Twilight, Shortwaves, Healing Trees
The next layer is by far the quietest of the three. It takes 24 hours of Travel to get this far, and once you do the stakes raise considerably. Still, it's peaceful. The second layer is a series of glass tunnels, where any instance in the universe can be walked too. Wind sweeps through the frosty tunnels, carrying faint sounds and static on their slipstreams. Others are there, as they always are, and a few Travelers. They whisper among themselves, calmer, far more relaxed than the world preceding it. These Others have no desire to meddle with the place beyond the Space Layer... why should they? As long as Travelers don't bother them...
They say one can see the space layer in the flakes coating the walls, and if you brush it aside you can view right into the past in the waking world. It's cold, and the static makes one's hair stand on end. The wind cuts like a knife, and some ways are completely blocked off because they can reach speeds comparable to standing on a speeding jet. Like the Space layer, odd colors reflect off the walls and attach to people and Creatures, leaving behind a colorful mist.
Travel through to that instance in time is simple, if difficult and sometimes painful. A Traveler has to dig through the frost, and partway through the glass in the tunnel, before slowly 'swimming' through a thick clear gel that surrounds the edge of the Space Layer. Of course, it will always be the time seen through the glass when one gets close enough to see the waking world overlay the Space Layer, but it's a numbing, looong process which no one is sure the exact duration of, as for most of it they're in time itself.
Strangely enough, this layer is the biggest time-saver for Travelers that know how to use it. What could take months or years to traverse can be and a Traveler can return to the waking world after a span of five minutes. Of course it has its complications for Travelers, and its hazards.
Once arrived, there's no way of knowing they need to go back until they've already been woken up...
YOU ARE READING
The Icebound Clocktower and Other Noise Inspired Stories
FantasySo my friend introduced me to this website: http://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php and I discovered by opening different tabs and playing different combinations of sounds at once made some pretty cool ambient sounds. Thus, I started writing what I pic...
