After what felt like an hour of flying, but what the lemur assured Poire was much less, they finally arrived at the beginning of a long bridge made up of rope and old wooden planks. “He cannot take this any further,” the lemur told Poire.

“Why not?” Poire asked.

“It is forbidden,” was the last thing the lemur said as they waved their goodbyes to the giant beetle before turning towards the bridge once more.

It was connected to something so far, that whatever it was, it was covered by clouds.

“You are not going to go?” The lemur asked with the usual tilt of his head.

Poire looked down to her feet, still covered in dirt, and then past them – to the bridge that dangled in the fierce winds of these great heights. “Can I… Can I really do this?” she asked him.

One of the planks detached itself from the bridge that creaked over again.

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“Of course you can,” the lemur said, “but…” he glanced down to the drop they would suffer should she fail. “Believe in yourself before you start anything,” he said.

“I’d always heard my father say you had to be prepared for failure even if you did believe,” Poire told him.

“In cases like these I believe it is in your best interests, girl, to forget about the word failure. Instead, concentrate on the pressure of your steps, the way you will hold onto the rope, should one snap beneath your tiny build.”

Poire gulped. She expected saliva to come trickling down her dried throat, and then she remembered about the loss of her brain matter and head, which caused her to ask herself the question: how am I even here and living without such important assets that my body needs to be present?

“What are you thinking about?” the lemur asked her. “Are you having second thoughts? Because if it wasn’t already obvious, girl, we cannot go back alone now.”

“Why can’t we go back?” Poire asked him.

“Because,” he said, “we have already seen too much. It would be against the rules.”

Poire crossed her arms. “There are too many rules around here. I don’t like it.”

The lemur cackled. “Perhaps. But what can we do? It’s not as if this was our land.”

“Well then, who’s land is it?” she asked him.

He merely pointed ahead, to the gathering of clouds blocking their path, and said: “Cross the bridge, girl, and then you’ll find out.”