Salome sat on a flat stone that jutted out of the tall grass, her elbows resting on her knees and her head cradled in her hands. She had been sitting like that for hours, almost in a daze, with a fixed stare. And still she expected that in the next moment she would open her eyes in her bed at home and wake up from this crazy dream her imagination had conjured. But all her senses reported to her with an intensity she had never experienced before things that could not possibly have arisen from the confused mind of a simple girl. She had always valued her imagination highly, but this was…

Deep beneath her, a vast sea of clouds roiled, stretching like a white infinity from horizon to horizon. A cloud ocean. Salome could hardly believe it, even after hours of staring at the sluggish mass. The ever-gray layer of clouds that had rumbled over her head all her life now lay softly and purely at her feet, as flawless and untouched as a field in winter after the first snowfall. Occasionally, Salome was overcome by a fit of dizziness, as her stomach apparently did not like to view the clouds from the opposite direction.

She sat there silently, listening to the omnipresent, soothing rustle of the blades of grass swaying back and forth in the constant breath of air, as if waves were moving over the plain like over the surface of a still lake. She had long since given up trying to brush away the strands of hair that were constantly blown into her face. According to Van, these invisible streams in the air were called wind. At first, they had seemed eerie to Salome, but she had to admit that she now found the wind quite pleasant. Its gentle touch on her skin, the constant, playful tug at her clothes, the way it seemed to breathe life into everything… And all the sounds and scents riding on it! She closed her eyes, listening to the chirping of countless insects, the distant song of unfamiliar birds, she smelled the fresh earth, the warmth…

Firmament.

Salome whispered the word, the name, letting it melt on her tongue and savoring the sweet, exciting foreignness of its sound. It was the name of a place that was not supposed to exist at all. A place, no—a whole world above the clouds, where nothing but a void ravaged by eternal decay should exist. She sat on a vast plain under an impossibly blue sky, looking at a world illuminated by the golden light of a glaring disc, a world where there should be none. But she was here, there was no doubt about it. All around her, the mighty world pillars rose, their shadows lying on the clouds like the hands of enormous clocks, slowly ticking along their predetermined paths. However, as Salome noted once again, they had lost something of their supposed infinity. The vast plateaus growing from the top of each pillar had never been mentioned. For the thousandth time she tried to make sense of this obvious inconsistency, but as always only two plausible explanations remained: either the lessons drilled into every resident of Fundament from childhood were all lies, or the people in her homeland really had no idea what was happening above their heads.

“Am I imagining things or did you not move at all since I left?” Van’s voice suddenly rang out behind her. Salome turned and looked up at the boy standing at the end of a trail of trampled grass.

“Really?” she asked slowly. Van looked at her with amusement, then sighed and dropped down into the grass beside her.

“I found a place further back where we can spend the night. Nothing special, but still better than sleeping under the open sky.” When Salome did not reply, he looked up at her. “Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer immediately but stared off into the distance. After a while, she said, “This is real, isn’t it?”

Van snorted. “How many times are you gonna ask me that? The answer will always be the same, trust me.” He tilted his head back and gazed at the sky. “But yeah, I get you. I felt the same when I discovered Fundament. You were there, remember?”

Salome said nothing, instead letting her gaze wander for a while longer. Van had danced and laughed with joy at the sight of her homeland. She, on the other hand… Everything around her was so new, so fascinating, so breathtakingly beautiful. How was she supposed to react to the sight of all these overwhelming wonders? For most of them she didn’t even have a name!

“So, what exactly do you plan to do now that we’re in Firmament?” she asked eventually.

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“For starters, dinner would be nice,” Van mumbled. “By the pillars, I’m starving! About time we got something between our teeth.”

Now, as Van mentioned it, Salome also became aware of her empty stomach. With all the new impressions bombarding her at the moment, she had simply forgotten her hunger.

“About the stuff you had in your backpack… guess we can forget about that” Van said, a little disappointed. “A real shame it disappeared. Let’s see if I have anything left.” He opened the bundle that was tied to his belt and produced two small, battered green apples, followed by two more. He gave the last two to Salome. “Here. Brought these from your home. I hope no one misses them. Those are apples, right? Never seen such puny little things.”

