Borealis Twenty Four - Dancer

     Bodies congealed. Then bodies revealed, and rainbows fantastic in abundance-- Bliss walked, bobbed eternal, but reality tripped, glowering infernal, robust with flattened, finite attitudes. On top, a music blared ins and outs-- its ways and wants from the speakers adjusted by the hands of the uncaring and the frivolous and quaint. Elsewhere, people slept far further down, downed until they waked, and harder workers worked harder down still with no future rewards in sight, just tedious delirium and sadness.
     Meanwhile, the hot sun had long since set itself once again, its glowing creeping deep below the dusty horizoned windowsill of the lone Borealis, a city looked awkwardly out from but not deservedly in, until now. And there, from a small screen in a dimly lit room, there displayed before the girls-- a monotonous dance of the aforementioned. Men at computers, scientists at imagining, and people, the real Business Types, the ones of whom lacked all business, strutted and bopping to a miserable beat whacked-pulsating with apathy and an adulterated love for the monotonous. Incessance.
     Aurora leaned forward, closer to the screen. "What are they doing?" she said.
     Ember coughed. "Dancing." Cleared her throat. "Looks dumb, huh?"
     Aurora scrunched her face. "A little." And she watched a little while longer.
     Everyone was touching and bumping into each other. And... everyone looked intoxicated, at least on some stretched out paramount level of obfuscation that lacked importance, perhaps something manufactured to replicate a sharp, loathsome pheromone traditionaly released deep within the depths of desperation.
     "Ember?"
     "Yeah?"
     "Is this part of 'Mirage' as well?"
     The girl scratched her head. "Probably," she answered. "Anything that can disorient is fair game within that thing, uh..." She thought for a moment. "Whatever it is..."
     Ember found it difficult to formulate her thoughts properly. The dance moves were sucking them in, too. The heat waves and the emotions contained within the moving pictures the girls watched... The substances involved... they moved them too, distracting them, but the girls felt something else, something different. They felt pity. They had both experienced the taste of the truths in their lives, and the girls had both had inklings of the greatnesses tickled into their big hearts and full brains, their soft souls and darker thoughts. It was the same warmth the girls had experienced atop the discovery of new things, whether through their two plates of cold eggs or some articulated, stale carbon cups of space age turquoise juice.
     Aurora felt gassy. The juice hadn't set very well with her. "Ember?"
     "Hm?"
     "Have you ever, um..." she trailed off, distracted again. "Have you ever asked Garnet about 'Mirage' before?"
     Fed up, Ember shut off the blurry, colored video screen they had both been looming over for far too long. "Not exactly," she yawned. "But I did hear it from him once."
     Curious, Aurora spurted out, "Oh yeah?"
     "Yeah, and get this. He's not fat or an outsider either. He's blonde and skinny."
     Aurora threw-up a splash of bluey space age goo. Her drink from before. "What?!"

