What Goes Up, Must Come Down

After drinking their fill of awe, Elias and Fawks walked out of the desolation that was the forest in the morning, to a space that felt strange, almost desert-like.
They sat cross-legged, leaning back on their hands, eyes fixed on the sky.

Far off on the horizon, to their right, one of the two dim suns was setting – though only in relation to their own island, not the Common Ground below. The other sun hovered far higher, so distant it looked like a pale small moon.

Now, up here – so impossibly high, so far from everyone and everything – even the Common Ground felt like a world long forgotten… a memory! The Outskirts, Tarlmere… Red–
No! Not Red, too!

Elias clutched the two Drael Red had given them for the journey, which he’d tucked into his shirt pocket when Fawks had loaded him with the other ones from the lake. They glowed a faint red.

“You think maybe the Little Prince could be in one of these?” Fawks asked.

“What?” Elias blinked at his naive question – but then, glancing at him, remembered he was just a child.

“That would’ve been nice though,” Fawks mused, warming to the thought, as he also reconsidered what he just said. “But I remember at the end he died… I didn’t like that part.” His voice dimmed, almost sad.

“He didn’t exactly die,” Elias tried to explain, though uncertain himself. “He went back to his planet. The next morning his body was gone…”

“Hmm… yeah… still.” Fawks thought for a moment, then grinned. “I liked The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse more.”

There wasn’t much light to see each other clearly, but the faint glow above them seemed like an aurora shimmering down over their faces.

After a moment, Elias asked, “These were bedtime stories your parents used to read with you, right?”
Fawks nodded.

“My wife and I used to read stories like that to our children too,” Elias said softly. “Mostly me, more than her…” He admitted it with a guilty smile.

From what Elias could make out in the dimness, Fawks’s expression seemed to say: I respect that.

“Though honestly,” Elias added, “most nights I read them Bible stories.”

A shadow suddenly passed over Fawks, then over Elias himself. Both of them looked up at once.

Something vast and unseen moved across the constellations — they could tell only because, one by one, stars disappeared, then reappeared as the shape drifted past. The thing itself remained completely invisible, not a trace of light upon it. Only in places where it crossed the stars did some strange distortion appear, as if the starlight bent around its edges — vanishing, then sliding aside, then snapping back into place.

Its movement revealed a shape like… like a–
“A gear!” Elias gasped.
A colossal, dark gear, betraying the hand of man’s imagination behind this entire creation.

“If we keep watching, we might see more!” Fawks said, suddenly excited. “But what could move such enormous, dark gears?”

“Dark energy!” Elias joked.
Fawks didn’t get it.

“You know what?” Elias added, almost with relief. “I think this island really will come back down again.”

“Oh? How come?”

“Well… where else could we go? All this is finite! I can’t believe the imagination of a single man could sustain a whole universe like this… more than just an awe-inspiring backdrop.”

And as if to confirm his doubt, the second dim sun rose again on the horizon–almost where it had set moments earlier.

“Oh! We’re descending!” Fawks exclaimed. “After all this, I didn’t expect the descent to start so quick—aaAAAH!”

At once the island dropped into an accelerating free fall, dragging Elias and Fawks with it.

For a breath, before they even understood what had happened, they were weightless–then the air hit. A roaring updraft clawed over the surface, so fierce it felt like the ground itself wanted to peel them away.

“This isn’t good!” Elias shouted as the gale whipped at his face.

“If this smashes into the Common Ground, it’ll obliterate everything below!” Fawks yelled.

“Yes! For miles!” Elias cried back. “But never mind them–we’ll be paste first!”

Fawks immediately crouched and scrambled away, claws digging in against the current.

“Where are you going?!” Elias fought to keep up, bracing low, each step more a lunge than a stride.

“The edge!” Fawks shouted. “I need to look down!”

Elias froze for a moment, remembering the vertigo from the last time. “…Yeah. You do that,” he muttered, barely audible.

At the brink, Fawks clung flat and craned out. “Elias! It’s all black beneath us… but I think the Common Ground is racing up at us at impossible speed!”

A thunderous crack tore across the island. A whole section sheared off the far side, tumbling away into the dark.

“The island is breaking apart!” Fawks cried.

““It was never built for free-fall!” Elias shouted, heart pounding as he crept closer. “We need to abandon ship!”

“So… jump?!”

“Jump. Do you think you can slow my fall?”

“There’s only one way to find out.” Fawks bared his teeth in a grin.

“Then let’s do it. The dark will soften my vertigo… just don’t jump too late!”

“Too early’s just as bad! I can’t hold you long–if at all!”

Below, the first suns began to edge around the Common Ground. Though night still lingered there, the rising suns spilled light across the clouds.

“Some suns are rising!” Fawks cried.

“How far?”

Before he could answer, the island plunged through the layer, tearing it open in seconds.

“…We’re past them,” Fawks said flatly.

Elias’s eyes widened in alarm. “We don’t have much time!”

“How much?” Fawks demanded.

Elias hesitated. “I don’t know! Seconds–maybe a minute!”

“…How long’s already passed?”

“I don’t know!” Elias barked back.

“Seconds?!”

“Some… many seconds!” he stammered.

“That’s vague!”

Elias gave a helpless shrug in the rushing wind.

“Then on three!” Fawks barked.

“ONE!” Elias cried.

“TWO!” they shouted together.

“THRE–”

The island splintered violently, pitching them into open air. For a heartbeat they were both tumbling, flung in separate arcs. Fawks fought the dizzying gusts, then dove and caught Elias from behind, holding onto him like a living parachute, and he thrust his tail toward the waves below, and instantly their bodies bucked upward against the plunge, if only for a heartbeat.

One massive slab beneath them seemed to slow, arrested by some unseen swell. It curved into a glide and kissed the ocean with barely a splash, as if a hidden chute had bent its fall and swallowed its last momentum.

Fawks and Elias weren’t so lucky– their fall slowed, but not enough. Together they struck the water with brutal force.