James awoke to a pitch-black room and a faint breeze that ruffled his hair. His thoughts started as a jumbled mess of confused emotions that slowly fixed themselves together, jogging his memory. It was almost disorientating to remember what had happened. The fall from the tree, the pain from his broken leg, the two people who helped him, and the face that belonged to one of them. It all slowly came back to him.

James sat up, inspecting the room. It was small, but in a cozy way. His mind then immediately shifted to Celeste. How long had he been sleeping? Was he passed her deadline? Was the ship even still there? James felt a spike of panic as the reality of last thought sunk in.

He swung his legs out of bed, exposing them to the room’s cool breeze. Then, with a resolve born from the inevitability of what he would have to do, he stood up… and felt no pain whatsoever. He looked at his left leg in awe, putting his full weight on it. How long had he been out? He hadn’t been sleeping for a month, had he? With a growing anxiety, he stumbled his way through the room, aiming for a faint slit of light that shot under what James assumed was a door. He reached for a handle but was met with a long piece of wood that extended across the door from left to right. After a few moments of fidgeting with the piece of wood, he was able to push it to the side, freeing the door to swing open. Judging by the texture, James thought it was a wooden door, but the wailing of the hinges pointed to at least some presence of metal. The familiarity of the sound soothed James as he took a step out of the dark room and into a slightly less dark room; it was lit by candlelight. James had seen candles on several different occasions in Vinci, but to say they were rare was an understatement. It seemed these people didn’t have the same scarcity since three candles sat lit on three separate walls casting shadows about the room. Several chairs were strewn about the room with no care for the aesthetics of the matter. One of these chairs was pulled up to a desk that contained several sheets of paper and writing utensils. He, of course, was far more distracted by the girl that sat in the chair. The two locked eyes. James recognized her immediately. She had been the one holding his head earlier when he had passed out. She instinctively reached for the side of her belt, standing up and knocking her chair back. James hadn’t a clue what she was reaching for, but he also wasn’t keen to find out. He raised his hands, palms facing towards her in a show of surrender.

“Uh. Thank you. My leg… it feels much better,” James said, trying and failing to keep the nervousness out of his voice. He tracked her eyes, which glanced briefly down to his leg.

“Why are you here?” she asked, voice stern. James took a step back.

“You… brought me here, didn’t you?” he asked with a perplexed expression.

“Not here. Here,” she said, waving her arms to her surroundings. “You are a cloud rider, no? You never come to our village without reason.”

“Village!?” James said, unable to control himself. “There are more of you?”

The girl eyed him with a look of suspicion before slowly nodding. “There are many of us,” she said. “You have not come here to take from us?” she asked.

“Why would we take from you?” James asked, bemused. He spotted a door embedded into the far wall and began walking towards it.

“You always try to—stop. Where are you going?”

“To see this village you mentioned,” James responded.

“No, you are not. I was told not to let you leave. You shouldn’t even be out of bed.” The girl’s eyes narrowed. “And what was with the stress on the word village?” she demanded. James gave a sheepish smile.

“I’m sorry, but you must be misusing the word village. You expect me to believe that there are enough people to fill a dozen or so houses down here where life shouldn’t even exist? There’s just no way. We would know about it.”

James watched as the girl’s face relaxed for the first time since he had seen it staring down on him near the water. Then she smirked. It took him completely by surprise.

“What?” he asked.

“I had heard that condescension was common among your people,” she said, glancing at the door. “Very well. Let’s take a walk.” James watched as she stood and approached the door. “But you stay by my side. Is that clear?” James nodded vigorously, which seemed to be enough for the girl as she then slid the piece of wood holding the door in place to the side.

The door swung open and James stepped into a world of dreams. He had been right. There was not a dozen or so houses, but a hundred or more. The house that he had emerged from sat near the top of a gradual incline, allowing him to take in the village in its entirety. Rows upon rows of houses glowed with various strengths and colors. James turned around to get a good look at the house he had just exited. A faint glow of purple emanated from the house.

“This is your house?” he asked in amazement.

“Mhm,” she said in satisfaction. “Or my mother’s, at least.”

James felt the outer wall of the house. It was bark, which explained the glowing—or at least explained why it was glowing.

“How?” he asked as he dragged his hand along the bark, leaving a trail of deep purple.

“Bioluminescence would be the most reasonable answer,” she said. James shot her a confused look. “Some organisms contain luciferin, which allows them to glow. This is called bioluminescence.” She paused, inspecting James’s expression. “They really don’t teach you much up there, do they? I mean, I had heard that it was bad, but I didn’t think it was this bad.”

