Draft
January Breaks
At three bells past dawn, the Asphodelos made its final approach over the Black City.
She breathed deep into the glass, capturing on that film of mist the ephemera of mediocrity in motion. Today’s sun was a sallow red smirch, the slow scorch of tobacco embers burning pale through the smog and dead winds. Rivers and rills of rust-colored smoke spilled from the foundries, terminal coughs that cankered the gondola windows with sores of soot and ashen ulcers. And far below, the dark rush of the populace: workaday masses walking along latticework roads in broken black tides, their collective drip no more swift or lovely than that of slop through old piping.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to Paralyze City,” the captain announced through a buzzing brass horn, “where the gas is green and the squirrels are gritty.” His words were met by a concert of groans and sighs from the translators onboard, but with a noticeable piccolo of relief; at least this time he’d had the decency not to mention how the brass was oftentimes mean and the earls were so to speak shitty.
The Belfry Docks came into view, an obelisk of perfect obsidian that slumbered deep even in the brightest of daylight. Once a simple bell tower, it had been retrofitted by the Luftraum Ministerium to double as a high mooring mast, following the recent rise in both transnational and international sky traffic. Seven cathode lights set the silver bell afire, flashing a precautionary orange that signaled for a crewman to drop the cables that would anchor to the masthead. The diplomatic welcoming party waved from the platform while liveried attendants took their places along the carpet. It wasn’t long before they reeled in the zeppelin close enough for the gangway to drop and snap on the platform’s railing, and shorter still before the passengers disembarked, a procession of colors so exotic they came alive against the blacks and grays of tower and city.
She came out last, and not the least. Indeed, the kameez tunic she wore over thick black stockings seemed woven from rays of sunset, with sapphire motifs that shimmered like the scales of a butterfly. By no stretch of the imagination, one could even claim that her dupatta scarf swayed in the wind like endless fields of sumac under the tender kiss of a pomegranate sun. The outfit, however, was nowhere as memorable as the woman herself.
They are a strange phenomenon, these people we sometimes glimpse. They are presences so misplaced they turn to shouts while the world hushes to a whisper. In that odd gleam or cloud’s shadow, their eyes feel truer than eyes have a right to be. They do not hide behind the glamour of a mirage, they do not flaunt their worth in plumes of gold, in gems afire. In that briefest of moments, they are merely undeniable, and in the next they are gone, like memories of a vivid dream… but the essence remains, an indelible mark upon the soul.
She was definitely hard to deny, what with those eyes of polished ice, hair like jet-black ink down a crystal clear stream, and her somewhat peculiar lack of shoes. She was also in the middle of performing the aforementioned disappearance act, which at first glance seemed to involve crossing over the parapet’s railing and presumably falling three-hundred feet down to a cold, oil-slicked pavement.
“Shu pholor chath!” one of the attendants cursed out in horror, suddenly aware of the loud, blustery weather. “What are you doing?”
“Mhm.” She paused, blinked. Her legs dangled precariously on either side of the increasingly wobbly railing. “Going down.”
“Are you mad? This is more than dangerous! And… and probably illegal!”
“Well going your way is definitely illegal, and I already spent the last seven weeks in a flying cell… so I’ll take my chances.” There was an awkward moment when the Fallien nationals and Aleraran envoys had an epiphany, and after that she might as well have had ‘stowaway’ written in bold across her face. Her time was up, so she smiled, and added: “But thanks for the concern, you’re a sweetheart.”
She let go of the rail, arms to cancerous heavens, and fell to someone else’s death. She prayed it wasn’t any of the heart attacks she just caused on that platform. She also hoped it was a bureaucrat.