Entry Fourteen

This is Rewel.  The world ends here.

The perfectly cut circular crust of the edge of the world is inches from my feet. Matduke has gone, leaving me with Tristam and a pack slung over my shoulder. “You must leave now,” Matduke had whispered in my ear. “They are after you, after the both of us.”

Tristam stands next to me and places a hand on the arching semi-metallic dome that surrounds the city. It pulses under his touch. “I’d like to say you’re lucky.” He pauses, fingers tapping the dome. “Write everything down in that book, in case you decide to come back. I want to know how it’s changed out there.”

His grey hair reflects his age; the wrinkled skin on the backs of his hands shows veins, real veins. “Don’t take off your gloves. Don’t tell them you’re from a white city encased in a dome. Tell them you remember nothing.” He turns and faces me. “People out there are just as likely to kill you as people in here.”

I nod and understand. I step towards the dome: the world ends here.

Tristam catches my arm. “I would hope to never see you again. And I would hope that out there you don’t remain a slave.”

I remove his hand from my arm. “I don’t know what I’ll do yet.” I feel Tristam shove me through the semi-metallic dome and it bends and folds to accommodate my shape as I force myself through it. I was told it is a semi-permeable field that prevented the city from coming into harm.

The pressure of the field is gone and I fall to solid ground with my eyes closed. I am afraid that if I open them I will only see the white cobblestone streets as I walk through the crowd of people dressed in white. Under my hands though is a softness, a lushness. It feels like silk or better.

I open my eyes. I must open them, I must see. But my eyes explode in pain and light and vividness that do not belong to the white city. And I scream and cry and scream. Everything is in my eyes and I see everything. There is so much pain in sight. The world ends here.