James blushed in embarrassment. “I know what bioluminescence is!” he snapped. He didn’t, of course, but he wasn’t about to let her know that. “I just didn’t know trees could do it.” The girl gave him a skeptical look but chose not to press him on the matter.

“That’s because they can’t,” she said flatly.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” James said.

“Tell me about it. It has something to do with my mother and her mother before her. And one day it will have something to do with me,” she said with a sigh. James scratched his head.

“I… I don’t understand,” he said.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” she said as she placed a hand to the wall, leaving an exact impression of her hand print.

James watched her expression grow distant as she watched the hand print slowly fade from existence. He was about to ask her what was wrong when she abruptly shook herself out of her melancholy and shot a glare at James. “Alright. You’ve seen that this village is indeed a village. Back inside and get some rest.” Her tone had taken on the same sternness that it had when he first spoke with her

James shot one last glance at the village, mesmerized by its size. His eyes settled on something in the very middle. A group of people illuminated by the light of the surrounding buildings.

“What’s going on over there?” he asked, pointing towards the group. The girl looked and then narrowed her eyes at him.

“You tell me. What have you come here for? Those are your people that my mother and the elder are meeting with.”

“My people?” James said, confused. “Oh! The Divers.” James peered at the distant group and saw the faint outline of a rope ladder rising into the darkness. There were less trees in this area, so most of the light was concentrated at ground level. James started to make his way towards the group. He had only gotten a few steps when a hand yanked him back.

“You are not going down there,” the girl said. James gave her an annoyed look and yanked himself free of her grip—or at least tried to. James was no weakling, but she was strong. Time to change tactics.

“Don’t you want to know what they’re talking about?” James asked. “You keep saying we are here for something. If we are here for something, then I’m not aware of what it is, so let’s find out.”

James knew the accusation that the Divers were here for something was ridiculous considering no one knew that life even existed beneath the clouds. Though, there was an itching at the back of his mind caused by the unlikeliness of what he was seeing. Did they really lower the ladder directly in the middle of the village by sheer coincidence? They had stopped here before, hadn’t they? James shook the thoughts away. That wasn’t important. His job right now was to convince the girl with the iron grip that snooping on them was the right decision. James could tell by the look on her face that is was working.

“I’m tired of always being left out of the important discussions,” he said. Her grip loosened. “If they would just include us, then perhaps we could be of some use to them.” Her hand reluctantly slipped off his arm.

“You stay with me, okay?” the girl said. Once again, James nodded vigorously. “Good. Let’s go,” she said before trotting down a side alley.

James spent a few moments admiring how well she carried herself over the uneven ground before rushing after her. For his entire life, he had walked on flat metal surfaces. The ground he walked on now didn’t have the hardness nor the evenness of what he was used to. He found himself stumbling occasionally as his feet hit rocks and found their way into hidden holes.

The girl took him off to the right side of the village, which paralleled a river. The water glowed similar to the trees but on a much smaller magnitude. Still, it lit up enough to show the riverbed clearly. The two walked along it for a time before James spotted something moving in the river. He jumped.

“What is that?” he whispered.

The girl followed his eyes to the river where a small fish wiggled against the slow-moving current. She then looked back at him bemused.

“It’s a fish,” she said, inspecting James. “Do they teach you nothing up above the clouds?”

“So, do you eat these?” James asked, kneeling down to get a better view. It continued to wiggle back and forth in the current.

“Eat them!?” she said, incredulous at the idea. “They clean the rivers water so that we may drink it.” She shook her head. “Eat them. What a foolish idea.”

“Well then what do you eat!?” James asked exasperated. “Dirt?”

She shot him a look that made James overly aware of how easily he could be pushed into the river.

“No. We eat what is provided by Kodama. We…” Her voice trailed off as something caught her attention. Now it was James’s turn to follow her eyes. He followed them to the village where a bright light lit up part of it. Their view was obscured by the building closest to them, whose glow now felt nonexistent compared to the blaze of brightness behind it. It was like the light of a bulb compared to that of the sun.

A flash of movement passed by him. It took him a few moments for him to realize that it had been the girl sprinting towards the light. He took off after her, confused at her urgency.

“Wait!” he called after her.

She did not wait. She barreled between buildings and over rocks at a speed that James couldn’t help but be impressed with. The glow was getting brighter, and that’s when he heard it—the sound of screams.