Borealis Twenty Three - Fretting Fullers, Lies & Lions

     "You are inside Borealis, Howl," a man said through an invisible loud speaker. "Killer." He chuckled.
     It was just another white room that lacked all depth and definition after the sudden flurry of images had dissipated. Silent tears trickled down Howl's cheeks. His brain was in pieces, and his heart had beat itself into submission. The boy tried to speak again but could only produce squeaks.
     Another chuckle through the loud speaker. "I'm surprised you don't recognize my voice," the man said. His voice was smug. "No matter, though. You're a smart boy. You'll figure it out before too long."
     Howl blinked, severing a stream of tear drops from their source.
     "You're physical condition is astounding. So much vitality for a boy your age. Do you know how many bone fractures you've suffered in the past three years? Twenty-nine. They've all healed rather well. So... you are lucky in that regard." The man paused. "However, the index of your muscle mass and the rate of its growth, or fluctuation, indicate that you may experience some amount of height irregularity, i.e. you're growth will be stunted. So, get used to your current stature."
     The boy held his breath. He was trying very hard to locate the source of the man's voice. It was difficult, given the acoustics of the room, however large it was.
     "Not that it will be a problem. Your height is perfect for the conditions you've been forced to live in." Howl could almost hear a smile curving the meaning of the man's words. "You know, I was the one who selected you to become a Riser Dog, both you and your father."
     Had Howl not already been holding his breath, he would have stopped breathing just then. The information he was being fed made little sense to him. What did the man mean? Everyone in Howl's pack could say that they had been present at Howl's birth, that Howl's father had been the alpha of their pack for nearly twenty years.
     "I can see the look on your face. Incredulous. Now, don't go believing everything you remember. The human brain is very insufficient in terms of recording witnessed history. There are so many inaccuracies over time. Your mind reconstructs or removes people from your memories whenever it wants. You have no control. Their clothes change. Their actions. Their motivations. People say one thing. You thought they meant another. What's true is the present. It cannot lie. It's fresh the second you experience it. The second after, unfortunately, is of little to no use. It's become past. Yet we cling to it... For, what else do we have?" The man was talking in circles to confuse the boy. "So, listen to me. I am not here to lie to you. I am here to enlighten you, Howl... Killer." More chuckles.
     The room went dark again in order to subject Howl to more crazy images, but Howl had located the source of the man's voice while the man had been talking. And, when the lights had gone out, Howl had seen, for a split second before the images had blocked his field of vision, a man standing behind a high-up window, inside of a small room, leaning over a microphone, his back arched and his arms braced against whatever it was that was supporting the microphone.
     Images of men and women in long, white coats creating balls and blocks of oranges, reds, and yellows contorted around Howl's body as he thought about what he had just seen. The boy raised a hand to see if he could touch one of the images circling around him. His fingers cut right through, and he felt nothing. The images, however, flushed red and changed over to flashes of violence and death the instant his fingers made contact. It was disturbing, but Howl had seen worse.
     Unsure of what else to do, the boy took a deep breath and shrugged. "They don't call me 'Killer' for nothing," he said to himself.
     The next thing he knew, he was running, the images were behind him, and before long, he could make out the features on the man's face.
     The man laughed. "Good. Very good," he said.

