Wonderer of the Hollow Realm

I used to work with my family along the crust. It was a comfortable and daring sight to be hold. A lovely little mining city that was made up of countless of my own kind. We had moved rock and tissue that would fall from the sky on multiple occasions. From the wars and destruction that would lay in our wake, but we never questioned it. It was a sort of weeping sound that would end in a violent series of cracks like a red hot steel ball to a puddle of ice. Skidding along the surface before settling and sinking below its shell. I had been warned on multiple occasions not to go out when the tissue would fall from the heavens, but I was young and foolish. I would often try and see if any would land on our yard or in the streets during any of these times, but I was mostly unsuccessful. Prudent of me to think I could find any where we lived even if sirens blared we would never see such foreign snow fall, like dandruff.

It was only until I had turned 96 on the standard calendar that I was able to first see it dance from the sky. I was an adolescent at the time but mostly in mind rather than body, it was the norm. It was beautiful yet horrifying, the moment it touched certain buildings the constructs of their material would begin to steam but never appear to melt. I was curious and wished that one day I could touch is seemingly velvety texture. Though I had insisted to my father on multiple occasions that I wanted to go on the same expeditions as he would. Traveling across the hollow lands of the broken brittle and barren steppes, he had known of their dangers. Yet, I was stupid, I had convinced him though I did not know what I was getting into. He said that on the next trip he would take me and my brother Kyydruun. Before we hadn't traveled far from the cities grasp when we would play with the other kids, on occasion some would die but it was no biggie. Often we'd see them the very next day good as new which was great, it felt like we could take on challenges with no real issue of never being able to experience again. I suppose that is just the will of our kind, ever present and ever learning, always dying but always continuing onward.

We had finally made our way over toward the city's edge, It felt like we had crossed hundreds of thousands of standard mega-lengths. It was strange, but divine in terms of sight from one end to another as if we had entered an ocean from the head up only to walk three feet and end up here. I remember hearing about how vessels would use the same technique to take crew from one spot to another over long distances. We had finally made it to the gateway that would lead us toward the rifts. The Rifts were a collection of deep chasms that lead to small and large pools of formation tissue, though tissue was something that was harvested it wasn't entirely something that was collected from the rifts. In fact the rifts were off limits due to the amount that would die trying. Infant tissue would form large budding colonies along some of these rift puddles and in great time spew out from the crust out toward the center of the sky. I had been reminded of this by my father who was stern but caring of us both, it was only tradition for him to care for us as our mother was out with some other mate and father didn't want to leave us with a crooked informant from the cities main child care agency. Climbing over large stones and strangely formed boulders my father watched us carefully from the front. He was aided by a device on the back of his head to see both front and back at the same time and was an expert in its use. I was mesmerized by this machine and had played with it days before when he had first shown it to us. It was something of his he was given by the military when he used to serve. My brother was distracted though I had caught him a few times while on this trip it was apparent that he might not be suited yet to do this. Yet, he carried onward as we found a nice relatively flat area to set up our camp.

We set up a small tent like structure, it wasn't anything fancy but it would reasonably shelter us in the case of a blizzard. Though we had been lucky so far, it was bound to happen at some point. I was sitting outside the tent when I noticed a small fiber like structure, my brother was throwing rocks into the rifts as they made audible growling and gargling noises as if they were alive. I had began to crawl over to it to get a closer look. It was colorful and blue, though it didn't give off any of the emitted light I had seen in books or stories before. Perhaps, there wasn't enough of it or rather it was using a different kind of lense or camera. I did not know at the time but I was about to make a huge mistake. I had touched it at first with the nearby elongated rocks and stones nearby to see if it was safe. Nothing appeared to happen only some sort of steam would come off but the rock appeared fine. Then I placed it into my hand, at first there was no feeling but that was the issue. I couldn't feel anything anymore on the palm of my hand it was strange, I began wiping it across my body in curiosity noticing I would lose more and more feeling and feel warmer and warmer throughout my body. I placed it down finally and felt weird I tried getting up but had a hard time standing, it felt as if I was floating. Then finally I fell. My brother gasped and pointed. My father took notice and tried reaching for me with no avail. I hit the formation pond below me and nearly instantly lost consciousness. When I would wake up I was in some sort of facility back home and had remembered nothing of the in between.

This would be the first time I would die.