My eyes widened as the door did, pupils widening as I took in the shimmer of sunlight. A shadow crept through the entrance of the cellar; a delicate-framed ghost of a child stepped down the crooked stairs, a soft thud with each step, slowly floating over to me before prodding my arm with a twisted metal poker. The touch had a contradictory effect- my muscles tensed up from the dull pain, and yet, it was enough to completely relax them. I winced as I sat up, the blood rushing throughout my body like a waterfall. The child didn’t say a word, simply staring at me as if I were some kind of wild animal. And I, like a fool, stared back. It was definitely a girl, maybe around nine or ten years old, at first glance, innocent, naive, everything that a child should stereotypically be. But what caught me were her eyes, like a spider’s web, and as soon as I made contact with them, I knew I wouldn’t be able to look away. She seemed to be searching me, and it was as if I could feel her inside my mind, inside my thoughts and memories.

Her eyes widened, if that was even possible, and her lips parted in a mixture of shock and surprise.

And then she smiled. Unexpected, yes, but even more so that it seemed to be a smile of pity. It nearly drove me mad- here I was, an adult, if only recently, and a kid was feeling sorry for me. I inhaled sharply. “Why the hell are you smiling?” I breathed angrily, although there was a small part of me that reprimanded myself for swearing at child. But she didn’t even seem to notice.

“You don’t remember.” Her voice wasn’t like a wind chime, or a breeze. Just a regular child’s voice, and I had no idea why I expected to be anything different. Perhaps it was just that everything I had experienced so far had been so out of the ordinary, and quite frankly, insane, that I would have been less surprised if at second glance, she turned into an animal of some sort. The cryptic message was unusual, though.

“Where am I?” In a bakery. Obviously. There were plenty of bakeries by my apartment, it was just a matter of figuring out which one I was in. “I need to leave. I need to go home.” I started to stand up, but lost balance quickly, trying to steady myself on shaky foal legs. The girl just watched me until I regained my footing. Brushing myself off quickly, I started for the door, grabbing onto the soft metal railing.

“You don’t know where to go. You’ll leave the building, but then what? You don’t know where you are.”

“Thanks, but I’m sure I can find my way. I know this town like the back of my hand.” Halfway up the stairs.

“This isn’t your town.”

“What are you talking about?” I turned to face her, but she slipped past me, running ahead to the top of the stairs and holding out her hand. “I’ll show you.” It was that pitying smile again. Absolutely infuriating, but I followed her through the door anyway. If there was any way she could help me, then there was no reason not to go with her.

The front of the bakery was the most undecorated, cluttered building I had ever seen. Bottles, jars, plates of pastries were sprawled out on shelves and tables, but that was all I was able to take in before I realized that the girl had disappeared behind a wall in the back of the store. Hurrying to catch up and not get lost, I saw her standing on a makeshift balcony showcasing what seemed to be the rest of the town- the floor extended farther than the ceiling, and there was a metallic fence surrounding the edge. The support was apparently stronger than it seemed, because the girl was leaning over the fence, and nothing even budged. It was also at this point when I realized that the walls around me, as well as the floor and ceiling, weren’t made of actual wood. It was metal shaped so carefully that it gave off the appearance of lumber. In fact, everything was made of copper, aluminum, and numerous other metals that I didn’t even recognize. The houses surrounding the bakery, the massive glimmering wall that encompassed the area, the streets, the lights next to the sidewalk, even the people below had a cold tinge to them. My heart started beating faster as the recognition, the safety of knowing the area, had vanished. A small warm hand took mine- the girl was next to me, that pitying smile facing me again. But this time, I wasn’t angry. Just hollow and afraid.

“Where am I?” I could barely get the words out.

And the little girl, who had found me in the cellar of the bakery, searched my soul and gave cryptic messages, presented this place in the simplest way she knew how:

“Welcome to Metallic City.”

It wasn’t really something she could describe in a few words, the reaction she had when he brushed by her. A tangle of phrases, slipping over and under each other. At first, they were knotted together, coarse, but as she wet her lips before she spoke, they loosened and fell apart. For once, she had nothing to say, and could only look. Although normally cutting off her senses would have angered her, it was replaced with a mixture of low expectations and high hopes. For once, she was not confident; for once, she wasn’t exactly sure of what to do. In that moment, her strong outward appearance began to crumble. She wanted to reach out and touch him again, to feel the fabric that had grazed her skin. Just like those words and phrases, he was slipping away. Immediately, she turned to look at him, a flickering image of a boy on the verge of manhood, threading through the crowds on the street.

A short, stout man woke her up from her trance with a gruff “Excuse me, miss”. She was a full head taller than him, and as he looked up, his busy expression turned red out of embarrassment as he realized who he was addressing. “Oh my, I am so sorry, Madame, please pardon me, I truly did not see you-”. She cut him off with a shrug and a soft-spoken smile. “It’s quite alright, you look like you have many things on your mind. Try not to think about the bad, and appreciate the good. Look around you, and keep in mind that no matter what, the sun will always shine.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked away, lost in her own thoughts.

——

not in order

It had actually never occurred to me, before that moment, that it had all been a dream. I made a note to myself to look up what the meaning of the dream was as I opened my eyes. A wave of warm, delicious air flooded over me, almost to the point of nausea. It was as if I had to hold my breath for days on end, and was finally able to let go.

