Kaleb trekked over the surface of the fragment, picking small bits of edible vegetation as he went. It was mostly similar to what grew on his home, but everything was tiny, stunted by comparison. He supposed that the constant exposure and the lack of any protective areas led to the vegetation being so small. Once he’d gathered what he thought was enough, he returned to the tent. Iowara was fiddling with one of the devices that he had. He called them ‘terminals’, but to Kaleb they resembled fantastic illusions. They traced all sorts of things with light on a surface, in ways that Kaleb had not fully understood even after Iowara’s explanation.

“Ah, hello, how are you?”

“I saw a golden wing”

“Ah, it caught a gull, did it?”

“Yes”

“Hmmm, I was wondering why you seemed so dejected”

“It was that obvious?”

“You, Kaleb, are as clear to read as a book in bold font.”

Kaleb snorted, “Am I really that bad?”

“Don’t ever try to do any subterfuge, that’s my advice to you.”

Kaleb couldn’t help but feel happier in the company of this strange man, and he slowly felt the weight that had descended on him in his contemplation of the gulls gradually lighten. He smiled broadly,

“Thanks for looking after me”

“Oh! Ah, That’s quite alright, you’re welcome to stay here for as long as you like, really. It’s been a terribly lonely few years for me, you know. I’m just glad to have some company” Iowara smiled back, blushing slightly. Kaleb had only been here for a day and a night. But even so, he was grateful.

“Do you get many monsters attacking you out here?”

“Oh yes, a few.”

Kaleb’s eyebrows shot up at the casual way that Iowara spoke of them.

“Can you defeat them that easily?”

“Haha… I wouldn’t say that. No, sorry, did I give you the wrong impression? I’m not that strong, though spikes do help, naturally. It is simply an occupational hazard, after all, who is going to come and save me out here? There’s nobody else flying along with me, you know. You’ve got to have a bare minimum of confidence in your own abilities to be able to leave the safety of the inner zones… though I’ve heard rumours that monsters have even attacked there lately.”

“They would attack the settlement every now and again”

“Yes, I imagine they would… but monsters aren’t especially vicious most of the time. Often it is for some other reason, someone has upset them or something. I once heard that there was a clan of people who used to ride on the backs of particulalry large monsters”

“Really?”

“Yes, they were apparently a very proud people, they fought an endless number of duels, and they were incredibly strong. But as spikes became more popular, their physical prowess became less and less of a threat, and eventually they left behind the world of humanity and flew off out into the depths of the pillars.”

“Wow. I wonder how they managed to tame the monsters?”

“Hmm, I’m not sure at all. Especially when they get big enough to ride it begins to seem like they would need a lot of food and would be difficult to keep. But anyway, who knows if it is really true? I haven’t seen any conclusive evidence of the episode. This was the early wire era after all, and lots of legends abound about those times, as well as the times before them…”

“Like the relics”

“Oh– oh, well they’re very much real.”

“What?!”

“I’ve even seen one before… quite an extraordinary thing. But they are remnants from another world. No one understands them really, they have existed since long before the wire era, even longer than humanity has lived on the pillars, it is speculated…”

“That’s incredible!”

“Yes, it is! But I have seen one, and seen the archaeological records that accompanied it… It was a truly ancient object. It’s purpose had not been determined though. Indeed its entire nature remains a mystery. But there is supposedly a group that understands them, and is implanting people with them like we are implanted with spikes… in fact, spikes themselves are derived from a relic, you know. Though that origin story is also lost to the early wire era, when record keeping wasn’t at the forefront of people’s minds.”

“By the way Iowara, What are you making?” Kaleb asked, sniffing at the peculiar aroma that filled the air and looking at the pot that was boiling on the stove.

“Tea, would you like some?”

“Hmmm… ah, I’ll try it. It doesn’t smell like the teas we had”

“Ah, of course, of course. I bought this from the last place I visited, it is apparently a delicacy there… some flowers… I can’t remember the name. It only flowers once every few thousand cycles, so it is prized highly and it’s quite tasty!”

He poured Kaleb a cup, and then one for himself, and settled down on a small foldable chair with a sigh of contentment. Kaleb wondered how someone who found waking so difficult managed to do anything at all. But he had another concern on his mind, something that he had noticed while watching the mists.