Borealis Twenty One - Perpendiculars in Parallel

     Ember smiled, "Yup, I was right behind you." She walked over to Aurora's side and looked out at the city along with her friend. "If it hadn't been for that champagne bottle of yours, I probably would have never noticed you."
     "You think so?" Aurora asked, somewhat rhetorically.
     "Yeah. I mean, you're lucky it wasn't more than just me and those guys--"
     "The Riser Dogs?"
     "Yeah, who noticed you. You know," Ember turned to face Aurora, but the city girl kept her face planted against the window. "You never did tell me where you got that bottle from."
     Sounding somewhat bored with Ember's question, the city girl responded, "Garnet."
     "What?"
     "Garnet. I got it from Garnet. He gave it to me. He gives me all sorts of things."
     Aurora watched the activity going on outside on the various visible roofs and buildings, partially glad that she wouldn't have to deal with the stresses of the outside for once, partially sad that she wasn't in between those stresses roaming the city with the wind in her hair. The air inside the city felt so stale. "Hey, Ember," she said.
     Ember was lost in thought.
     "Ember?"
     "Hm? Yeah?"
     "If you didn't know what eggs were until today, how did you know what champagne was when you saw me?"
     Ember walked away from the window to the back of the room. "We actually have that here."
     "You do? Why would you have that and not eggs?"
     "Eggs don't help you feel better."
     Aurora turned away from the window. "Feel better? How does champagne make you feel better. It just makes me sleepy."
     "That's just it. It makes you feel different. It numbs you and makes you forget about life for a little while. Isn't that why you drink it?"
     Bored again, the city girl turned back to her city, and said, "I suppose so. I've never really thought about it much. I just hate dreaming."
     The girls had been so excited a few moments ago. Now they both felt so tired, like they had used up all of their emotions in one go. It seemed boredom was the only thing that they could feel with any enthusiasm after going through everything that they had been through. They were thirsty too. So that was something outside of boredom that they could feel. Garnet hadn't had anything to drink on hand when they had eaten breakfast that morning, which was somewhat ironic, considering what had led them to be in his presence, at least in a round about way.
     Ember waved her hand in front of one of the white tiles on the wall perpendicular to the room's window. The tile pixelated away and revealed a cold, cloudy cubby that was self lit and glowing with a light pulse. Ember waved away another tile, the one directly below the cubby. Hidden there were a couple silver knobs and a dozen brass buttons on a black panel. There was a screen as well, black like the panel and filled with green, electronic lettering that changed with each button press. After a few minutes, Ember decided on a button combination and turned one of the knobs. A glass door slid over the front of the cubby, and the cubby slowly filled with white, puffy smoke. The smoke swirled around as it entered, pulling closer to the center of the machine as it spun. Within seconds, it congealed together and hardened, forming two glasses. Green and blue liquids then poured from the roof of the cubby, mixing together inside the two glasses to create a vibrant sort of glowing turquoise. Once the glasses were filled, the glass door slid away, Ember reached inside and grabbed the glasses, and then walked back over to her friend's side.
     "Thirsty?" she said.
     Her friend didn't respond, but there was an odd expression on her face, one that suggested dread and confusion.
     Ember moved closer to Aurora, "Are you okay?"
     The city girl swallowed nervously, "How are we here?"
     "What do you mean? We walked here. Garnet--"
     "No, I mean how are we here if the building I was sitting on, the one right there, is the second tallest building in Borealis?"
     Ember didn't understand. "Well, shouldn't this one be the tallest, then?" she asked.
     Aurora shook her head. "No. It shouldn't. Because that one is." She pointed at a building off in the distance that towered far above everything else in the city. "I was staring at it the night you saw me, and I certainly don't remember there ever being anything behind me that night. No building. Only sky."
     "Here." Ember tapped her foot on the floor twice, and a small, waist high cylinder emerged from the floor where she had tapped. She set down the glasses on the cylinder and turned her full attention to where her friend was pointing. "Well," she said. "That building does appear to be level with this one. Maybe it's one of those buildings. If it is, I can't believe I've never noticed it before."
     Placing her index fingers about two feet away from each other, both above and below Aurora's pointing finger, Ember drew a nearly perfect circle around Borealis' tallest building. The second the circle was finished, the entire window went black, with the exception of what was inside the circle. Aurora gasped and jumped back. Ember laughed and pinched the center of the remaining piece of visible window. Just like a camera, the window began to zoom in on the building off in the distance. In less than a minute, the girls could see the side of the city's tallest building as though it were only five feet in front of them.
     Ember looked over at her friend, who was now sweating, smirked and said, "Mirage." She turned back to the window and saw in it what she expected to find. Herself and her friend staring right back at her.

