tales from the skyline: a short story anthology

𝖿ⱺ𝗋 ⱺυ𝗋 ⱺω𐓣 𝗌α𝗄𝖾

I roll out the large parchment, scraps of paper sown together crackling against each other, and face the group. The map of the Sky unfurls, vibrant paints collected over the months showing the god's new home, their hiding place, for all our eyes to see. The lantern's warm light illuminates the map's details, making it shimmer as though the clouds really are moving, and casting dancing shadows on the faces of the people around me. Tommy – my little brother, not by blood though he might as well be – stares excitedly up at me from where he sits on the floor, wooden sword in hand.

"Alright, Mutes!" I command, and I wish I had wings so this moment could be twice as memorable when carved into minds of the future, "Are we ready to start the greatest movement of our revolution?"

My eyes scan the people in our underground room, the surface world too scorched by the wrath of the gods to be worth living on. I know these people, not just their names, their faces, but what they love. Why they fight with me against the so-called deities that abandoned our planet after toying with it like it meant nothing to them.

"Yes!" I hear the rumbling reply call back to me, voices and tones of all sorts overlapping on each other like a harmonic symphony, and it's truly brilliant the lengths we've managed to come. Hundreds of people, and in our segment of the earth alone, standing against the wrath of those act as earth's salvation.

Long ago – although it can't have been too long, since a few of the people in the revolution was around for it – we harnessed the power of the stars. It was brilliant, never seen before, and suddenly everyone wanted a piece of it. Because, well, as one would expect of the stars, it was powerful. One strike alone, crackling down from the heavens like a lightning dagger, was enough to make a mere human into a god. It was an instant hit, the seeming return of the Greek gods, powerful enough to create or destroy our world. Everybody clamoured to get their fix, the addicting taste of power sitting right on their tongue, but as is with most, all good things must end.

We – they – got greedy, using their power against the earth, turning it into the battle of the century, Man vs. Man. This level of conflict had been unheard of since the ancient times when wars and pandemics raged. We all joked about it, calling it the Broken time, laughing at the notion of having to stay inside, scared, for your own safety.

We don't laugh anymore. Not since the "gods" fled to the clouds; the heavens that gave them this dastardly power, leaving us rotting in the rubble of their confidence. We're no longer safe on the surface, temperatures extreme and any source of life either charred or frozen. Anything that actually survives in this climate is beyond recognition – plants taking on fiery colours in a feeble attempt to disguise in the flames, which is all well until there's a sudden climate change, and animals with hides stronger than the ground we live under. Humans have had no such adaptations – we're simply trapped at the mercy of uncertainty and lies. We're stuck with no voice – weak, hopeless, mute. My best friend, Noah, says that's where I come in.

Icarus.

The only god without wings, made powerful through mere human error, and at times I struggle with figuring out if it's a blessing or a curse. But then I cast my gaze to those in front of me, determined expressions only just illuminated by the room's weak light, and I realise.

It's a blessing every time, to give people their voice. To see people I know, and new people, and especially Noah, staring at me, confident in my plan.

But, above all, I'm doing it for Noah and Tommy. They're the reason I've stayed sane, after all, and the reason I have a family after my father left for the clouds.

I found Tom when he was sleeping in one of the only safe havens on this part of the surface, and brought him here. I thought that maybe he'd bond with one of the older people in the refuge, but he followed me around like a cartoon character follows pie on a windowsill. He's the little brother I never had – he wants to be like me, even when I tell him that I don't want to be like me. Even called himself Theseus just because "my big brother Icarus is a god, so I want to be a god too!"