//------------------------------// // 20: Verðandi // Story: Fimbulvetr // by Alkarasu //------------------------------// The next morning the world broke down. It had begun as many mornings before that, with Vsevolod waking up first, having breakfast before his companions woke up and then watching the sun rise. Waking before the sunrise was a useful acquired habit he got from his long walk. Of course, on some days the weather was hiding the sun, but one benefit of being on top of the clouds was that it was no concern. The view was spectacular as expected, and the young griffon had already prepared to risk his life by attempting to wake up his friends, who usually were less than enthusiastic about it when he had noticed the strange thing. Before him, in the vast expanse of the clouds was a long tear. It started with a wide gap several steps away from their "camp" and closed several hundred meters further east. Looking around, he noticed that at the western side the clouds looked weird as well, bunching up into a big hill as if their movement was blocked by something. Their sleeping spot was surrounded by the horseshoe-shaped barrier of clouds, opening into the tear. Worse than that, he had noticed that the clouds were moving all around their small island of stability. Looking at the ground through the tear, he discovered this "island" was almost stationary. Vsevolod sighed, "Just one day. One damn day for something in the world to make sense. Is it too much?" He looked at the skies above and felt how his anger boils to the surface from somewhere deep within. Back in the day, when the world made sense, he never knew he could be that angry, but the further he went into the madness of the present, the easier it became to get irritated. The anger needed a release, and he quickly found out that his body is well prepared to give it one. His roar was deep, deafening and had an authority to it one would expect from a full-grown lion, not a small catbird cub. The only effect it had was a pair of bumps on his head. Both Helga and Kurgash had shown excellent skills in hitting a snooze button on the alarm clock without waking up, despite never encountering one. Leaving them to their slumber, the young griffon took the time to examine their predicament closer. The cloud patch was about ten meters in radius and centered roughly at their sleeping spot. The divide between the stationary cloud and the moving ones was clearly visible, and upon touching it Vsevolod felt as if their cloud had more "substance" to it. The air currents around it also felt heavier and lazier, as if they awaited a push from outside to even consider moving. He attempted to push, and sure enough, the cloud slowly drifted across the stream that carried them just the day before. It stopped moving once he stopped pushing it, though. Vsevolod sighed and slumped on the cloud beside his friends in defeat. He wondered if anything he knew about the world was true anymore. Every time he thought he got it, the sense slipped away once more. It was so infuriating that only the fresh pain from the bumps was holding him from more roaring. Sighing once more, he decided to wait. "Honored Ancestor, you sleep a lot!" The voice of the pegasus woke him from the slumber he slipped into while waiting for the girls to wake up. "Mother says that rising early you make spirits happy and your life longer!" "Sleep-much-lazy!" added Helga, shaking her head disapprovingly. "No br-reakfast!" "You two are the ones to talk," grumbled Vsevolod, touching the bumps that still hurt a bit. "Have you seen what happened?" Judging from their surprised faces, he assumed that they are yet to see their problem. Shrugging, he pointed to the edges of their unnaturally stable cloud. Helga immediately jumped to the edge and started sniffing at it, looking very puzzled, "No go home? Cloud... rotten-lazy-move-refusal!" "What? Why? What's wrong?" Kurgash also carefully slipped to the edge and looked at the ground. "This was not to happen? Honored Ancestor, I don't understand!" "Then I guess it makes three of us," sighed Vsevolod. "The damn cloud doesn't move anymore. I have no idea why, but unless someone pushes it, it's stuck. I hope Helga has an idea what happened and how to fix it." "Heel-ha elk-meal!" responded the catbird in question, returning from the edge of the cloud wearing the most confused and shocked expression Vsevolod had ever seen on her. "Cloud bad! Cloud no bad! Cloud fast-safe, no bad! No word!" "...and our expert breaks, wonderful," concluded the younger griffon, looking at their former fast-safe transport. "If she doesn't know, who will? Is there some kind of police