Winter Fire

Ch. 13 [Elegance And Desolation]

Winter Fire
Ch. 13
Elegance And Desolation

We weren't driving for long. I didn't bother talking and neither did Elias. He just drove, his lips pressed tightly together, his eyes glowering at the road. I sat stiffly in the back, my arms crossed, my gaze flicking between him and the street signs, apprehension churning in my stomach. I knew there was no way I would be able to remember every turn we took, but I still had to try.

We had left the city a ways back, and for a while it was all deserted countryside, but then we began approaching another patch of disorienting backwards-mirror-air and the moment the car passed through it, the countryside instantly transformed into another city of sorts, but one I'd have never even dreamed of seeing, a city that wasn't there only seconds ago.

It was breathtaking, the entire mass of structures hovering high above the ground on stilts like ones of those old river villages. The architecture was like none I'd ever seen, buildings with diagonal sides, striking in then out then in again, forming series of diamonds that appeared to have a hundred different floors, some on the walls, some on the ceiling, others even on a diagonal, the gravity supporting whichever area it was closest to. Staircases wound like spinning spirals up the sides of the building, doors upside down and sideways. The structures were built of a material that looked like prism glass, hinted with brilliant rainbows of colors I never knew existed. The roads were hills of something that looked like snow and ice, practically floating in the air, supported only by the diamond stilt buildings they connected to.

I sat up straight in my seat, speechless, my heart practically freezing in its beat from my awe. Elias drove us beneath a beautiful glass gate and up a sloping hill of snow, and with every new scene my eyes passed over another whirling sensation of wonderment fluttered in my stomach. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the buildings towering up all around me. It was unearthly. Inhuman.

"What . . . on . . . earth . . . ?" I breathed.

Elias only chuckled beneath his breath.

I didn't even glance at him. "Is this . . . real?"

He watched me from the rear view mirror. "That depends on what your definition of real is."

I scowled at him. But then I noticed, not in any corner of this huge foreign city did I once see a single person. It was beautiful, but desolate, veiled in an air of abandonment I was blinded to before.

"What happened to this place?" I whispered.

Elias' fingers tightened on the wheel, and I frowned as I glanced at him.

"Elias," I pressed quietly, "where is everybody?"

He pressed his lips together, and for a moment I thought he wouldn't answer, but then he spoke, his voice low and tainted with sorrow and regret.

"They died out."

I inhaled slowly, unsure how to respond, so only the soft breath of an, "Oh," escaped me.

He didn't reply.

The next few minutes we drove in silence. At first I tried to question him about what happened, then I attempted to find out exactly what this city was, and then when he still remained sitting in a brooding silence I tried asking him about himself. At that he told me to shut up.

Finally after an eternity of tense silence, Elias pulled the car into the . . . driveway . . . of one of the tall, menacing diamond buildings. He got out. I got out. But I was too curious to try to run. I couldn't leave without figuring out more about this strange city, about what it was, where it came from, and how I've never heard of things like this before.