Marroo’s father was the first person he could remember comparing the worlds to an egg. “It’s a shell.” He said, pointing to the upward curve of the bottom’s horizon and tracing it up, up, up, until it disappeared from a four year old Marroo’s sight in the umber haze that made up their sky. His finger continued, passing the orange eye of the Core, the clouds, and the shapes that moved above them in the haze until it came back down the curve of the opposite horizon. “It wraps all the way around the core. We walk on the bottom of that shell, on the inside, while the heavens,” he pointed to shapes visible as dark silhouettes in the haze at the top of the horizon, “replace the white of the egg, and the core itself is the yolk.”

Four year old Marroo sat on his father’s shoulders at the top of the apartment building they’d moved into after his brother disappeared. These were the bad days, days when his mother barely spoke except to read him stories, and his father was always away on business that couldn’t seem to wait. Other men and women surrounded them, neighbors from the same apartment building, chatting with one another while they all waited for the New Year to appear through the haze. Their voices made a pleasant backdrop to the sounds of the cityscape that surrounded them and the gentle breeze that stirred Marroo’s hair on its way from to turnward with the passage of the clouds and the Midnight Plains.

“When we lived in the dregs, the proper dregs, we didn’t celebrate the same festivals people up here do, although I suppose their linked. Our new year was connected to the floods that came with the rains in the wake of the New Year, but up here, you can actually watch it come.”

Fireworked banged above a nearby tower prematurely and Marroo rested his chin on his father’s head while Darro pointed to a huge black shape vaguely visible in the haze above the horizon. He traced it from top to bottom, all the way across the sky. “We’ll be in its shadow for almost three days.” He coughed and his breath rattled in his throat. “Some fools stay awake for the duration.” He went on. “Stupid, but, when the shadow is gone, the heavens will start up their cycle again, at least those shapes that follow the cycle will do so, while we go about our lives down below.”

There was a murmur around them as the edge of the vast night of the New Year pressed through the haze to appear as a thin black line. A dottering old man next to them pulled out a pair of binoculars to gaze at it while fireworks started to pop and boom from buildings all over the city around them. The old man offered the binoculars to Darro, who lifted them towards Marroo instead of using them himself.

“Careful with them.” The old man said.

Marroo trained the heavy lenses on the approaching edge of the night, but the view wobbled and shook too much for him to get more than a cursory glimpse, enough to know that it was vast, far larger than any of the Midnight Plains that gave the city it’s nights.

He handed the binoculars back down to his father who handed them back to the old man. A riot of familiars shot by as a cloud of holographic fireworks, bursting in silent red and blue star bursts only to do so again as they whipped away on the wind.

“What’s outside the egg-shell?” Marroo asked after they’d watched the shadow of the New Year appear across the bowl of the horizon for a while.

Darro didn’t reply for a moment. “Not much.” He finally grated in reply. “The Beyond, a few guilds. I’ve never been there.”

The old man next to them dropped his binoculars to glare at the lenses. “They use the Beyond for tombs.” He said. He used a bit of his shirt to polish the lenses of his binoculars then trained them on the approaching Night again. “Nothing but dark and tombs, as far as the eye can see.”

The New Year was not the only celestial object the city celebrated with fireworks or revelry. The length and severity of nights and days were variable dependent on the positions of the plains that passed above them, and there were other shapes in the sky linked to trade between the Bottom and the Sky or the myths and traditions of various sects across the Dregs. There was the Ring at the center of the longest day, when his mother told him lovers often exchanged rings with their beloved, a disc said to be the ancient home of the first adept whose zenith was celebrated by every martial school with parades and public speeches, and a series of four Nights whose shadows passed in four hour segments spaced out across four different parts of the city and said to be the shapes which appeared when the city was first founded.

None of the other festivals could match the New Year in importance though, and with each passage of the three days of night, Marroo felt as though his life moved deeper and deeper into the shadow, with only occasional spark of distant light.

After he broke the boy’s ribs at the park, the other children stopped playing with Marroo. He tried to sit and watch them play sometimes, but the bored ones who were older than him came and taunted him, told him his father was a dog or that he had a face even his parents couldn’t love. Marroo asked his mother to let him stay home, and sometimes she did, but she insisted that he needed time with other children his age, and he learned to bring his books and ignore the taunts until the bored ones went away while he hid in the bushes and read.

