When the Sky Moved

Even if it leaves we stay

The first warning was the silence.

Not from the City.

The City was never silent.

Sirens sounded across the districts. Jumpships screamed overhead. People crowded balconies and streets, all of them staring toward the same impossible thing.

The Traveler was moving.

Bear stood near the edge of the Tower courtyard, eyes fixed on the enormous white sphere rising above the City. For all of his second life, it had simply been there.

Broken once.

Silent always.

But there.

A constant above the skyline.

Something so large and permanent that Bear had stopped thinking of it as something capable of leaving. Cate floated beside him. Then, slowly, she drifted forward.

"Cate."

She did not turn.

The Traveler continued to climb. Fragments of cloud curled around its surface as it rose higher, leaving behind the place humanity had built beneath it.

Bear looked toward the streets below. People were pointing. Some were running. Others simply stood where they were.

Guardians watched from rooftops and platforms. Ghosts hovered beside them, every shell turned skyward. Nobody seemed to know what to do. For once, neither did he.

"Cate."

She stopped.

Bear stepped beside her. "It's okay."

Bear remembered the stories. The Collapse. The Last City. The Ghosts. The Light. Generations had lived beneath the Traveler without ever seeing it move.

"What if it goes?"

Cate faced him. No chirp. No movement. Just that single blue eye.

Bear looked back toward the sky. "I mean really goes."

Cate drifted closer until the edge of her shell touched his shoulder.

For a moment, he imagined the City without it. No great white sphere overhead. Just empty sky.

"You know what the stupid part is?"

Cate tilted slightly.

"I don't even know what I believe half the time."

She gave a soft electronic trill.

Bear smiled. "Yeah. You noticed."

"I don't know why it chose us. I don't know why it made you. But I know you found me."

Bear looked toward the City.

"And I know there are people down there who can't come back."

He looked up one final time.

"What if it leaves?"

Cate stayed at his shoulder.

Bear nodded slowly.

"Then we stay."

The sirens continued.

The City waited.

And high above them, for the first time in generations, the sky had moved.

Previous: The Weight of a Name · Ghost Stories