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  “Why? You, yourself, made your own voice indistinguishable and unable to be heard. Why should I apologize that I could not understand something that was, is, and always will be, unintelligible?”

  A chuckle hops from the binding of the sky again, and I feel some sort of strange comfort as his mind moves in closer to mine.

  “You’re right. Those were both bad examples. I’m not a very good teacher with this kind of stuff.”

  I shrug. “I think you’re fine enough.”

  “Well, thanks.” Another giggle, then, “Just... next time don’t apologize for how I feel. Apologize for what you did. So... not sorry for me being sad...”

  I hold hair so light and fine, I can see through. Pieces of glass. Like everything around me. “Sorry that I was mean and cruel.”

  “Exactly. Exactly.” He sounds content, and I smile, smally, before he says, “Ives, look, they’re talking again.”

  Indeed, they are. They nestle together, talking in the brevity between moments. Screech stops in front of Freckles, and she edges towards him. Their conversation is nothings – as fitful and inconsequential as the weather, but Screech still seems to have a power, an anger, that goes further than some murmurings about the temperature in the air. Freckles is completely relaxed, and when he turns to see her, face and body still stiff and resentful over something I can not predict or understand, the gleam in her eyes seems to further his upset. They had only been talking, voices lowered, for short spurts, when suddenly, Screech’s arms reach out and shove Freckles.

  And again, in a flash, a moment, it’s all too real to me. The fact that at any second, Freckles can take a spill over the edge and cease to exist. The fact that he can, too. The fact that their lives are flimsy, easily bent, easily forgotten.

  Any silly satire session between Thomas and I is long forgotten. I should have been paying more attention. I should be here, with them, my mind in their current, in their now, their always. Mine does not matter. Thomas’ does not matter.

  They do. I have to love them, after all. I have to need them, or there won’t be any me anymore.

  Or I’ll start again.

  I step forwards, but I know any step I take to venture to the other side of the barrier may be too late. My body burns and my heart races immediately – a reaction that comes in the span of nanoseconds, igniting every fiber and atom of my body.

  “Woah!” She’s screaming the words as she regains her footing, her muscles beginning to lock. “Not cool.”

  “That is a light way of putting it,” I say, beneath the thumping in my throat.

  “Ives, are you okay?” I can feel the sudden worry change the mood like the temperature in the air, can feel concern seeping from every corner of my universe.

  “I’m fine.” As long as they are, I will be.

  “Because we can’t, that’s why!” She’s backing up from him, giving him a look similar to the one I’ve shared with Isaac – as if she’s afraid of something that was supposed to be the only thing she had.

  I feel a lump in my throat that is none too familiar.

  “For God’s sake, Scree! Just because I can’t tell you in Fahrenheit or Celsius what degrees it is doesn’t mean you need to murder me!”

  And then, it’s quiet. His eyes are dark now, his figure hunched. I attempt not to close my eyes, no matter how much I do not want to see this scene, for I know that watching them is my duty.

  “Yeah...” He unravels, relaxes, apologizes with nothing more than his gaze. “Yeah.”

  He cannot say “sorry” either, probably for reasons as unknown as mine.

  I take time to question whether he is more like me or Isaac.

  Or perhaps, like Thomas suggested, he is like no one. He is only like himself, because we are all different, and we are all unique.

  I wonder if I would seem unique to others. I feel unique to myself, but I do not know what I am comparing it to as, once again, Thomas thoughtfully pointed out. Who would I be to others? A phantom? A far away friend? If I were to have a Moderator, like they do, what would they think of me?

  “Listen, we gotta bunker down for the night. When it gets too dark we can’t see anything.”

  I nod in reply to Freckles’ words. My introspection today has made me endlessly exhausted, though I did not realize it until the prospect of sleep was posed.

