Outskirts

Elias hit the ground with an awkward thud, while Fawks seemed to… float for a moment before gently touching down — or at least that’s how it looked.
Either way, his “landing” was far smoother than Elias’s.

Elias instantly looked at his hands in surprise, then down at his legs, his stomach… the rest of his body as he stood up. A smile spread across his face.
All around him was sunlight, as if it were midday in the countryside.

Behind him hovered an arched, bubble-like gateway, just above the ground — exactly like the one he had fallen through just moments ago… except this one was dark, resembling the nothingness he had just escaped.
“Come back to me,” Peachy’s voice echoed faintly from within the archway, distant yet close enough to tug at him.

“So… what do you think?” Fawks asked.

Elias lingered, that faint echo still pulling at him like an invisible thread. The archway shimmered — not quite solid, not quite air — and for a moment he wondered what might happen if he stepped back through.

Then the warmth hit him. Not just sunlight, but a deep, physical warmth that seemed to sink into his very skin.
Elias looked around. Rolling hills (some quite literally rolling), scattered trees, a sky so clear it almost hurt to look at. The air was filled with a sweet scent, like a meadow overflowing with flowers of every kind. A breeze flowed over him in waves, almost like sea surf, and he could hear the calls of birds he’d never heard before.

Somewhere far away, a bell chimed, its sound lingering unnaturally long.

Fawks had wandered a few paces ahead, swaying his arms in that carefree way children sometimes do, squinting at something in the distance — a tower that seemed to slightly shift its position each time Elias blinked, maybe even its shape subtly changing.
“Well? Better than the dark, right?”

“What is this place?” Elias asked.

“The Outskirts.”

“Outskirts?”

“Yeah — the Outskirts of the Common Ground.”

“Common Ground…” Elias repeated under his breath.

Now that he could see Fawks clearly, he really did look like a boy of about ten — though there was something in his eyes, in his manner, that hinted at the wisdom of someone much older. He wore worn-out shoes, a linen shirt, short trousers held up by a belt that looked suspiciously like a fox’s tail, and on his head, an oversized newsboy cap that somehow didn’t fall off. His hair was frizzy, his gaze was bright, almost sharp, though the irises themselves were pale.”

There was something oddly familiar about this child.

“…Are you my younger self?” Elias finally asked, following him, still trying to get used to walking barefoot on the springy grass, each blade bending and slowly springing back as he stepped.

“What?” Fawks looked at him with the innocent confusion of a child who thinks the answer should be obvious.
“No. I told you — I’m Fawks.”

He trotted down a small slope and onto a narrow dirt path.

“There are roads here?” Elias asked, still suspicious.

“There’s everything here! It even has many suns,” Fawks replied, making a playful gesture upward.

“Many suns?” Elias tried to look, but the brightness was blinding. Still, he spotted a patch of sky where the light was less intense — and there, in that dimmer pocket, were brilliant constellations and colorful nebulae.

“Here, look at this!” Fawks picked up a stone and hurled it at a nearby tree. Instantly, all the leaves took flight in a flutter like a flock of birds, accompanied by a sound like harp strings. They scattered in all directions, leaving glowing trails behind them, almost like jet contrails.
Then, a single fruit fell from the now-bare branches.

Fawks scooped it up and wiped it on his shirt.
“Want to try?”

“Uh… no thanks, I’m fine,” Elias said cautiously.

Fawks made a small face of mock disappointment, then bit into it himself.
“How do you know it’s not poisonous?” Elias asked, eyeing its strange purple-orange color.

“It’s actually astonishingly sweet and juicy! But that’s not the point. I wanted to show you this—” He pulled out the seed, tossed it onto the dirt path, and right before their eyes, a new tree sprouted and grew tall in seconds, identical to the first. The road itself bent slightly to curve around it.

“How about that, huh? Found that out by accident!”

Elias didn’t know what to make of all this. With everything that had already happened to him, his capacity for wonder was… dulled.

“You’re a really hard person to impress, you know that?” Fawks complained.

“Well, I’m sorry… all of this is new to me!” Elias said quickly, not wanting his guide to feel bad.

“Yeah… you’ll take it all in much better once you see what people make here… what they build.”

Elias started wandering along the road, taking in the strange flora. Most plants and trees had two-toned leaves — like olive leaves, green on one side and silver on the other — except here, the silver was real and shining, catching light in shifting colors.

The earlier sweet fragrance in the air was now joined by something salty.
“Is there a sea nearby?”

“Ah, it’s the river!” Fawks darted uphill to the left, waving Elias over.

Elias climbed up too — and there it was, just thirty meters away: a river flowing uphill, its current moving opposite to where they were headed. It was so wide, it could almost be mistaken for a sea. Peering into the distance across it, Elias saw, once again, a tapestry of nebulae and constellations.

When they reached the shore, they saw someone canoeing upstream — in the same direction as the flow.

“Hey there, stranger!” Fawks called.

“Ahoy!” the man replied.

“Where to?”

“The furthest I can get from the Common Ground,” the man said with a grim smile.

As he passed, Elias noticed his bright yellow eyes. He leaned forward to see his own reflection in the flowing water — his face looked just as he remembered… except his eyes were pale, like Fawks’s. Paler, even.

“I look… the same!” he finally blurted.

“Of course you do,” Fawks said simply. “You’re you.”

Elias smiled at him.
“You’re smiling?” Fawks grinned. “Finally!” His exaggeratedly happy face even made Elias chuckle.

“So, what’s next?” Elias asked.

“I say we head to the nearest settlement and get you some proper shoes,” Fawks said, glancing at Elias’s bare feet. “I’ve been there once before.”

“Lead the way.”

They walked for several kilometers as the day slowly edged toward evening, eventually approaching the tower Elias had first seen from afar — the one that kept changing positions. It truly was rotating, from just below its midpoint upward, yet there was no machinery, no creaking metal, no grinding gears. It simply rolled and turned, the only sound being the rush of air it displaced.

Behind the tower, a small town came into view. The smell of freshly baked bread reached Elias’s nose — and he realized he was hungry. But then another scent broke through.

“Smells like…” Fawks began.

“Rain!” Elias interrupted.

“Oh no!” Fawks shouted, taking off in a sprint. “RUN!”

Elias chased after him. “Why? What’s going on?”

“This isn’t normal rain!” Fawks panted between words. “It rains anything! Once it rained stones! I’ve heard it can even rain cats and dogs — literally!”

He ran surprisingly fast for a ten-year-old — in fact, fast even for Elias. But less than a hundred meters from safety, the “rain” caught up with them.