that would arrest us for breaking a cloud? Wouldn't surprise me if there actually is. You know what? I refuse to be surprised anymore. It never answers the questions and never helps when the world decides to throw you something like this. Hey, world, have you heard me? I refuse..." The rest of his angry rant was stopped by a faint sound that made Helga jump in place and start looking around. The sound stopped as abruptly as it started, but then resumed, a bit louder. Soon it became apparent that the sound is a very high-pitched screech coming from somewhere above and repeating on more or less regular intervals, getting closer and closer. Glancing up, Vsevolod nearly instantly located the source - an object tumbling through the air, with collapsed parachute trailing behind. The object looked vaguely pony-shaped, but the tumbling and the wind made it hard to discern even for his eagle eyes. When the object passed directly above them, it slid out from the straps of the parachute bag. Helga chirped "Useful-fun!" and dashed to intercept the parachute. Vsevolod almost decided to jump to catch whoever was falling, but the size of the pony made him hesitate. As it turned out, it wasn't necessary, the pony struck the clouds right in the center of the hill made by them bunching against their stationary sleeping spot and stuck there with his rear pointing directly upwards. The back legs twitched a bit and went still, as well as the horrible screech. There was one thing that made Vsevolod blink in surprise about that pony, though. All ponies he had met before, and there were a lot of them in the Nomad camp, had one thing in common. They never wore pants. There were plenty of other garments - hats, coats, even boots in some cases, but no pony had pants. This one broke the trend by being entangled in wide green pants several sizes too large. The tail of the pony was partially caught by the belt, and it looked very uncomfortable. "Honored Ancestor, how did you know he's coming?" asked Kurgash, slowly coming closer to the fallen pony. "Can you feel when the Return appears? I never heard about such powerful magic!" "What do you mean?" Vsevolod looked at her in confusion. "He screamed so much I think he was heard back in Moscow." "I haven't heard anything!" blinked Kurgash, eyeing the pants. "You two just started looking around, and then he fell from the skies!" "I hope I'm not interrupting anything important, but could you please help me to get out?" interrupted an unfamiliar voice from inside the clouds. "Can't seem to get a good grip on this snow." "It's not a... oh, sorry," Vsevolod reminded himself of priorities and grabbed one of the legs. With a grunt and several hard wing flaps, he managed to pull the pony out of his fluffy prison. The newcomer blinked several times and covered his face with a hoof. "Who turned up the lights? It's bright as... the hell is this thing? Hey, it's a hoof! It's a... oh, phew, just a dream. Hello, figments! A griffon and a pegasus? Huh, I wonder what would that symbolize... don't forget to look it up when awake... check. All right, let's see where it gets us!" The pony blinked his huge green eyes with vertically slitted pupils and squinted at Vsevolod. His lip went up into a smile, showing off a set of very impressive sharp fangs. The fur on his face was a dark yellow, almost brown color, and his mane was dull red. Further investigation of the strange pony was interrupted by a high-pitched squeal, almost rivaling the screech from before, but coming from Kurgash this time. "A Dreamwalker! A real Dreamwalker! Honored Ancestor, it's a Dreamwalker!" "A what now?" the small griffon turned to the pegasus, tilting his head. "You mean there is a whole kind of pony with such eyes and teeth?" "Yes! They are Dreamwalkers! They look like pony and bat! Very rare! The herds have only one now, and she's almost as old as mother! I never met her, she's too old for many visitors, but I've always wanted to see a Dreamwalker!" the pony was almost bouncing with excitement, causing the newcomer to try to move further from her. That only lead to him entangling himself in his clothing even further and falling face-first on the clouds. "Keep her away from me," muttered the dreamwalker, trying to right himself. "She's too loud. Dreams shouldn't be so loud." "And he thinks it's just a dream! Squee!" Kurgash fluttered her wings and suddenly took off. Yelping in surprise, she closed them and fell to the clouds, almost trampling the new pony. "Of course it's just a dream, my dear figment," sighed the pony, finally sitting down and managing to slip out of his shirt. The shirt fell through the clouds, causing