  I ease myself down on a stair as the pair do the same, Freckles explaining to him how to lie so they both can fit, the two of them beginning to relax into the soot of a stair. I wonder what it feels like – if it’s comfortable, or uncomfortable, as I run my fingers over the smooth surface.

  “No moon.”

  I look up at my own sky, following Screech’s observation. “None here, either,” I say, though I know he cannot hear me, or see me, just as I can no longer see them, from the quick darkening of the sky.

  Has the sky always been so dark at a certain, seemingly randomly appointed time? I cannot remember. I do not remember. I feel as if I need to – I attempt to call the thought, the memory, into my mind...

  “Wow.” Screech interrupts my thoughts almost instantly. “When you said it got dark...”

  “Yeah,” both Freckles and I breathe.

  I close my eyes, attempting to wait for sleep to find me. I listen to the howling, clawing, explosion of screeches in the wind across the barrier, and I attempt not to let it shake me too much.

  “Thomas,” I state, but my voice jumps up an incline at the last second, makes my original statement a question.

  “Yes?” he’s returning.

  “You never did tell me if you were seeing anyone romantically.” I cross my arms on my stomach, pull my hair behind me.

  “No, I didn’t, did I?” He seems to be contemplating that for second, as if trying to bring an answer to my original question. Finally, his voice returns, just moments before my mind darkens in sleep.

  “I’m sorry.”

  seventeen

  A world of concrete and wires, full of mostly hairless mammals that fight about social inconsequentials as if they are life and death.

  A world with streets and plains, and stairs that only connect floors and ceilings, stairs that always have a top.

  A world with cars and horses, and dry and wet, deserts and swirling waterfalls. A world that is light and dark, night and day, and hungers, thirsts, breathes.

  A world that is so different, and yet... this is the only world I have ever known.

  It’s cold and crisp. It’s a November morning – of course it’s cold and crisp. My fingers are numb because I’ve forgotten my gloves in my flat, but I didn’t forget a woolen purple scarf, tied many times around my neck, and a knit cap that pulls down on my silver hair. My numbed fingers go to examining myself, as if I hadn’t watched myself get dressed this morning – my tied hair sits on my left shoulder, in a huge braid thick enough to marvel even Rapunzel, tied with a leather cord at the bottom. Even with my hair pulled thusly, my head feels warm. My hands examine the slippery, water resistant cloth of my jacket, and I stare at my tight denim jeans and faded brown boots, the insides quilted with care and warmth. As I turn a silver, moon-charmed ring pendant on the finger of my right hand, I stare around me.

  Concrete, as I’ve known it to be. Trees are framed in patches of gold and red leaves, and the sunlight is caught behind an eternally gray sky, swirling and burbling above, promising rain that we hope will not come with the cold.

  We?

  There are hundreds of people, here. All different heights, and colors, and shapes. Moving, talking, all warmly dressed and searching for their technology within the folds of their clothing as they walk between buildings. Their voices are accented, touched, just as mine is.

  I am in some sort of square – with large, curling fountains near frozen in their movements, and white concrete all around me.

  These are all facts that I have come to accept, know, and understand...

  But why is this all so surprising to me?

  I feel strangel
y, a way I have never felt before. Like I have been asleep for a long, long time, and I’m waking up, and for a moment, I believed so firmly in the dream that I thought it to be the real world.

  I begin walking forward. I cannot remember for the moment where I am going – I begin to search my pockets for my phone to direct me, dutifully.

  My hands come up empty almost instantly. Bollocks. I must have left that in the flat, too.

  But my hands will not be empty for long.

  I’m running, now, my feet knowing where they are headed, despite my mind having absolutely no recollection. I shift slightly as I run, point my toes in my shoes, as if it’s more natural for me to be walking with pointed feet than it is on my heels. I lick chapped lips and race, and suddenly the world is blurring in front of me, as if it’s fading, disappearing, leaving me here with nothing more than frightened words and thoughts.

