Earth Can't Hold Us All

Nova's POV: Real Happiness

June 1st, 2080

The soft floor boards creak beneath our feet. I feel the stairs bending as I climb them to the top. There's a dimly lit hallway that takes us to the next flight of stairs. We pass about four mismatched doors through that hallway. On the seventh step up the next staircase a board makes a wretched cracking sound. I stop; frozen in place. Hinge turns his head to give me an eye-role.

"That one has been doing that lately," he says. "Pretty sure it'll snap soon." He grabs my hand, pulling me up to the next step.

Now this next hallway smells a bit like soup, not the warm meat soup smell at the Up-Town restaurants. More like a cabbage and fish water soup that has been left out for a number of days. I can't help but gag.

"This smells worse than the sea food market," I complain to Hinge in between gags.

"Up-town market or Slum Side market?"

"Both markets smell like rotten fish scales. Doesn't matter how wealthy the people in Up-Town are, their old seafood still smells like our side of town's market."

"Clementine says that her mom is protesting against Up-Town's sea food market," Hinge says,  his voice seems to raise when he says her name. He wants me to notice whom he's talking about.

"Clementine, huh?" I say, giving him the pleasure of taking an interest in his favorite subject.

"Yep." His dark skinned face develops a hint of blush.

"Is she taking part in her mother's protest?"

"Yeah. Well...no actually. Her mom is making her," he says, rolling his eyes again.

"So why is her mom protesting?"

"She believes that the vendors are selling rotten sea food," he says.

"Well, duh. What else are they supposed to do with all of that old fish? Just through it back into the water?"

"That's what her mom thinks they should do," his placid brown eyes stay to the wooden floor boards as he says this.

"You believe that that's what they should do too?!" I honestly don't feel surprised even though I sound it.

"Yes."

"But our village floats on the sea! We would just make this filthy water even more contaminated if we just dumped rotten fish into it." I am sickened as I imagine looking out of my bedroom window and seeing thousands of rancid fish floating on the brown sea water, moving along with the ocean's current and traveling under the bridges and the floating buildings.

"Well then what do you suppose we do with the old fish?" Hinge sounds angry and his wide hands clasp into fists. I feel a subtle urge to back a few steps away from him, remembering that he is still experiencing the main side effect of gulping Grit; Rage.

"Hinge, watch it. You're still Raged," I warn him. "You keep going in and out of it." He then shakes his head, as if something is tangled in his short hair.

"My head does feel like there's something inside of it, other than my brain," he says calmly with a laugh. Then he takes his still clenched fists and starts to hit his head with them. Thud, thud, thud.

"Hinge!" I yell, grabbing his wrists and pushing him down to the floor. I slam my knee onto his chest to pin him down. It's a good thing that I'm fit and tall, because he flails his body in a possessed way, trying to get me off of him so that he can continue smashing his head.

"GAaaaAh!" he screams. "It hurts, Nova. Nooova, make it stop!! Get it ouuut of my head!"

"Hinge! Look a me!" I yell into his face until his eyes open. "It's just Grit messing with your head! It will pass in a couple minutes!"