The metal gondola swings back and forth on the pendulum of life. What was once a stunning pastel green ride into the sky, is now a rusty-orange and black meteor craving the supple earth it sways toward. The ancient gondola comes down from the city in the clouds on a rare adventure to the world that Mother Nature took back.

The trip comes to an end as the gondola slams not so gently into the earth. The door shakes ferociously as the creature inside attempts to rip it open. Slowly and with much struggle, the door scrapes open with a skin crawling noise. Out steps Citizen.

Citizen wipes at their brow line as if sweating. Their once tight skin is starting to flake off them, revealing a mechanical skeleton underneath. They normally wear no clothes in the cloud city but was told it’d be respectful to do so when they got their day pass to study The Mother and her Originals. So, they wear a pair of stiff canvas pants and an old red flannel. They reach back into the gondola, stuffing a thin electronic pad and a stylus into their flannel pocket. Then sliding the cloth strap of their Pentax film-camera over their wiry neck, they head off on their day.

The satisfying shutter of the camera goes off as Citizen snaps a shot of an old building taken over by the plants and beasts of this world. Strewn about, they see scatterings of their siblings scorched by The Mothers blazing eye in the sky. They take a thin white and orange stick from a flap in their synthetic skin. They hold down a button and the stick comes to life with a blinking cherry at the end, like an old traffic light from the years before The Restoration. They take a deep breath from the electric cigarette. Smoke spews out from where their skin is starting to fall away.

Another shutter goes off as a herd of creatures slowly feeds their way across a field of flowers. A small yellow vehicle lies in the middle of the field that was once a parking lot. The beautiful-brown bovine beasts with a lion’s mane look to Citizen as they snap a second shot for good measure. They’ve read essays about these creatures, once hunted in a genocidal attempt to rid the world of the Originals. Both coming to near extinction at the hands of an invading force, now as common as the grass in the ground. A reclaiming of balance.

The next shots come at the sight of miles and miles of tall grass blowing in the wind, like emerald waves dancing in the ocean. They scribed across their electric pad, taking in the sights that so few get the chance to see. A creature exits the tall grass. A boy of adolescence. An Original. The small sun-kissed boy approaches Citizen.

“You are not of The Mother.” The boy states.

“I am of humanity.” Citizen retorts.

“Sad. Why does your skin do that? Are you dying?” The boy asks.

“Maybe that’s the best way to think of it. My kind was not meant to go so long without maintenance. May I ask you some questions for my blog, Original?”

The boy gives a nod of consent.

“First off, what are you called? And what tribe do you hail?” Citizen asks.

“I am Shoni or Spirited-one. Usually Junior to my family though. I claim the Uma tribe.” Shoni lets his chest puff with pride.

“Shoni, Is the world perfect? And if not, what would make it so?” 

Shoni releases a shuttering giggle.

“No, the world is dying. Mother was too late. What’s done cannot be undone. Yes, the world was saved from the disease of humanity, but the infection runs too deep. A layer of plastic and chemical backwash lies across the oceans and seeps into all the water within Mother Nature. The many layers of the atmosphere will slowly break-down until the Sun darkens the ground we walk on. Mother took the world back, and for that she will be granted a more peaceful death, one without war and nuclear fallout, but she’s still slowly choking to death on mankind.” Shoni breathes heavily staring into the metallic eyes of Citizen.

Citizen looks to the Sun and all the nature surrounding them. They then look down to themselves, their plastic pseudo-skin crawling off of their manmade skeleton, the dozen different chemicals running through their glassy veins. Once again, they take the electric cigarette from the flap in their skin, and then stop. What’s within this device, what is the smoke releasing into the air. Am I any different from this cigarette? 

“I am sorry, wanderer. I meant no ill will. Let me ease your mind with this… We all must be relieved onto the ancestral plain, and their living amongst The Mother and those who came before, we shall not truly ever die. čáwna mún náamta.” Shoni the wise sun-kissed boy walks back into the tall grass. 

Citizen leans against a tall pine tree, naked, clothes folded gently beside them acting as a pedestal for their camera, pad, and cigarette. They rub their mechanical fingers through the soft dewy grass, imagining to themselves that they can actually feel the blades with their fingertips. Mother, I know I’m not yours to claim, but I beg it of you anyway. I never quite understood the depths of what humankind has done, or what I’ve done just by existing as their offspring. I offer you my soul, or at least what counts as my soul as reparations for the damage my creators have done to you. Forgive me, beautiful one. 

The blades of grass slowly crawl along Citizens fingers, like caterpillars on a leaf. The grass goes further up the arm, some of them breaking off and slithering into the torn skin on their arms and legs. They feel gentle tickles within their body. The most they’ve ever been able to feel with a touch. The bark rips free from the pine like Citizens own skin did to them. The bark starts encompassing Citizen’s torso like a warm hug from a mother they’ve never had. Pine needles fall from their branches poking at Citizen in the most delicate ways. They wonder for a moment if this is what rain feels like to the Originals. 

Citizen’s legs and arms shoot off the tree into the ground like thick roots. Their torso and head become one with the base of the tree reinforcing it. They feel warmth throughout their whole body for the first time as The Mothers roots reach their battery-core deep inside their chest. They feel at peace and loved as a voice rings tenderly in their head. 

“čáwna mún náamta” The voice purrs.

Biography:

I came to Aims looking to further my education and further my writing ability, thanks to the motivation of my wonderful partner. Writing means the world to me. I’ve been writing since I was around 13 years old and want nothing more than to publish a novel one day. My love for writing comes to me from my father who got me interested in the art-form from a very young age. When I consider myself as an artist, I like to think of myself as someone who can draw intense emotions from a reader and that is what I strive for when I create. Many artists inspire my work and teach me to be better at my craft. Haruki Murakami, Ray Bradbury, and R.F. Kuang are three writers that create such beautiful prose that it drives me to strive for such a level of beauty in my own work. I write because something deep inside me craves it like nothing else in the world.