  There is a police officer standing with his back to me, and he’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. I run and I run and I run, and I’m blinking fervently at the blurring, and as my hands rise and wipe at my face, I realize it’s because I’m crying, and I run towards him, and reach one frozen, shaking hand out, towards the man, courage gathered and thumping in my chest...

  I wake up on the empty, white, glass staircase, screaming, and not knowing why.

  “Ives! Ives! Hey, hey! Calm down! What happened? What’s wrong?”

  I believe that is why I’m screaming, currently. Because I do not know what happened. I do not know what is wrong, and yet, still, it is so wrong, like when I woke up to Isaac kissing me, and I didn’t know what he was doing or how or why but I knew, with every fiber of my being, that it wasn’t something I wanted him to be doing.

  “Ives! Take a breath, okay?”

  But I can’t. I’ve jumped up from my lying position and I’m curled over myself, fingers laced around my legs, screaming into the fabric of the only clothing I’ve ever known – my white dress. My eyes are closed, but for some reason, I believe if I were to open them, the world would be blurry...

  “Ives, you need to breathe! Remember where you are! Who you are!”

  I’m shaking, and I’m all colors of frightened, and my long hair cascades on top of and around me, shielding me from fear that I do not understand, the source of which is lost, foreign, unsure. I’m trying to grasp at details, but they’re all there, just as I’ve always remembered them – my name is Ivory, I live on this staircase, I am the Moderator of two children, Freckles and Screech, and I have a friend named Thomas who lives in the sky, and I am screaming, into my white dress, and I do not know why.

  My mind searches for Isaac, and remembers his existence – far away, distant, gone, lost due to an argument a stranger decided to strike up with me.

  For a moment, it’s as if I remember more than I ever have before – and then, suddenly, instantly, I remember less.

  “Please! Ives, please, calm down!”

  It’s the begging that gets my attention, I believe, because the next moment, I’m working on evening my breath, on relaxing my tensed shoulders. My attention automatically goes to my right hand’s ring finger, and I play with an imaginary ring that has never graced my grasp before releasing it, with forced, shaky, deep breaths.

  “Better?”

  I do not know. I still feel the same turmoil raging inside, but such a knee-jerk reaction cannot be given for the length of time one is frightened or injured. I do not speak these words, phrase this idea; I only nod, slowly, and begin to unfurl my body, tracing my hands over my legs, stretching and touching the now-distant tips of my toes as easily as if I were born holding them.

  My eyes trail to the barrier adjacent to me, and I start, slightly. “It’s blank.”

  “They’re sleeping, and you were sleeping, so I turned it off.”

  “Why? Does it waste p – power?”

  “Ives, you need to breathe for a moment. Don’t worry about them.”

  I release my held breaths again, close my eyes and attempt to solidify my memory of this existence, this plane. And yet... there is some sort of thought, some truth, that keeps lingering behind the backs of my eyes, keeps proclaiming itself to be the one and only truth.

  “Better?”

  I do not reply with a nod this time – I’m still attempting to remember. Or, perhaps, forget? My mind is foggy, fading, a large, empty field with white smoke covering all.

  “What happened?”

  I do not want to tell him. I want this to be mine, this thought to linger only with me, not with cryptic voices in the wind.

  But I give an answer, finally, because there is no reason not to.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?”

  “I mean that I do not know.” I attempt not to huff at him, which is quite a taxing task.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No.” As much as I hate to admit it, as I stretch my mind out, there is nothing new of consequence to see, to think. “I was here, falling asleep, one moment – and, the next I was waking up, shouting.”

  He’s silent, either mulling it over or attempting to assess the validity of my words. I honestly do not know how secretive or distrustful I could be. Probably quite, if the situation called for it. But in this instance, this moment – there is no need, no reason to be. Why would I tell him that nothing was there if there were something? I would just not even bother telling him either way.

  “Did you see anything out of the ordinary while I was asleep?” I say. He’d never quite verbally established that he could see the world around us, but every action and direction seems to indicate that he can.

