Rayne climbs one rung at a time into the endless blue nothing.
Beneath her, the colony shrinks to a small, perfectly organized grid. The sweat from her palms makes the metal slick, her arms shaking with fatigue.
She'd been stuck in bed the last three days, with a rattling cough and drenched in cold sweat. All Rayne wants to do is sleep; the warm embrace of her bed calling out to her from a thousand feet below. But her grandmother's voice is louder.
You're a Painter, Rayne. They need you.
A normal colonist has every reason to believe her job is pointless, a futile attempt to maintain some kind of normalcy. God knows she felt that way more often than not. Most people never look up. They don't have a reason to. But Painters know better.
The daytime sky has been empty for days, and people have begun to notice. Even if they don't realize it, they notice. Rayne had heard the shouts through her bedroom window. A current of restless energy permeates the colony, and it is nearly at a breaking point.
Rayne stops to catch her breath, threading her arms through the rungs to keep herself from plummeting down. The cold metal stings her bare skin. Sweat drenched hair sticks to the side of her face, but she doesn't dare reach to move it.
She isn't made for this, not like her grandmother was. Every day for forty years she made this climb, painting stories in the sky for people who couldn't care less. At least she was good at it, unlike Rayne who doesn't have an artistic bone in her aching body.
Her grandmother's clouds told stories, myths she'd heard as a girl, legends she'd been a part of creating. If she could have kept painting forever, she would have.
Then she was gone, and Rayne was the only one who could follow in her footsteps. The only one she told the story to. What happened the last time there wasn't a Painter to cover the empty sky. Only Painters get to know. Only Painters need to carry that burden.
She hears the story now in her grandmother's voice, as though she was there, pushing her forward.
Before I was born, the world was on its dying breaths. Families fled to artificial safety. Some below the surface, some left the Earth completely. The Founders had decided they wanted to stay above, to be the first to reclaim the dead planet.
The Founders designed the colony to be perfect - perfect architecture, perfect temperature, perfect trees in perfect parks. There's even a program in place to keep the interior of the dome in sync with the time outside: bright and blue in the day, dark and black at night. But no one had thought of the sky.
And now, it can't be changed. The program will run undisturbed for another three hundred and sixteen years, until Earth can reclaim itself.
Rayne doubts that time will ever actually come. She never told her grandmother that, but she has a feeling they shared the sentiment. An artificial breeze from a hidden vent in the side of the dome blows through her, sending a shiver down her spine. Rayne takes a breath and braces herself, focusing in on the echo of her grandmother's story.
But something was wrong.
People grew anxious and angry. They fought behind closed doors, until the bloodshed spilled out into the streets. The prison, designed to fit less than a hundred of us, was filled by the end of the first month. No one knew what was happening. The Founders held a meeting. They tried drastic measures, dealing out higher punishments for lesser crimes. Drones circled the dome like vultures.
Then, and only then, did someone decide to look up.
Rayne looks above her as she climbs the final stretch. She sees what they did. An endless blue nothing. No sun, no clouds. At night, no moon, nor stars. It was artificial. It was unnatural.
It drove everyone stir crazy.
Just like it is now.
Rayne hauls herself into the camouflaged pod tucked against the wall of the dome. No one is watching her ascent and she simply vanishes, becoming a part of the vast blue nothingness.
She lies on the floor of the pod, taking deep shuddering breaths, thanking every deity she can name that she made it.
Embedded in the wall of the pod is a telescreen. It's meant to look like a window, but it's attached to a camera feed on the exterior of the dome. Real windows to the outside can't survive the winds.
It's there to inspire her work, but there's nothing particularly inspiring about a barren, unchanging, landscape. No trees or buildings; they'd all been razed by storms or bombs. An omnipresent grey blanket hangs in the sky, the real sky. It only acts as a blunt reminder of how artificial her life truly is.
Rayne turns her back to the screen and sits on the floor of the pod. A deep, rattling cough doubles her over. Every inch of her body begs her to go back to sleep. But she doesn't dare.
Taking the Brush in her hands, Rayne stands at the opening of the pod, trying to make the clouds match the story in her head. Vapor pours from the end of the Brush into the open sky. She isn't nearly as good as her grandmother, but she does her best. The clouds don't have to be good, they just have to be there.
After all, people almost never look up.
Topic: Draft 3 - The Painter (Read 852 times)