The Life of Gaia

CHAPTER 2: Deep Reality

Aries didn't seem to have woken up when she found herself flying across the sky as the sun lazily sank into the lake of the horizon. 

It was all real, deeply real, and she couldn't help but notice how her conscience had literally jumped out of the house moments after the knife had gone into her belly. 

The girl looked around and saw the city stretching almost to infinity before her eyes. Buildings as tall as mountains, elegant arches that seemed to float in the air, and endless parks seemed clear to her eyes for the first time, and not just buildings lined up along a street. 

Aries felt light on the outside, but inside she felt an avalanche of panic: what was happening? The thought that she was probably dead touched her mind for a moment, insinuating the doubt that she could be so. She looked up and saw something incredible. 

A few seconds into her ascent (because yes, she was flying higher and higher), she saw a figure shoot across the sky. It was like black lightning, but clearly humanoid in appearance. He had a large cart, or perhaps it was a carriage, behind him, and as he passed, he left a kind of trail that covered the whole world in an instant, descending like an infinite piece of cloth over that red city. Then the stars appeared on that cloth. But just for a moment, Aries thought she saw something beautiful, before the veil of cloth covered him violently. 

Maybe a city, she wasn't sure. She looked down and realized that the landscape below her was now almost invisible. When does the sky end? Good question, she thought. She decided to tell herself that there was no end to the sky and that she would gradually sink into the darkness of space. 

Eventually, however, the sky ran out, and when it did, Aries slammed it in her face. She would never have thought the sky to be so soft: if she had bumped into a blanket, it would have been no different. 

Almost trapped by the smooth fabric she felt pressed against, she pushed her arms forward, trying to stand up and keep her face away from the thing that smelled damp. In the effort, she found herself looking to the right and saw a black figure, a point that was becoming less and less of a point in the distance. 

It was the figure that had brought the night, and it looked very angry, judging by the growl that was getting louder and louder. In his hand he aggressively grasped a long, inky staff that ended in a silver knob. 

The top and bottom were now reversed: Aries, frightened by this vision, began to crawl in the opposite direction, sweating with every inch she moved forward. The figure was much faster than her, and in front of the girl there was no place to hide, only a hostile and dark floor that prevented her from moving. 

Beads of sweat rose from her neck onto her face, then flew, or rather fell, upward. Was she walking or climbing? What if the force that was pulling her let go, or if the black figure caught her? Aries dragged her legs farther and farther, rubbing the skin of her knees against the fabric of the sky. She turned: her pursuer had almost caught up with her. A single tear rolled down her forehead and disappeared into her hair. 

At some point, the seat she was sitting on gave way under her weight...and she tore. Or maybe it was something that pulled her down. In any case, she flew up in an awkward spin, she screamed, and that was the last thing the girl did on this side of heaven for a long time. 

In her whirl, Aries had just enough time to see the figure that had brought the night dart out of the hole it had created, screaming in rage and disappearing soon after. The girl wanted to lose consciousness for a moment, but her wish was not granted. 

A sickening feeling came over her as she saw that below her, where the sky should have been, there was now solid land, and that the fabric that had been dark blue now looked light gray on this side, dotted with black here and there where the stars should have been.