One Word Prompts

Whale - City of Whales

                She stood on a balcony overlooking the endless sky. Around her clouds of pastel yellow, pink, and blue swirled as far as she could see. The city floated through them, rising and falling slowly with the movements of the great whale upon which it had been built.

An entire labyrinth of twisting streets and crisscrossing skyways had been built on the enormous creature. Towers jutted up amid charming plazas, all around a mound of a castle, with walls and parapets of white stone. One could wander for days on end through the streets without coming across the same place twice.

In the distance, other whales could sometimes be seen. Each their own world unto themselves. Some carried cities like this one, quiet and quaint, cobblestone lining their streets, ivy growing over their walls. Some carried jungles, damp and dark, ancient trees grown deep into ancient backs, wild creatures lurking within the deep brush. Others still were open fields, their inhabitants growing crops far as could be seen, horses running wild over the expanse.

Each whale was different, each traveling in a different direction on a different path through the endless sea of clouds. Sometimes they would align next to each other for days or months. Sometimes they would pass each other miles upon miles apart. How they decided where to go, why they did any of what they did, no one knew. Nor could they be controlled. The great creatures went where they would, seemingly without purpose.

She liked to think they were going somewhere though. That just like the humans, so tiny on their backs. She imagined they had goals, that they were searching for something too.

A school of flying fish darted beneath her, their silver scales glistening in the sun, their gossamer fins streaming behind them. They collected on the whale's belly, grazing on the moss, their mouths seeming to kiss the gentle giant.

A pair of men on airels, large colorful birds of burden, flew past, larger bags clasped in the talons of the birds hung heavy between them. Did they come to trade goods from a nearby whale? Or were they wanderers, people who hopped from whale to whale, never to return to the place of their birth again?

How big was this sky, she often wondered. Was it infinite? Or did the sky end somewhere, the way a whale's back eventually ended? What did that even mean for the sky to end? Would there be something solid there? Like an endless wall? Did they all float in a glass sphere, a closed system, unescapable? But then, if there was a wall, there must be another side. And then the question became, what was there?

She wanted to know. Wanted to see the great expanse that surrounded her. But to leave was to never return, and her curiosity had not yet eclipsed her fear.

But maybe one day she'd go and explore beyond this balcony, join the wanderers, quest far into the clouds. Maybe one day she'd find new whales and new cities, maybe she'd find the end of the sky.

One day.