Borealis Twenty - Adroit Anomalies

     The long, metal hallway was purple and cold. Aurora didn't like it. It was too small and cramped. Where was the sky? Why was it so dark?
     Ember walked along in front, quiet and cautious. "You okay?" she said, looking back, a faint echo following her words.
     "I'm fine," Aurora lied. Her new clothes were too tight.
     "Loosen up, will ya?" Ember said with a slight smirk. "The goal is not to stick out." She thought for a moment. "Not that that's really achievable given that there are no records of you ever living here. Your name isn't on file. Your face--"
     "I thought you said you watched us somehow, even though you're in here. Doesn't that mean other people watch us too, people that know my face?" Aurora said as she tugged at her white shirt and pants with some futility, hoping that they would suddenly free up and stop clinging to her so snugly.
     "Yeah... I guess." Ember turned back around. "I just mean that you're not supposed to be in here, which is sort of 'duh,' right? People can't hide stuff like that with new clothes and a hair brush."
     That was of little comfort to Aurora. "Then what do we do?"
     Ember was silent. "Um," she started. "I never really thought that far ahead. I just wanted to meet you." Ember sighed. "And, it didn't help that Garnet practically forced us through that false wall. What was he thinking anyway?" She threw her hands in the air. "Oh no! A little boy's coming to get us! Oooo!"
     The girls walked on for a few minutes, mostly listening to each other breath. Their footsteps were largely muted by their rubber soled shoes. Aurora wasn't used to shoes either. She very well might have been better off as a new born, pigeon toed duckling. Her movement and posture was almost as awkward, and she wouldn't have looked so much like someone from the desert had she actually been a duckling. Aurora frowned.
     At the end of the hall was the only light the girls could see, and it was the one responsible for all the purple in the hallway. The closer the girls got, the more white the bulb and its light seemed to become. Next to the light, on the right, was a rusted metal door. Aurora didn't like the look of it. Perhaps it led to an even smaller and darker place. She shivered. The thought of it was absolutely dreadful to her.
     Ember, unaware of her friend's fear, started talking again. "Really," she said. "I thought you would have been left shivering on the floor by now."
     "Because it's cold?"
     "No. You have to be claustrophobic on some level, I'd imagine."
     She was. She didn't know the word, however, but she was. Had it not been in her nature to mask any weakness, even around those she trusted, she probably would have just collapsed into shivers upon entering the hallway. She was beginning to have some difficulty breathing as it was... Despite the look of the door and her concerns about it where it might lead, she just wanted something to open up this hallway and give her some more space.
     At the door, the girls stopped and looked at one another. Aurora gave Ember a sheepish smile, but Ember didn't see it in Aurora's silhouette. The silly Roof Rat was standing right in front of the now purplish white light. Ember, rolling her eyes and showing yet another halfway amused smirk, put her hands on the door's wheel handle and turned. It opened with little fuss or force and with almost no squinging or screeching to accompany it.
     "Huh. Wasn't expecting that, " Ember said drollfully.
     They both walked through the door, Ember first and Aurora second. The door closed lightly behind them.
     "Huh. Wasn't expecting that either."
     Before them stretched another hallway, this time well lit, nearly too well lit for the poor outside girl who had never seen artificial light before. The hall was wide, littered with closed doors and intersections, and the end of the hallway wasn't even visible. This was a new source of stress for Aurora.
     She looked over to her friend who had by now gone forward a few steps. "What do we do now?"
     Ember shook her head. "I don't believe it. I can't believe we're just right here."
     "What?" Aurora was confused and starting get a headache from all the fluorescent lighting.
     The fiery blonde whipped around, her grin toothy, straight, and ear to ear.
     "What?" Aurora asked again, this time nervous.
     "Haha!" Ember jumped up and down. "We're on the other side of the city!" She ran up and grabbed Aurora by the shoulders. "Garnet teleported us to the other side of the city! And look!" Aurora followed the girl's finger toward the way they had come. "That door's not even a door anymore! It's a wall! It's a freaking wall!"
     There were no words. The Roof Rat simply raised her eyebrows.
     Her friend ran over a few feet down the hall and then pointed at another wall. "This is my room!"
     "It's a wall."
     "And it's my room! It's hidden! Watch!" Ember ran her finger along the wall, drawing a large rectangle.
     The wall fuzzed briefly and then revealed a simple white door, much like the others that lined the hallway. The door opened. Inside was a room with three large white walls and one giant, wall-sized window that looked out onto a rooftop, the one where Aurora had been captured and the place she had slept after getting tipsy that night. The shards of glass and even a little blood, all of it was still there, glistening in the midday sun.
     Aurora rushed inside to the window, glad to see the outside again. She pressed her face against the window, much like Ember had done before. "I can't believe it," she said. "You were right behind me the entire time!"