“Ah, Iowara, I’m sorry to mention this so early in the morning, but when will we be close to another pillar? I don’t mean to outstay your hospitality…”

“Oh” Iowa suddenly looked up guiltily “forgive me, Kaleb, I should have alerted you to that fact.” He poured out the tea for two cups and handed some to Kaleb. “Well, I do hop off the fragment every now and again, as you can see” he indicated the pot of tea “but only rarely, in order to buy supplies and such. It would be a problem if I lost it. But this pillar tends not to approach other pillars very much. And furthermore this area here is known as the archipelago – there are only few chains of pillars around here that actually join to each other. It is a notoriously difficult area to navigate, and I’m not entirely sure that your windsuit will be able to get you all the way to where you want to go.”

“Oh”

“I’m happy to help though. I can set up a sensory field that detects any nearby pillars, but from my estimations, we will be approaching a fairly major settlement in a couple of days”

“How do you know?”

“Well, I already told you about the terminals, but this one” he lifted a small pocket-sized terminal “has location data stored on it from the independent meteorological institute of all the places that they know of and their approximate position.”

“Really, how does it work?”

Iowara then handed the device over to Kaleb and described the three dimensional grid system that had been implemented – though not without a fair number of differences– across areas, in order to navigate the pillars. The terminal showed the journey that the fragment had taken, their current location, alongside a number of dots that indicated settlements. Kaleb could see, just as Iowara had said, that they were due to be going by a larger dot.

“If that’s the case, then, do you mind if I stay with you for the next few days?”

“Absolutely not! It has been a real pleasure to converse with another human again” Kaleb frowned at this odd expression: what else has he been conversing with? “I would actually like it if someone were to join me on my research, as my assistant seems to have left me in the lurch as it were… but I think it would be a cruelty to ask that of you since you have not seen anything of the city that you so boldly left your home to visit!”

“Oh, well, I mean I’m honoured that you would even think of me for something like that, but I would like to see more of the world. I’ve already lived one life surrounded only by the mists, and while what you’re doing here interests me a great deal, I would really like to see the rest of the world.”

“Quite! And I think it is the right choice to make. That being said, do you think you could help me for a couple of days?”

“Of course!”

“And Kaleb?”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if I could ask you a favour.”

“What is it?”

“Well, you see… I am rather occupied here on the pillar, and so… uh… I haven’t been able to tell anyone about any of the research I’ve been doing.” Iowara paused for a second “so long as it isn’t too much trouble, I was wondering if I could give you my research to deliver to the independent meteorological institute”

“Oh!”

“It’s alright if it’s too much to ask, just say! Please, I don’t want to impede on your journey. The independent meteoroligcal institute is in a rather magnificent place called Rathulle City, it’s very much worth your time to visit as well! And so, if you plan on doing any site-seeing, well, maybe you could go there too?”

“Iowara! I would love to!”

“Oh, ri – really!?”

“Yes! This is perfect. I was just going to see the world, and I was really feeling very vague about everything, but if there’s something that I can do… well that would be perfect for me.”

“Ah! Well then thank you so very much, for everything! This would be a huge help. But I have to tell you now, the only people you should trust with this research will be the Dean Sel Hariel and my assistant Egren Ohallan.”

“Oh, oh okay. Is it alright for me to be transporting it?”

“It’ll be fine. I’m going to encode it anyway, so it’ll be reasonably safe, but any researcher worth their salt in this kind of line of work would crack it in a few days”

“Oh”

“People will target you for it as well, if they know you have it, but just don’t tell them, and you should be fine”

“Right”

“Very good, then we have an arrangement!”

Iowara proferred his hand, and Kaleb took it, and shook it firmly. He was, in truth, thankful –now he had a goal to go with his journeys.

Kaleb spent the rest of the day helping Iowara with his work, fixing some of the peculiar rod-like constructions that Kaleb had first noticed when he landed on the pillar, which had been degraded by the mist, and cleaning out any parts that were encrusted with solidified dust.

Iowa also explained to Kaleb that the pillars were mapped with a series of beacons that let people know the rough location they were inside the three dimension grid of the mapping system. The system used three beacons to determine one’s location, and it was mostly left alone by people, though organisations had been known to interfere with the coordinate system for their own benefit from time to time – but since it required so many resources to implement any changes and the beacons also communicated with one another, any errors were typically able to be found and accounted for. Kaleb had not heard of this system before, and Iowara gave him the location terminal so that he could get used to it “after all, you’ll have far more use for it than I will” he said.

And so Kaleb passed his days on the pillar fragment.