a happy squawk from Helga, who dove through the tear to catch it. "I have hooves, sitting on something looking like a cloud and talking with a pegasus and a griffon. What else could it be?" "So that's what they mean by The Talk," sighed Vsevolod, also sitting down and feeling that a headache would come shortly. "Let's start with the introductions, then. My name is Vsevolod, this is Kurgash Irte, Helga would be joining us shortly. What's your name?" "Oh, getting ominous! I like that! Name's Oleg. Now, what was that Talk you were talking about?" "That was the local name for a moment when some poor soul crushes all your dreams and hopes," Vsevolod sighed again, looking at happy Hel landing nearby with a parachute and a shirt in her claws. "You see, this all... I very much wish it to be a dream. It's not. I'm living it for the past few months, and I'm afraid, you will have to as well. I won't sugarcoat it for you, it's not pretty, it's not pleasant, and it's about as insane as you can imagine, but this is what counts as reality now. You are a small brown horselike creature with... huh, bat wings? Neat. You are nine hundred years in the future. You'll probably never meet any of your relatives, friends or loving ones again. Oh, and the human civilization is long gone, can't forget that one. If you want to know something else as depressing, don't hesitate to ask, I'm always happy to help a fellow Return to hate their life more." "Sounds like bullshit," nodded Oleg with a frown. "I hope your other stories are funnier, or I'll have to ask for another storyteller." "Oh, don't worry, I have a lot of them. Like the one where I almost starve to death in a forest that turns out to be Moscow. It's hilarious, I laugh myself to sleep every time I remember it," said Vsevolod, shuddering at the memory. "Since then I was nearly murdered by a couple of racist elk for being a griffon, was almost enslaved by a bunch of minotaurs for just being there, was half-eaten by a pack of wolves, had a good chance to be lynched for having a friend, was enslaved by a tribe of horse nomads, ran away from a death by torture and, most recently, broke a cloud. You could BET I wish it was all a dream!" By the end of the tirade, Vsevolod was almost screaming in the bat pony face. Recalling all the stuff that happened to him in such a short time made him furious and ready to cry at the same time. The pony shifted nervously and looked around once more. "Hey, hey, chill! I... this... you mean... look, I don't..." suddenly, his face went pale and his jaw slacked a bit. "This is... real?" The young griffon sighed and lowered himself onto the cloud. "Took me almost a week to believe in it, you know. Though, there was no one around to tell me what's going on, so..." At that point, Vsevolod had noticed that the face of the pony was starting to shift into a wide grin, showing off his impressive set of canines. He looked around and said in an almost inaudible whisper, "Yes!" "...wha?" the reaction was so unexpected that the griffon found himself unable to find any smarter sounding question. "Yes!" screamed Oleg on top of his lungs, trying to stand up, but tangling himself in his own pants and falling on the cloud face-first. That had not affected his hysterical giggles. "Finally! At last! Yes!" "Honored Ancestor, is the Dreamwalker crazy?" asked Kurgash, carefully stepping away from the giggling batpony. "Probably," agreed Vsevolod, also stepping away to Helga, who still stood at the edge of the cloud, holding the parachute. "Dinner flea-brain?" asked the bigger griffon, tilting her head. "No cloud-crazy." "Chirp yourself, beakface," giggled the batpony, once again trying to stand up. This time he managed to regain the sitting position. "I'm perfectly sane. At least, as sane as a person could be after fifteen years in software engineering. And guess what? That's another thing I won't miss even for a second! Today's my day, and even your sour faces can't spoil it. By the way, how do you do that with a beak?" "Magic," deadpanned Vsevolod. "That's all explanation I've got, so you'll have to be content with it." "All right!" nodded Oleg, carefully taking off his pants and throwing them away. Helga dropped the parachute on Kurgash and dived to intercept the new toy. "Works for me, as long it doesn't break and I don't have to fix it. Now, is there some sort of government? Anything I need to visit or sign? Or is everyone just minding their own business as they should? Are there any religions? Taboos? Come on, man, say something!" "You seem to be awfully cheerful for someone whose previous life ended ten minutes ago," noted