Borealis Nineteen - Bad Dog, No Biscuit

     A small burst of sand popped into view behind a nearby sand dune, raining and mixing granules of yellow and beige over and beyond the summit of the guilty desert bulge that covered the explosion's origin. Howl darted behind an empty platform of concrete that sheltered itself beneath a semi-transparent red tarp. He peeked over. Saw nothing. But heard the sound of shifting sand and scooping hands. Five minutes passed, and the sound stopped. Footsteps, boots digging into sand, climbing, replaced the previous sound. Howl waited. The footsteps stopped. Still no sight of the noise maker, the sand blower. Howl crept backward into an alleyway that stretched out behind him, using the shadows it cast as cover. A few seconds passed.
     Suddenly, a black figure, pitch in the desert sun, its shape bulbous and clothes dilapidated, mounted the crest of the dune and dusted itself off. It was a man, and he wore a mask. He would have been spectacular in sight for no one had Howl not been there to see him.
     "Garnet," Howl whispered, sliding deeper into the shadows. "I knew it was you, you filthy Bird."
     Garnet rubbed the lenses of his goggles for a while and then continued his march across the large dune. Toward the bottom, he finally settled down into a trot and began to make his way toward the city's first buildings. Howl glared at the masked man. What was he up to? The boy's mouth began to twitch as he glared. The Grounder Bird slowed his pace even more. Howl bit his lip. Garnet stopped. The Bird was only a few yards away from the young Dog, but the Bird was looking at a different alleyway.
     Silent and slow, a small pocket of air left the world and disappeared into Howl's lungs. It stayed there for a while. Everything was still. Garnet turned and looked right at the boy.
     "Oh! Hello, Killer," the Bird said happily. "The goggles in my mask brighten up dark places for me, you know."
     The boy exhaled violently. He wasn't used to being spotted.
     Garnet tilted his head slightly. "Goodbye for now." A roar of thunder crackled from the Bird. The space around him went black. And he, with the black, vanished.
     Half an hour passed before Howl moved again. During that time he listened for the Bird, sure that the man would reappear somewhere in the city... But he never did. No snap. No thunder. No pop. Garnet was gone. Howl cursed and made a dash for the sand dune, conscious that at any moment Garnet could reappear and thus prevent him from reaching whatever secret rest at the foot of the desert.
     Clouds drew closer as Howl ran up the face of the dune, and the desert threatened to swallow the boy whole as he slid down the other side. Sand went everywhere, strewn about in Howl's haste, erasing most of the tracks and traces Garnet had left behind. Howl didn't care. He just started digging as soon as he stopped sliding. And, after many furious scoops and much more cursing, the boy found something.
     Garnet stepped out from beneath the shadows that had hidden Howl earlier. "Silly boy," he chuckled to himself. "And you thought you weren't supposed to find that."

Borealis Eighteen - Lefts of Passage

     Howl frowned at the dunes sprawling out in front of him. There seemed no end to them, but he knew that there probably was an end, an end that he would never get to see. He had tried his best to see the end of the desert once, but even the tip of the tallest skyscraper in Borealis had not been high enough to look beyond the horizon. It frustrated him. He knew that if his eyes were unable to make the journey, then surely the rest of his body would fair far worse, and his body was already capable of so much at such a young age. Howl could leap, duck, zig and zag with the best of the Unfortunate Ones of the city, rough up anyone he came across, and track even the faintest of trails so long as the sun shone and the wind was kind. Nothing really intimidated or challenged the boy's presence in the least, save his father, but here stood the desert, mocking the boy's very existence. It more than frustrated him. It made him angry.
     Howl spat at the ground. He had intended for his saliva to serve as his direct challenge to the desert's vastness, an assertion of his superiority over the sand and the heat. But, the childishness of his gesture did little more than to exacerbate Howl's feelings of futility and insignificance in the midst of such grainy eternity.
     "I hate you," Howl said to no one.
     The wind blew up from behind him as if to hug and comfort him as though a mother might do, but he shrugged it off as though he were a son embarrassed at his mother's ignorance of her child's approaching maturity. Another breeze soon came by, this time indifferent to the boy's woes. A single strand of it caught itself upon Howl's clothes, curving all along the air pockets of his posture as it made its way up his body. The strand carried with it a note of burnt air and the smell of cooking. The boy's nose pricked and tickled at the scent, reminding him that he had more to do than lament his preadolescent humanity.
     "Eggs," Howl muttered to himself as he walked over to the building from which the scent seemed to originate. "Only you, Garnet."