My senses and nerves slowly became acute to my surroundings first. I realized I was laying on a wooden surface, in a generally dark room. That’s strange. Why am I not on a couch or a bed? As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could feel my heart pounding at the realization that I was surrounded by boxes, barrels, jars, baskets, crevices filled with…

Bread.

Obviously. That would explain why it smelled so good. In an attempt to look around, I lifted my head for a second before dropping it back down, exhausted. A scratching sound echoed near my foot, and I tried to back up and kick whatever it was away, and yet, my legs weren’t moving either. Neither were my arms, or any other muscle. There wasn’t anything holding me down, as far as I could tell, and my common sense told me to sleep it off. Chuckling to myself, I realized that if I got hungry, I could just eat some of the bread. However, as I was about to get as comfortable as I could on a rough wooden floor, I could feel the terror on my face- I was in a dark room, I didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t move. My breathing rate increased audibly, my hands getting clammy and wet from the fear. I needed to get out, I was going to die, I needed to get somewhere safe, I had to hide, I had to move.

—

My bad for the kind shitty, pretty short entry.

I really should update more often- I just need to find my muse for this next part.

Every morning the sun would rise, and every morning, she would be there, waiting for it. It must have been the way the lights glinted off of the walls, and reflected onto the paved streets of her home, that drew her towards the open sockets in the walls. And if she looked to the north, she could see the lake that provided for her people. Soon, there would be a crowd of both young and old formed by the edge, waiting to collect water for their families. The sky was a faint pink, indicating that that was her cue to open the gate to the lake. They called her the Welcomer, and it was her duty to stand by the lake each morning, and greet each individual with a smile. Such was the tradition. Her city looked so beautiful today, though…

The Welcomer snapped back to attention, realizing that she if she did not leave now, she would be late. Grabbing up the ends of her dress, she hurried out the door, keeping an eye out for the sun. If only there was a way to turn back time, even for a few minutes… out of her peripheral vision, she noticed the Garden. There were sundials in the Garden. The Welcomer bit her lip nervously. Although she had not been trained on how to operate them yet, they couldn’t be that difficult to use. And if she wasn’t at the gate on time… she shuddered, not even wanting to think of the consequences. Taking the initiative, she shot through to the sundials, and turned the dials fifteen minutes back. Fifteen minutes couldn’t hurt, she thought, and in either case, it would be an easy fix. Looking up, the sky had gone from the bright yellow it was about to turn, to a sickly grey. She could see the sun rising in the horizon, just as she saw it fifteen minutes ago. The Welcomer smiled- it worked. The sky she could deal with later, but now she wouldn’t be late, and besides, she had a duty to do.

I had been walking through an hourglass, I swear. All I saw around me were different shades of grey. The ground, if you could call it that, was sandy and grey. I paused to touch it at one point- when, I don’t remember, but it was some time ago- but it was the same indistinguishable temperature as everything else around me. The sky, or whatever it was that touched the horizon, was neither dark nor light; it was just another shade of grey. I wasn’t even sure if I was real, or if this was just a place that my subconscious had crept into. I remembered reading somewhere, perhaps in a past life, that these things happen to comatose patients, but I didn’t recall any event occurring that would put me in that situation. What I knew for certain was that this was not where I was brought up, this was not where I had begun. If I searched inside myself, beyond the pain shooting up through my legs, I could still feel warm hands on mine, as if there was another being on this damned planet capable of emotion. I couldn’t hold that feeling for long, before every nerve in my body flew up in flames- since I got here, I had not stopped walking. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Whenever that thought entered my head, though, every organ in my body lurched forward, pushing me onward, and I had no choice but to continue, as if my very life depended on it.

We began when the earth was barren.

It was a masterpiece of destruction- walls of water crashing down, thunder was the only noise heard, and lightning was the only source of illumination. There was only a small group of us, a handful of the rustiest beings you’d ever hope to find. But we were sturdy. Ragged and weary from our endless walk across the sands of time, we had but a pounded-on, golden sheet with us, the only item that had survived. But if not for that sheet of metal, you wouldn’t be here right now. 

The metal protected us from the storms and the floods, and after time had passed, the storms had cleared and the water had almost completely dried. When we looked up from beneath the sheet, we saw bountiful soil, dyed the same color as the sun beating down on us. Nearby, there was a clear, sparkling lake. We placed the golden sheet that had protected us on its side, sticking into the ground, and as a pack, went for the lake. It was filled to the brim with large multi-colored fish. A beautiful golden tree stood at the edge of the water, bearing the sweetest fruit we had ever tasted. We decided to live near the lake for some time, sleeping, drinking, and eating, knowing that because we made it through hell, we had found our heaven. 

Then the night fell. We fell asleep beneath the twinkling stars, all of us taking a relieved sigh. It was the deepest sleep we had ever experienced. With the rise of the morning sun, we went back to visit the sheet of metal constantly. To our surprise, it had grown twice as large and had started changing colors- a rainbow of silver, bronze, and gold. Every passing day, the metal grew larger and larger. The men started cutting off small pieces of metal and arranging them into shelters, to protect us from the burning sun. By this time, we had children running among us, almost a very small village. The shelters grew like these children, so when our children grew to their full potential, the shelters did too. And when we told them the story of the Golden Metal, they cut off pieces of the shelters to build buildings, houses, and stores. We have passed down this tale for hundreds of generations. And now we pass it on to you.