  “No. Nothing ‘out of the ordinary’.”

  I nod, take that as my confirmation, and gesture at the barrier. “Put them back on.”

  “Ives, I think you need some more time to – ”

  “Put them back on.”

  And, as usual, he follows my whims.

  The next moment, the screen is covered in the pale morning light of the strange world. Screech is beckoning Freckles forward, so I rise to my own shaky feet, attempting to guard my trembling legs enough to be able to walk as calmly and languidly as I always have.

  It takes many expanses, many lengths of time, but finally, my grace returns to me, and I am walking with pointed feet, half-off, half-on the staircase, eyes slightly closed, feeling nothing but invisible, slippery ground beneath me guide each of my steps. I spin and leap from stair to stair, easing and relaxing into the apparent morning, my second day watching two people, who are forever silent, forever lost.

  “You gotta be careful,” Thomas is always warning, between every pirouette.

  “You must stop acting as if you are my mother,” I reply.

  He falls into a silence so steely that for a moment, with the humor only afforded to private thoughts, I wonder if he really is my mother.

  He could be one of my parents. The thought makes me laugh, once, out loud.

  But then why was he always so opposed to Isaac’s existence?

  Perhaps he’d only wanted one child, and I was his favorite.

  I raise my chin and dance even bolder and stronger at such a thought. Being someone’s favorite, even just in my mind, and even just the voice of a wind, seems to relax me some.

  I contemplate whether or not Screech and Freckles will feel relieved that they’re my favorites, as well.

  “We’ve not eaten.”

  The simple phrase pulls me out of my rather egotistical, confusing cognition. I turn on the tips of my toes to my partners, staring at the other dancers in the ballet adoringly, though they do not seem to reply with their own steps or spins, only with agitated, confused words, their minds seemingly on a whole different wavelength than mine is currently.

  “No,” is Freckles’ reply, without a glance up.

  “Are they provided for, as well?” I question.

  “What?”

  “You said, before – that I was provided for. I was
part of a community in which I would be provided for, if need ever be. That my hunger and thirst were taken care of, and in return, I had to work.”

  “We don’t need to eat,” Freckles interrupts, but Thomas answers, overlapping her simple statement.

  “Oh! Oh. Uh – yeah. In a way, I guess. They are.”

  “So what work do they do, in return, for being provided for?”

  “Nobody here,” Screech is muttering to himself, while my turns begin to die down with the weight of questioning.

  I can almost see what he’s thinking, as if it’s portrayed on the large barrier. I read the words I know that are in his mind over and over again, to myself: There are many others here that she has met.

  I knew this fact, of course. I wonder why Screech seems to be so melancholy, so dark about the subject entirely.

  Thomas is not answering me, but I suppose that is fine, because the spectacle on the other side is interesting enough to entrance me.

  “What are you thinking?” comes Freckles’ voice.

  “Really?” I expire. “Like you can’t tell? Like you don’t know?”

  I wait for Thomas’ usual “maybe she can’t, you shouldn’t be so harsh to judge” thing, but he never reveals himself. Perhaps he is still thinking over the simple question I asked him just a length of time ago.

  “Thomas?” I attempt, prompting and prodding with what I hope is a gentle voice.

  But still, he hides in the silence and eternity of the heavens, and I am forced to pay attention to the conversation of strangers.

  “You always get into these moods. So quickly and randomly, too.” My voice is not attempting to be unkind, though I can realize that my words are, perhaps – I state everything in a very “matter of fact” way, voice easily portraying a fact that I either think or know to be true.

  I’m interrupted by the voices and world across, and give myself away to it, suddenly curious about what they may – or may not – say.

  “Tell me about them.” I grin as Screech begins walking backwards, up the staircase, apparently waiting for some sort of story to capture his mind and take him to an earlier time, before he had ever been conceived on this staircase.