Vsevolod, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that someone was actually happy about what happened to the world. "I have my reasons, and no, you can't have them, they are mine!" cackled Oleg. "So, any top bird that sets the pecking order?" "Ugh... I guess?" Vsevolod scratched his head, trying to find a way to describe all the weirdness of the world politics he encountered. "It doesn't look like it was before this all started, but some places govern themselves... somehow. Kurgash here would probably know more. She's a granddaughter of someone called Great Khan, so..." "Wait, wait, are you sure we are nine hundred years in the future? This sounds more like a history lesson. Next, you'll tell me that there are some princes ruling the lands to the west of the Volga or something." Vsevolod blinked a few times and scratched his head, "Now that you mention it... yes, there are. I've actually met one. He wasn't a ruler, but..." The pony deflated a bit, losing a good chunk of his cheer. "I think I would need you to tell me all that you know about it," said Oleg, sighing and laying on the cloud. The small griffon grabbed the parachute from Kurgash and started packing it back into the bag, telling the story of his adventures in the process. *** "...and that's how we found that the cloud is broken," Vsevolod had finished his tale and looked at the batpony. "You fell from the skies about a minute later." "Great, just great," groaned Oleg, carefully massaging his temples with the hooves. "So, they had an empty world, a fresh start, some weird unnatural powers, and all they've managed to accomplish was building a society that was a thousand years obsolete by the time they were born. They even kept the names! What kind of... sorry, I'm rambling. So, you are going to some kind of 'home', and your cloud doesn't move anymore? Have you tried leaving it and coming back? Nudging it in the direction it previously flew? Probably it's worth your time to just replace it?" Vsevolod looked at the cloud, feeling very stupid. The idea to just hop onto one of the moving ones wasn't among the ones he thought about. For some unexplainable reason, all he thought about was how to make the one they already had to move. "Erm.. you know, we wanted to try the last one when you arrived," his voice betrayed his lie, but the batpony seemed to be fine with it. "Oh, well, why won't we try this right now then? Show me how to use those," he pointed at his leathery wings that twitched a bit, but otherwise remained motionless, "and we can get right to it." "I think we can just walk for now," answered Vsevolod, getting up. "It took me several days just to get the idea how to move the wings and several weeks to take off. Right now, focus on walking, please. Trust me, it's not as easy as it seems." Oleg sighed and attempted to stand up again. He was able to do it without falling, but it was clear that the surface of the cloud is not the best place for learning the secrets of walking. The soft and springy surface was good for falling, but pretty hard to walk on, like an overly thick feather mattress. Still, with enough trial and error (and a lot of help from Kurgash), he managed to unsteadily climb over the cloud hill and onto the slowly moving clouds beyond. The further they got from their cloud island, the faster the clouds moved, and in a few minutes, the strange stationary cloud was out of their sight. "So, what's next?" asked Oleg, yawning loudly. "I won't mind getting some shuteye, feels like I hadn't slept for a week." "Sure, go ahead," nodded Vsevolod, strapping the parachute bag to the sleepy batpony. "You'll have to hold it, since as you can see the clouds are only kind enough to hold ourselves, not the gear. Good... midday, I guess." He looked around, seeing that Kurgash and Helga were also preparing for a nap. Before joining the pile, he looked at the ground below through the nearby tear in the cloud cover. It was still the same snow-covered plain with small patches of forest, only now it looked more hilly. Among the hills, he noticed multiple gray and brown dots moving in roughly the same direction as their cloud. "Huh, someone is having a spring migration, it seems," he murmured. He felt too lazy to refocus his eyes to see who that was, so he just cuddled the nearest sleeping body and drifted to the dream realm. Far below, a skinny elk, whos head was covered with a small embroidered woolen hat, looked at the clouds as his long legs carried him through the thinning snow cover. No threat was looming above the migrating flock, but he knew that one day the winged death would come. And when it would, he'll be ready to welcome it properly.