Aiza found him there the day after a New Year.

Marroo lay in a tunnel between two of the decorative shrubs they weren’t supposed to play in when she dropped onto her stomach in front of him. She rested her head on her hands and looked at him.

“Whatcha readin?” she asked.

Marroo ignored her.

Aiza scooted closer to peer over the cover of his book and he scooted backwards in the shrubbery tunnel to keep it out of reach.

She beamed a smile at him. Chocolate brown eyes matched the color of her skin while her smile split her dark face like a sunbeam. “Must be good.” She said.

Marroo glared at her, waiting for the ribbing he usually got from the other children. “It is.” He permitted when she didn’t say more. When she said nothing else, he turned his attention back to the book just in time to have it snatched from his hands. She tried to run with it, but, while Marroo hadn’t yet opened his core, he’d spent the last two years training in the martial arts. She didn’t even make it out of the shrubs before he’d caught up and tried to snatch the book back. She dodged it away from him just in time and held it behind her back as she grinned at him.

Marroo scowled and studied her. He held out his hand as an experiment. “Give it back.” He said. “That’s mine.”

“It’s not yours if I’ve got it.” She stuck out her tongue.

Marroo thought about punching her and taking it like he had when the boy stole his car but somehow didn’t feel right about punching her for the same reason. Marroo was bigger than her after all. She shouldn’t have been messing with him.

“I was reading it.” He said, trying a different tack.

“You’re not anymore.”

“Because you took it from me!”

“You’ll have to wait till I’m done with it.” she stuck up her nose as she said it. She took a step back, then whirled to sprint away. He snatched the book before she’d taken two steps. He retreated through the rows of shrubs before she even had a chance to turn and shout that he was a filthy sneak.

They did the same thing the next week, only this time it turned into a wrestling match with him lying on top of the book and her trying everything in her power to snatch it from under him. The week after that he tried to hide behind a utility box that hummed ominously and hid the sound of her footsteps until she snatched the book and tried to run away with it again.

He thought about hurting her again when she circled him the next week, just to get her to leave him alone, but he opted for hiding next to his mother the, until she chased him away and he clambered up into a tree instead. She followed him, undeterred even when he clambered out onto a branch to get away from her.

She sat on the limb looking at him while he perched in a Y further out from the trunk, confident that he could drop quickly without being hurt if she tried to climb out after him and he needed a quick get-away.

“You don’t say very much.” The girl said as he glared at her and waited for her to try pouncing on his book again.

He didn’t say anything, and she scooted out onto the branch towards him.

“I’ll jump.” he said.

She looked down at the ground. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Marroo looked down at the ground. “No I won’t.” but the ground looked much further away now that he was looking straight down at it. He held onto the branch a little tighter.

She scooted a little further out onto the branch and he snapped his eyes back to her.

“I don’t have to steal your book.” The girl said. “We could read together.”

Marroo held his book a little closer to his chest. “Why don’t you bring your own book?”

The girl sighed and rolled her eyes. “Momma won’t let me bring books. She says I have to play with the other kids, but she didn’t say I couldn’t read what the other kids brought.” She scooted a little closer. “Besides,” she said, “She won’t know if I just take a peak.”

Marroo abandoned the Y in the branch in order to scoot a little further away from her. Now that he was here he didn’t want to jump, but he didn’t want to give her the book either. The girl scooted all the way along the branch until she occupied the Y he’d just evacuated, and he scooted until he was just out of reach among the more perilous offshoots of the thick limb.

She made a pouty face. “What if I let you hold it?” she asked, “Then I could just read over your shoulder.”

Marroo only half considered her suggestion while his other half considered whether he would really hurt himself by jumping to the ground. “You wouldn’t steal it anymore?” he asked.

She closed her eyes and put her chin in the air as though in a show of nobility. “No more stealing.” she promised, and waved her hand as though it were some kind of spell.

He eyed her. “Fine then.” He agreed. “Only I’m going to hold it.”

She grinned, and clambered back to the trunk of the tree so he could return to the relative safety it provided.

“I’m Aiza.” She told him after an hour or two of reading. “What’s your name?”

“Marroo.”

She jumped down from the tree and turned back to him to wave. “It was nice reading with you Marroo.” she said, “Bring it again next week!” Then she skipped away.