• In a cold and thick black haze, the night washed over the village like a sheet of blindness, encompassing all of its domain in inky and demure silence.
    silence from a human point of view that is, there was the pattering of rain and the croaking of frogs and the howling of wind against the lines and lines of dream pods that stood in rows, rows of thousands against the side of the cliffs. each of these white egg like shapes held a person, young old, strong, weak, full of life, full of sadness.
    but there was a disturbance in the air that night. she sliced through the darkness like a knife, so unfamiliar was the night with a human being that it seemed to quiver around her like she held some kind of force filed. the night knew it shouldn't be afraid, but the leaves on the bushes around her shivered, nervous, of her arrival into their domain.
    she was small, frail, clasping her hands together as she walked to keep the warmth of each in a circular path. her small breaths became clouds of ice in front of her, only bound in a small woolen blanket her thick black hair tumbled out of the top of her shawl.
    she walked past each glowing life pod, the wind howling around them, a little louder tonight then had occurred in a long time.
    she was nearing the edge of the cliff the pods were lined upon, this small figure, taking small steps through the darkness with lowered head stopped as she reached the edge. she stopped, peering over the edge into the undulating liquid darkness that as the sea below them, a silent rar drifted up and wrapped around her the sound of one thousand billion tiny droplets of water, crashing together, accosting each other as they had since the dawn of time.

    the thin wet shawl slopped to the ground and out of its comfort crawled the smallest girl of her tribe, a "runt", a "sitter" "dreamer", a "rebel". as the wind howled its loudest yet and the rain beat down on her black slick hair she looked up into what could have been only called nothingness, the very emptiness of space and the sky enveloped her, folded her up inside its cold icy grip. rain began to collect around her opened eyes, it drizzled down and over her face, making heavier her already soaked dress.
    she had lived for a small amount of risings, not much more the the youngest of her tribe. she hadn't been alive when the world had become full of ice, full of pain and sorrow and nothingness. she hadn't even been born when the life pods had been built and most of the citizens of a civilization never to be mentioned again had locked themselves away in their own contraptions of comfort and artificial light and artificial dreams. she had been born out of one of these pods, a rare occurrence in the earlier days of their building but one that was cherished, a step towards populating a dying race, left in sparse patches around the husk of the earth. But she had ended up being born to early, her mother exposed to chemicals during the life pod construction, things that made her sick and birth a child that was sick too.
    she was the last to be born...9 years ago, a sign that there was no health left to be sapped from elders or even people of middle age, she was their one hope...that was lost.

    so they had abandoned their ideas of using the pods as simple homes at times when it became to cold, places to stay in between building their civilization back up. they had become permanent resting places for all of the worlds people, too tired and alone and afraid to continue trying to fix what seemed forever broken. they spent the rest of their time outside on making the pods livable for years to come, fake dream like states that would take away the pain, the suffering, of all those that had lived to see the next day. Locked away, each one that day. she remembered it, her father, the only person she knew that was left in the world had kissed her forehead with dry chapped lips, smiling somewhere under the taut stretched skin of an old and tired face. "your going to be alright form now on" he had said "we may not be able to fix anything out here, but we won't have to in here" he had pointed to the bright white alien like pods that sprung up form the dry and cracked earth. she had shivered that day, as hot as it was, her father had hoisted her up into the reclined seat of the pod, he stared at her blankly as he strapped her in, his happy gaze from before gone now, if it had ever been there at all. "papa, when will we be done dreaming? When will I see you again papa?" she had said, eyes wide.
    "soon" those faded eyes stared back, not at her but through her....

    it had been been many awakenings....more then she could bare to count when she came from her dream state like a shock, something had gone wrong with her pod, she jerked in her chair, awakening after so long, hr body sucked of life and joy, of creativity and soul. she had cried and sobbed for her papa, screamed and pounded against the wall of her pod before clawing at the door, pushing open the safety lock open and bursting forth into that dark and stormy night. she had taken the blanket from her pod, wrapped it around her smallness and as quickly as she could on feet that had nearly forgotten to walk she drew away from her pod and inspected the others around her, many of them had stopped glowing, many of them bent at awkward angles like the wind had finally beaten the spirits inside into submission.
    she didn't know exactly why the lights had gone out in the pods, but something inside her kept herself from checking them to find out.
    thats when she had remembered where she was, had herself snapped back into this forceful and violent cold reality. but no cries were uttered, no words spoken, she had spent to many nights asleep in her plastic solace to feel remorse for the people inside the other pods.

    so she stood, against the cold rushing rain, drenching her face and hair.
    thunder, far off sounded against the night sky and her eyes widened, nature rumbled all around her, a force, more alive then she was, thrashing itself against her, confused and angry at her intrusion into a world free now of her kind.
    a droplet rolled down her cheek, caught on her lip, and her tongue darted out to taste it, dangerous, new.
    but it was not rain that splashed against her parched mouth, it was a tear, a tear as salty as the ocean, as vast and empty as the sky above. she let the taste fill her whole being, savoring a feel, a feeling that was real, not a fake plastic dream, but a salty vulgar realness that seeped into her bones for only a second before disappearing as she did.
    the sunrise, it did no quiver as it rose. for it was too warm, and too salty...like a tear.