Silent Drifters brought dreams from above, hanging in the heavy humid air like pallid paper lanterns forgotten after the festivities. Some of them bobbed, some of them sunk - none of them soared. Every so often, a gentle breeze would flutter through the lands, helping the pale spherical bodies to drift, and thereby bringing more dreams across the land.
And below them the city slumbered. Spires of concrete, carved out of ancient structures, rose from the fast spreading foliage. The air hung heavy with the same spores that had brought many a human to slumber. However, the air was not silent. Silt laden water trickled through the hodgepodge of civilization and ruination. Distant footsteps scurried across water-logged soil and broken concrete, accenting the soft hum of the things in the sea.
Insects chittered and called to one another, only to be disturbed by the heavy trudging of feet – not the nimble ones scurrying in the distance but a pair belonging to a hulking mass of metal alloys and circuitry.
The thing- no, not a thing-
The human stopped where the land stopped in a jagged edge and where the sea slept, a murky soup of organic remnants of the past. Far out in the horizon was the smooth domed silhouette of a building, the lights through little round windows flickering off. This was odd- this was not supposed to happen. The power was always on. It had to be. But this was not of the concern for this particular mechanical man anyways. Their job was that of Retriever, not Courier. The sea was their domain, not the land. They returned with the decaying, not the preserved – with corpses, not with children.
But such was fate and they accepted it with a dive into the opaque sea of swirling greens, browns and golds.
This was just one of many somnolent days.
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This is more of a sneak-peak of more to come than an actual chapter (but also doubling as a prologue ). Will take a bit long on subsequent chapters as I plan to illustrate some chapters (not all mind you).
If you are interested, add this to your library! Votes and comments would be swell too~
- Ms Garlic
YOU ARE READING
Somnolent Days
Science FictionA nine-year old girl awakens from a cradle of liquid nitrogen while the world continues slumber under a haze of dust and spores. The land, broken and rebuilt on water, now supports human life in the form of mechanical bodies and artificial sentience...
