"Food?" she asked.

The so-called food looked more akin to medicine as opposed to anything I'd eat willingly. A slightly translucent and gooey mush interspersed with darker specs, maybe spices? But which spices you could get your hands on in a tree were unknown to me.

"No, but thank you. I'm sorted," I said, holding up my waterskin.

The girl tilted her head again. "What is it?" she asked.

"Oh, it's—Ah… It's water."

The child nodded, a little too enthusiastically for the sake of something as simple as water, and then she stood from her spot and walked out further to the leaves. She reached the edge of her platform and took another step. I nearly jumped out of my skin to stop her, but she did not fall, she only stepped on a smaller branch I couldn't see, and then another. Afterwards, she played the movement in reverse, and returned safely onto the platform, now holding a pail.

She snuck over to show me. "I have water too," she said.

I nodded, though not as enthusiastically as she had. I wondered if that disappointed her. She placed the pail beside her table, and we sat again in silence for a little while.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I live here."

"All alone?"

She nodded. "I used to live there." And she pointed far above us.

"Oh?"

"But I fell."

"You… you fell?"

She nodded again, intently. "Just like you."

"That's… true. Thanks for helping me up," I said.

"I wish there were people to help me up. I'm Mim."

"What?"

"I'm Mim."

Really, I was questioning the other thing she’d said, but then I realized the girl had given me something that sounded very much like a name. Each of my experiences thus far told me that must be impossible, so I asked, "What is that? Mim?"

"That's me," she said.

I nodded, very slowly. "Yes, right. And that's your… Name?"

Her eyes went wide. She shook her head frantically, then furrowed her eyebrows, brought a hand to her chin, and tapped her other hand against her knee. Eventually, she lit up like a lantern and said, "It's my de-sig-nation."

"Oh." I thought a moment and decided not to pry. "Well, Mim. Where exactly did you fall from?"

"The village," she said. "Where everyone else is."

"The Treefolk, you mean?"

She looked at me funny, but nodded all the same.

"And that's where you wish someone would help you up to? You want to go back home?"

Mim thought a moment, then stood and crept past me, as if she would disturb my rest by making too sudden a movement. She walked down the length of the branch, and stood near the trunk, stealing glances at me. I could see her excitement in the way she idly bounced on her toes.

"Is there something over there?" I asked.

Her eyes lit up. "Only if you want to see," she said.

I couldn't deny my curiosity, and so, I shuffled my way down, careful not to come too close to the edge.

"Are you afraid of heights?" Mim asked.

"I better not be."

"Oh," she said. "Well, I am."

Once I got closer to the trunk of the tree, I noticed a strange irregularity in the wood. Then, quickly enough to force a few blinks for fear I was hallucinating, the girl zipped upwards, about fifteen feet. I shook my head and took a closer look. There were small indents carved into the trunk, foot and hand holds. A ladder.

"You made this?" I asked. "That's amazing. How did you carve into the wood?"

The girl climbed back down, scratching the back of her head, clearly trying to stop the bashful smile from forming on her face, and failing. She held up her hands. "With these."

"No, I mean, what tool?"

She tilted her head. "Tool?"

"Yeah like a knife, a pick, something harder than the wood that gets into it."

I guessed my question had her stumped because all she could manage was to shrug and hold up her hands.

"That's… fine. You're making it to reach your village again, right? How high does it go?"

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Mim looked at me a moment, blinked, and then her head drooped. Her entire body shifted into utter despair. "Not high enough," she said.

I wasn't sure how to respond to that.

But before I could spend too long infected by her sorrow, she brightened and turned to me. "What are you doing here?"

"Uhm. Right. I'm climbing to the top, where the tree pierces the sky."

This excited the girl. "To the top? Will you see the circle of life?"

"The circle of life, huh? Well, if you mean the orb, I suppose I'll be seeing it."

As if reciting a lesson she'd memorized through sheer repetition, the girl tilted her chin up and spoke: "At the peak of our home lay the circle of life. It breathes into the Tree and thus breathes for us…" Then she stopped and her eyes closed. "I can't remember the rest."

I wanted to chuckle but decided it better to purse my lips and act impressed. On top of all that, it seemed the church's ideologies reached even the strange group of people living in the Skypiercer. I wondered briefly at the possibility of this orb possessing some supernatural and ill-defined ability to give the people of The Realm life. It seemed rather unlikely, especially so if Keeper wished me to steal it.

"Well," I said. "I'll be heading up as soon as I'm rested, however long that'll take."

Mim's bright expression went pale and she nodded to that. I just about began to cry at the face she made.

"How long have you been away from your home, Mim?"