Borealis Seventeen - Egg City

     Ember poked the yolk of one of her eggs, cooked sunny side up, until one of the eggs popped. The warm, organgey yellow stuff inside oozed up and bled out as soon as she removed the prong of her fork from the puncture. Plump liquid slowly covered half of the plate. It was weird, so Ember popped the second egg to fill the rest of the plate.
     Aurora, who had asked for her eggs scrambled, leaned over and lightly scolded Ember, "Don't be wasteful. Your eggs will be cold soon. Eat." She shoveled the last of her scramble into her mouth, barely chewing and mostly inhaling.
     "Okay," Ember said. She hadn't ever seen eggs before, and although she should have had the same appetite as Aurora, given that it had been well over a day since either had eaten anything, the sight of such a peculiar food was particularly off putting to her. So, she just sat there, making faces at the eggs in between pokes.
     Food was much different inside the city. Everything solid came in cubes or spheres of rich blues, deep purples, and emerald greens, and the liquids often shown in glowy reds, yellows, and oranges. Everything was flavored. Everything was sterile and delicious. No one knew where it came from, but such simple food hardly begged much inquiry or thought.
     Ember turned to Garnet, who had just walked around from behind a nearby corner-- Some scouting had been in order after breakfast, he felt-- and said, "Garnet, are you sure this food's alright? It's all yellowy and gross. And, what the hell is this white stuff around the edges and all these black dots?"
     Smiling and trying hard to stifle a laugh, Garnet responded, "Yes, Ember. It's fine." He sat down next to her and pointed at the black dots on the eggs. "That's pepper and the white bits are mostly made of water and protein." Pointing next to the goop Ember had let all over the plate, he chuckled, "And that's the best part."
     "What is it?"
     "It's the yolk. It's the part of the egg that would have eventually fed the embryo of a baby chicken, had the egg been fertilized."
     Chickens... Ember had only ever read about chickens. "Where did you find a chicken?"
     Garnet smiled and stood up. "Don't you worry about that." As he walked away, presumably to continue scouting, he added, "You need to eat. Think of the eggs as the medium-small cyan spheres you're used to having."
     Although that didn't fully satisfy Ember's curiosity and half revulsion, it did give her the courage to at least try the eggs.
     They were even better than the spheres, and the texture was something phenomenal.
     She quickly wolfed them down, stopping occasionally to chew and really think about the flavors of the eggs. Meanwhile, Aurora stood a few feet away, staring out at the vast, duned desert before them. They were on the very edge of the city.

Borealis Twelve - Blinded by Fire

     "What do you want?" Ember asked the green eyes.
     The green eyes grew brighter in response, but the owner of the eyes said nothing. Green light, meanwhile, filled the balcony, cutting through the trace amounts of yellow smog that lingered in the dark morning air. More and more light flooded from the two eyes as Ember sat, making it easier for her to see who stood before her.
     A large, round belly covered in a tattered trench coat was the first notable feature the growing light revealed. Then came broad shoulders adorned with large, black feathers that stuck into the air. Last came a pair of extra long arms, most likely extended by the trench coat's length, and a pair of rather short legs that were dressed in baggy corduroy. The face, however, remained a mystery as the green eyes were now so bright that they masked any features hidden behind them.
     Ember shielded her eyes with the back of her hand. She couldn't take anymore of the light's intensity. "Well," she said. "What do you want to do besides that?"
     The lights immediately dimmed to a more bearable level. Ember brought down her hand and could see that the eyes were attached to a large gas mask. The figure continued to remain silent.
     Unamused, Ember sighed, "Is that all you can do? Turn your lights on and off and scare people?"
     The figure shifted its weight and coughed a very muffled cough.
     "Great."
     Then, what sounded like a chuckle from the inside of a full trash can escaped the figure. "Ember," it said in an equally canned, though obviously masculine voice.
     Completely baffled, Ember said the only thing she was capable of saying at that moment, "Uh." All other words left her brain. So, she sat there, staring at the fat man with the green eyes who knew her name. She didn't even notice that Aurora was beginning to wake up.