James watched the girl disappear around a corner and nearly ran into her as he followed. She had stopped and was talking with a woman who had glowing purple eyes. He focused briefly on those glowing, pulsing eyes before his own were drawn to the fire that burned in front of them. Dozens of houses were burning in a blaze that put the fires in Bron’s kitchen to shame.

“Water,” he heard the woman saying. “Go get water, dear. I will clear the buildings.”

“No. I can help get them out. Let me—” the girl said but was cut short by the woman’s firm words.

“Water. Now.”

The girl grit her teeth and spun back the way she came, locking eyes with James. Her eyes narrowed in a fiery rage.

“You did this!” She reached towards her side, causing James to stumble backward, trip, and fall on his back.

“No! Why would I… I’ve been with you the whole time. I didn’t do this.”

She wasn’t listening. Her hand shifted at her side and began to lift something into view when the woman put an arm on her shoulder.

“He speaks the truth, dear. This was not his doing. Kodama would not have saved him if it was,” the woman said. The girl looked from her to James and eventually groaned in frustration.

“Get up! You’re helping me!” she said before storming past him.

James gave no objection to her order. He was already planning on helping so her words didn’t change much. He scrambled to his feet and chased after her. They hurried down the maze-like corridors that the buildings created until finally reaching a circle of stones stacked up to waist height. A deep, dark hole extended into the earth in the center of the stone circle. From the darkness of the hole, a rope rose up, attaching to a pulley at the top.

“Pull,” she said, handing him the end of the rope.

James pulled. He felt a strong resistance but continued to pull through it. “Faster,” the girl demanded.

James was shocked that he had finally found someone bossier than his sister but didn’t complain. She had every reason to demand urgency, and he knew it. He briefly glanced in the direction of the fire, seeing that the light looked even brighter. He sniffed, smelling smoke. Using that as motivation, he hurried his pulling until a bucket of faintly glowing water rose from the blackness.

The girl leaned over the stone edge and swung the bucket to the side so that it rested on the ground. James scurried beside her and watched as she reached to her waist again. He instinctively took a step back. She withdrew a knife that glistened in the light of the surrounding houses. James felt a chill thinking about how she had nearly pulled it out to use it on him. He watched as she furiously cut the rope at the top of the bucket. Within a few seconds, the rope was cut and the two were carrying the bucket filled with water, one on each side. The weight of it slowed their return considerably, causing them to carefully maneuver over the rocks and around the corners to not spill the water that sloshed within the bucket. Eventually they emerged out of one of the alleys into a small clearing. The center of the village, James realized.

Fire blanketed their vision. The two looked at each other and then down at the bucket they were carrying. It wasn’t going to be enough. It would take a couple hundred to put out this blaze. James’s focus shifted to an old lady standing in the middle of the opening. Everyone else was fleeing or trying to put out the fire, but she simply stood there looking at it, a pained expression on her face. The girl lumbered over to her, dragging James behind her.

“Where is my mother?” she demanded. The old lady did not respond. “Elder!” she screamed.

Slowly, the elder’s head shifted to look at her and her face grew even more pained. The woman did not speak, but simply pointed a finger towards a house completely engulfed in flames. A feeling of dread washed over James. He was suddenly yanked forward as the girl charged for the house. The elder’s hand gripped the girl by the shoulder before she could get far.

“We mustn’t lose both of you, child,” the elder said.

The girl didn’t take the time to respond, instead choosing to jerk her shoulder free and continue towards the house. The water sloshed over the edges of the bucket as James tried to keep up. He was about to tell her to stop, to try and talk some sense into her, but then he saw her face. Worried, terrified even, yet determined. Was that how his father had looked when he descended the ladder after his mother? He found that he couldn’t keep her from trying. The words seemed to stick in his throat as he tried to vocalize them. For some reason, stopping her from trying seemed much crueler than allowing her to run into the burning building. Cursing his own foolishness, James gripped the bucket tightly in his hands and quickened his pace.

A pulse of heat hit them in the face as they came closer to the building. James winced, but the girl pushed through it without pausing. The two hefted the bucket and emptied its contents on the door of the building. It dispersed enough of the flames to make the door accessible but did little to dampen the blaze that engulfed the rest of the building. The girl gripped the door and yanked it open. Smoke billowed out into the cloud-covered sky. James covered his mouth, determined not to breath it in. He barely noticed when the girl plunged headfirst into the thick cloud of soot. James tried to reach for her but grasped only air. Steeling himself, he turned his head away, took a deep breath of the freshest air he could find, and ran in after her.