"Oh!" She perked up and ran over to her makeshift platform, motioning me over. She pointed out a section on her table that had been scratched at thousands, if not tens of thousands of times. "One stroke means ten nights," she said. "And when it's like this, that means it's ten by ten, so one hundred nights. If you count them…"

I didn't let her finish. "Would you like to come with me, Mim? Back to your village?"

The girl stared at me, without reacting as she had for most of the other things I'd said. She seemed to be processing the offer. Then she smiled and nodded her head so hard I thought it was going to come off.

----------------------------------------

The holds on the makeshift ladder were small, certainly, but much easier to climb than heaving large claws up above my head over and over again. Mim had also clarified how she'd made the holds, and by their shape, I could more or less tell she wasn't lying and that indeed she had dug them with her fingernails. When she told me, I could feel the flesh under my own nails begin to throb.

"My head hurts…" Mim said.

"Not surprised, don't go shaking it around so much anymore."

"Sorry," she said, with almost too much sincerity.

As we climbed, I had to ask a few times if we were close to the end of her ladder, though the strange part was that, occasionally, Mim also asked if we were close. Each time I told her that, "How would I know, didn't you make it?" and she only ever replied, "Oh, yeah."

Before we started our climb, she'd asked me how I was planning on making my way to her little village far above, and I told her that, actually, I was a big scary monster. She did not quite believe it until, of course, I showed her the claws. Like a cat, the fear only lasted a moment before she was up close and poking at my new bulky limbs, asking what it was made of and if I'd ever slept on them before because they looked a little soft. I'd never considered that, but given they had turned to liquid without my say-so, I tried turning them soft myself, and given how quickly she fell asleep cradled in my big scary monster hands, it seemed she was right.

Eventually, the ladder came to an end and I asked her to hold on tight. Thin arms clutched around my waist, and my claws sprouted directly into the tree. She only jumped a bit.

I scanned the area above, found the nearest branch, and made a straight line towards it. Plenty of breaks, plenty of rest.

The remainder of the climb was much slower and much quieter. Due to my concentration, I got into the routine of forgetting there was even a girl clinging onto my waist and would occasionally break into a small panic, only to look down and see her arms still attached. This progressively turned into a call and response: I'd ask if she was holding up, and she would invariably tell me she hadn't broken a sweat. Combined with our frequent stops on tree branches where she spent the time hopping and skipping around, and I spent the time sprawled out staring at the rest of the climb, I learned very quickly that this girl had far more endurance than I did.

Other than the speed of our progress, things couldn't have been going better.

At nearly the same instant, Mim perked up and said, "There! It's right there, I can see it!" and a piercing blaze of pain came alight in my shoulder.

My right arm went slack and I grunted, clenching both my teeth and my other arm to keep from falling. I blinked through the heat of pain, and when I looked, there was a stick lodged into my arm. An arrow.

"What was that? What happened?" Mim gripped at around my stomach even tighter.

"Don't… know." I winced.

Then, I spotted it. Barely visible through the cover of leaves, was a face peeking through, staring down at us. Treefolk.

Another arrow whistled by my ear.

Hanging by one arm, I forced air into my lungs and yelled as loud as I could, "Don't shoot! I'm bringing Mim back! Do you hear me? I've got Mim with me!"

The girl cried out just the same. "It's me! He's my friend! Stop it!"

I hung there a while, panting, and heard no more arrows, but neither was there a response from above. Only the silence of pale wind however many thousands of feet above ground.

"Are you okay?" Mim asked.

I tried moving my arm, but it wouldn't budge. "Yeah."

"Can you still climb?" she asked.

I most definitely could not. "Yeah."

Think Ferro, think. I can't move my arm, must be the arrow stuck inside it. Take it out? Die of blood loss, great fun. I can Repair but Mim won't be able to hold on while I do. So don't hold on? She can dig a hold. Or find one. Or maybe… maybe there already is one.

"Mim, do you see the spot my right claw was a moment ago, the holes? Do you think you could use that as a hold, like your ladder?"

She was silent for a moment. "I think so."

"Good. Climb up my back and tell me when you're holding on tight. I'll be back in a second, alright?"

"Back in a second?" Her knee dug into my back as she clambered up.

"Don't worry about it."

A hand on my shoulder, then a foot. A knee on my head, and finally the weight lifted off me ever slightly.

"Okay!" she said.

"Holding on tight?"

"Think so!"

I closed my eyes and exhaled sharply. In one fluid motion, I whipped my neck to the side and bit into the shaft of the arrow sticking out of my shoulder, then tore the thing out, along with chunks of flesh and a spattering of warm blood across my face.

Repair. My body went gelatinous for half a heartbeat and my claw slipped out of its hold.

I pulled my focus and slammed my other arm into the tree. My claws sunk into the tree. It caught my fall. Thank the gods the arm still works.

I'd only fallen a few feet. "Still holding on up there?"

"I am!"

"Good! Now, let's get you home."