Sleepless: Chapter Twenty-Eight

I Need You [Like A Meteorite]

[First]
[Previous]

---

Carina graciously stopped at the mouth of the pass, allowing Margo to step forward and drink in the vastness of the blank world beyond the valley’s borders.

“I don’t understand,” she finally murmured. “This was all… something before?”

She received a half-hearted shrug in response, Carina squeezing Margo’s hand and beginning to pull her to where the backside of the mountain trail seeped into white nothingness. “A world without end, at least, to our knowledge at the time. Cities and wildlands, mountains and deserts, cultures and peoples the likes of which you hardly see anymore here. There are a few holdouts, but their deaths loom near, and with them, the death of anything that remained of the old world outside the valley.”

They reached the end of the trail, but Carina continued to gently coax her forward. With some hesitation, Margo decided to trust her, placing a foot on the empty white space. It held her weight, though the feeling of it beneath her was impossible to put into words. There was nothing beneath her feet, and yet it was solid. It had no texture — not rough, not smooth, just… nothing.

“…are you sure this is safe?”

“Safer than being in there,” Carina offered, and that was all it took.

Step by step, they ventured further from the mountains.

“…you said some people survived?”