Borealis Six - Bad Zephyrs

     Wind. Wind lashed and howled itself around Aurora's face, pulling and tugging, waking her up as it curved around her body and tattered her hair. All vision was blurred as though in a blended, mixed up, drunken stupor that was still spinning. Smells darted this way and that way and all the way up into Aurora's olfactory, reminding her that she had fallen to the Riser Dog's wrangle. She had lived... But how she had lived, she knew not! And, were it not for the speed that she traveled in the arms of the Dogs, she could have sussed out the answers she asked of calamity.
     Oh, and buildings and buildings were going up and plummeting down. The Riser Dogs bounded from roof top to roof top, never maintaining a straight line for fear that the other factions of the city would notice their rare live catch. If the Dogs thought Aurora special, then certainly she was. Certainly, she could be learned from. And, certainly, she could be toyed with. Hence, the Riser Dogs needed to deliver their catch as soon as possible. They needed to know what their leader, Sheer Wolf, might discern from this Roof Rat's exploits. They needed to know if her information could help them find a way into the buildings that caged their clan in the open air.
     Sadly, what they needed and what they wanted were two entirely different things. From Ember's perspective, the four leaping figures she saw didn't need Aurora at all. They just wanted her. Yes, it was really Ember who needed the girl, and she aimed to take her. So, down she went onto the Riser Dog pack. And, down Aurora went from the Riser Dogs' hands. A fight then ensued, and Aurora was won.

Borealis Two - Holy Dichotomy

  
     Harsh realities are not unlike ice cubes in the desert melting from the evaporate cloven rays of the uncaring sun. Such realities cause perception to lose its shape, to flood whatever surface rests beneath it, permeating the consciousness as though the consciousness were the surface below the ice cube, a surface made of sea sponge, rich with bitter salt. Welcome to the mindset of Aurora's day life, far removed from the melancholy bliss of her alcohol soaked night life in the sky. Nothing is real in the same moment that it truly is, a world of violence and heat.
     And no other mindset exists under the sun of Borealis. First light in the city awakens not only Aurora but thousands like her. Roof Rats and Riser Dogs, Sun Cats and Grounder Birds. They are the Unfortunate Ones, the people with no building to call home, no family to bond them. Once the moon rises, Borealis comes alive with joy and prosperity for the Business Types, those who built the city. For the Unfortunate Ones, the moon only brings nightmare infested sleep after a brief, evening calm. Most dream in amplifications of the horrors their day saw: attempting to survive while the rich and prosperous slept below, their gates and their walls and their robots keeping the Unfortunate Ones out of the safe all Business Types dream in. Aurora often wondered how such calm could rest its head without conviction under the frantic feet of the mania above it.
     The answer? Where conviction is absent, thought is likewise. So, it is true, then, that no other mindset exists under the sun of Borealis. The Business Types could almost be dead at their lack of thought if it were not for their potential to ignorantly verb themselves into being at night. They have no mindset, which makes their reality the unmelted ice cube. It is alone, cold, and contained. It never changes, and it never spreads itself thin enough to become something different. However, the Unfortunate Ones will become something different. As their reality melts into the sponge below, their chaos will unify and become something manageable. The salt in the sponge will preserve them and give them identity, and from pain, there will be growth.

Borealis One - Kaleidoscope Sweets

     

     Aurora looked up into the neon night sky of Borealis, an aging city of shadows and blacks, these darks the horrible nothings that encased the vibrant, yet deathly lit, electronic colored advertisements decorating the city's metal and glass clothing. Stars abounded the heavens, and every drop of the rainbow was represented in their ancient star shine. Although breathtaking to behold, the beauty of the sight was little more than a grand lie spawned from the ceaseless pollution that sweated up from the streets and factories below. Aurora breathed it all in with a sigh. This wretched city of Borealis was her home. It was her comfort and the place she loved.

     In her hands Aurora held a large bottle of the sweetest champagne a Roof Rat like herself could come by on a night like that night. Which is to say, it was a night unspecial to any other. It was normal, and, thus, all she had managed to obtain was an average bottle of champagne containing only the minimum required amount of sweet a person ever really needs in a drink. But to Aurora, the near potable, alcoholic substance she grasped was unique, as was the night before her. It had been an arduous day, and of course it was the difficult things that Aurora often found boring. So, how pleasant an idea it was to sit on the edge of the second tallest building in the city and gaze up upon the celestial, studded, neon crown painted above Borealis' most absurd building. After a swig from her bounty, Aurora felt the hug of peace embrace her. All was right in her world.

     Soon, the warmth of slumber and the chaos of dreams covered Aurora's eyes and lulled her consciousness into the next day, yet another rough day that would make the mundane of her night feel like the grandest treasure God had to offer.