Salome frowned as she looked at the apples in her hand. How else were they supposed to look? And why did Van act as if it were the most normal thing in the world to take things from other people’s houses?

“Apples are apples,” Salome said and bit into one of them. It tasted sour, but at least it was still reasonably fresh, and it helped stave off the hunger. She would have loved to have some of the bread in her backpack, but that was nowhere to be found since she woke up in Firmament. A shame. She had liked that backpack.

It was a meager meal, but better than nothing. Afterwards, Salome asked her question once again: “So, what exactly do you plan to do now? You really wanted to go back home. There must be a reason for that, right?”

“Very perceptive of you,” Van replied teasingly as he swallowed the last bite of his apple. “Never told you why I came to Fundament, did I? There were several reasons, but… I was looking for someone. My mother.” He let his gaze drift over the cloud ocean. “She's a navigator, you see? One of the best in all of Firmament. Every expedition wanted to hire her. Couldn’t save herself from offers.” He paused. “And I think she found a way to Fundament.”

“So you met her?” Salome asked.

Van fell silent for a moment before answering. “No. She wasn’t there.”

“How do you know that? You were only there for, like, two days—”

“She wasn’t there!” Van interrupted her. “I’m sure of it, alright?”

Salome hesitated. “Is she…?”

Van looked into her eyes. “She's alive, and I will find her one day. For sure.” His gaze was determined. He reached for the compass hidden beneath his shirt. “But first, I need to rub it in a few certain people’s faces that I’ve traversed the clouds. Oh yes, and you have to come with me.” He added the latter after a brief pause as if it were something entirely trivial. “I need you as proof that I was really in Fundament.”

“What do you mean by that?” Salome asked, confused.

“Well, without proof no one would believe my story. Fundament is something like a fairy tale here, you know? Very few people believe that it actually exists. And that’s where you come in.”

“Did you ask me for help because of that?” Salome asked, a suspicion arising in her. “You… planned all along to take me to Firmament, didn’t you?”

Van turned his gaze away from her and looked to the side. “I… wanted to offer it to you, anyway. Didn’t expect that you wouldn’t have a say in the matter. Now it almost looks like I’ve kidnapped you, doesn’t it?”

Salome raised her eyebrows in surprise. Did he feel guilty? Because he had revealed to her a world whose beauty simply took her breath away? A world that was so much more than she could ever put into words? At that thought, an amused snort escaped her. “Don’t worry about it,” she said dismissively. After all, one could hardly call it a kidnapping, considering the way they had reached Firmament. Neither she nor Van had the slightest explanation for what exactly had happened at the foot of the world pillar, or how they managed to travel through the vast cloudscape without noticing the slightest detail of the journey. Her memories of the strange noise were also blurred and seemed to be slowly fading, as if it had all been nothing more than a fleeting dream… She shook her head and returned to the matter at hand.

“But what exactly could I possibly prove? Instead of me, you could sell anyone as a resident of Fundament. No one would buy that.”

“It’s your eyes,” Van said simply. “In all of Firmament, no one has silver-gray eyes like yours.”

“And that’s supposed to be enough?” Salome asked skeptically.

“Hopefully,” Van said with a grin. He picked up a flat stone from the ground and idly played with it for a while. “There are old legends,” he said thoughtfully. “Stories in which certain… creatures appear that are connected to the missing age. No one can say how much truth there is in these stories, but a careful listener will notice that many of these beings are described as having ashen or ice-cold gray eyes. I used to think it was just a coincidence, but now that I’ve seen the world under the clouds and everyone has been staring at me with exactly those gray eyes, I believe that there must be a connection between Fundament and these old tales.”

“What creatures? And what’s the missing age?” Salome asked curiously.

“Ah… that’s not so important right now,” Van said, casting a probing glance at the sky. “Maybe I’ll tell you later, but we really need to get going.”

Salome wanted to protest, but he simply ignored her and stroked his chin in thought. “I honestly still haven’t the slightest idea where exactly we are, but if we walk along the edge for a while, I might find a clue. It’s always a good idea to follow the wind.”

With that, he jumped up and calmly forged a path through the tall grass. Salome followed him.