Borealis Seven - Curiousity Hangs

     Evening crept in, as did the oranges, yellows, and purples it often carried with it, pulling away the clear blue of the daytime's sky to make room for the night's dark. Aurora dangled from the side of a tall building. A hand held her left ankle. It was the only thing that prevented her from meeting the filthy streets below. Aurora stared down at these streets. They were about as boring as her day had been, at least in her opinion. She had slept through most of the day, after all, and the parts that had been punctuated by consciousness had been far too violent and haphazard for her liking.
     Aurora looked up, bored with the view below, and saw Ember, a short, blonde headed girl who had clean, white clothes on, not to mention a clean face with a clean head of hair. Now, that was something interesting, indeed. What faction could she possibly belong to? She was short enough to be a Roof Rat, tough enough to be a Riser Dog, quiet enough to be a Sun Cat, and clever enough to be a Grounder Bird. Aurora didn't know quite what to make of the girl.
     "You're probably wondering what or who the hell I am," Ember said, glaring down at Aurora with a slight smirk. "Well, I'm obviously not going to tell you anything out here..." She glanced behind her at the fleeing Riser Dogs she had just beaten away. "Too many ears..."
     Out here? What did she mean by "out here," Aurora wondered. She couldn't think of a single "in here" that they could even go to on the rooftops of Borealis. Of course, it was entirely possible that this girl was a Business Type, which would explain her cleanliness, but there had never been a known instance of a Business Type emerging from within the city walls to explore the outside of the city ever. Then again, Aurora thought, how on earth could any of the four factions on the outside know that any sort of people existed on the inside if no one had ever seen someone from the inside before? It didn't add up.

Borealis Four - Pillars and Folly

  
     It was the champagne bottle shattering next to her head and the spray of wasted alcohol that finally pulled Aurora away from her dreams. Above her stood four dark figures, their bodies silhouettes in front of the freshly risen sun. The figures swayed back and forth ever so slightly on the balls of their feet, their toes slanted up, pointing into the air. Aurora had a feeling that these were the Riser Dogs come to punish her for staying out in the sunlight for too long. She had never been this close to a group of them before, as she was usually very good at keeping her distance from them, but she knew all the same that she had to act very quickly, faster than she had ever acted before, if she wished to escape them. Only a few Roof Rats, to Aurora's knowledge, had managed to evade the Riser Dogs over the years, and they all said the same thing, "Do not let their toes touch the ground. If that happens, you are as good as dead."
     Fear filled every vessel, vein, and artery of Aurora's body. Her blood boiled and steamed adrenaline, and every sense shut down in order to send more power to sight. Aurora was ready to make her move. The Riser Dogs were still on the balls of their feet. The sun was high, and the champagne glistened. And the champagne... Aurora had forgotten about the champagne. She had forgotten about the bottle's destruction, about the sound it had made, about the sound that had woken her up. And so, Aurora reached out blindly, her eyes fixated on the Dog closest to her, and set her left hand down upon the surface of the roof, shifting her weight to the support of her hand as she went. It would have been a good first move, too, had the shards of glass and the puddle of champagne not rested between her hand and the roof's surface. Every shard, big and small, pushed into Aurora's palm as though fingers into the softest bread dough. Blood soon found its way out of the punctures and into the champagne and glass. Had it been up to Aurora, she would have soldiered on despite her sudden and unexpected pain, but the slickness of the champagne and blood and the cold sting of the glass and alcohol was too much. She had slipped.
     The sway of the Riser Dogs ceased, and their toes came down. They lunged. They grabbed. And they pulled. They did not, however, hit or harm. It was all very confusing. The world was a blur of dirty, tan muscles, dark green clothes, and blue sky to Aurora. Somewhere in the midst of it all, a hand emerged holding a sickly yellow, damp cloth. The cloth pressed against Aurora's mouth and nostrils, and the last thing she heard before she fell asleep once more was, "Where the hell did she find that bottle?"

Borealis Three - Neo Crow

     Silence. The deafening sound that permeates the morningscape of each and every day in Borealis. It pricks the ears of the Unfortunate Ones, whispering, "The Sun has gone up to sleep in the sky, and the Moon has gone down to work in the earth below. What say you to a day of jamboree?" And each of the four walks of the city arise from their slumber to honor the silence, noting the absence of the nighttime factories' hum by saying nothing. Orange, meanwhile, bathes everyone and everything, the Sun's light the true instigator of consciousness.
     A Grounder Bird cries out from Balderdash Alley, sharing the good news that silence needn't hold the morning captive any longer. "Pray," he says. "Pray for the jubilant jamboree!" On the next level up, the stomps of the Riser Dogs clang out and echo, ensuring that no other soul dare lie in dreams, lest they suffer the bite of a Riser Dog wrangle. And, from all corners of the city, Sun Cats sing at the shadows cast from the sunrise's ascent. Their song proclaiming the city's approaching warmth:

"O, Shadows shallow on your fallowed gallows,

travel o'er the graveled graces, sing to me your addled places.

Leave me from, the eaves they come, death to all, to all the dumb!"

     Quickly, the Roof Rats scurry to their hiding places. Their squeaks of fear drawing the routine of Borealis' dawn to a close. Pure daylight then covers the city in warmth, the warmth warned of by the Sun Cats' song. For sunlight often calls out to those who wish to cause harm. No soul is safe out from under the shadows' blanket.
     It would not be a good day for Aurora, in that case. Too much champagne had gone into her system the night before. So, she lay there, that day, asleep as the shadows retreated from her body. Had she any luck, the stomps of the approaching Riser Dogs would rouse her in time enough.

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.