.

-

"Why is there only one Window in the Ceiling?" Nobi asked his father, Doobi, one day as they raked.

He sighed. "Always been that way," he said as if the conversation were over; but there was a nervousness at the end of his speech, and he raked faster and more intently than he had been known to do. He knew that Nobi had no predilection to being caught into understanding passive aggressive signs, and once he asked one question that was usually a sign of many more to come. Doobi was more patient than the rest of them, and lazier too. He was accepted but not well-liked by everyone.

"So we don't know how it got there?"

"Well, it was put there by the ancestors who brought us here."

"Right, this isn't the planet where we're from. Jobi mentioned that the other day..."

"Is now."

This was the depth of conversation Nobi could pry from people. I watched him, sometimes in the present, but always I caught up on the Past whenever I had to go away for whatever reason. The way he was so naturally different than everyone else, though his name sounded almost the same to them all...and what reason did he have to be different?

Long before his birth the people of the Grove had agreed to destroy all of the literature and art the Tall Ones had brought from the earth. They'd been too tired to appreciate it, and it just took up space that they didn't have. It hadn't been an angry decision, and hardly one argued for or against by any of them; it was unanimous and seemed obvious. They couldn't fathom the consequences which would come to their own children; I wonder, if they knew, would they care?

If Nobi had had access to even a fraction of the library brought by the Tall Ones, he wouldn't have needed me. And then...but I'm getting ahead of myself.