I stared in awe as the initial brightness seemed to dim, and the world around me cleared. Up ahead, the sky was clear and bright, saturated with sunlight, although there was no sun as far as I could see. Directly ahead, land stretched out further than my eyes could make out, though either side of me there was a sharp drop. Was it some sort of island? Long, and slim, and surrounded by clouds rather than water. The clouds stretched further than the land did, though it appeared to be far below the island, at least half a kilometre down. I shuddered at the thought of falling off the edge.
The island itself was luscious with life, covered in trees and what looked like long grass, though it was hard to tell - the land was covered with the same white mist that had been inside the tunnel, the grass poked through it. I noticed that though the very bottom of my legs were sunken beneath the strange mist, hiding my ankles and feet entirely, I couldn't feel a thing.
Carefully kneeling down, mystified, I gently grazed the mist with my hand. It swirled in response to my movement, and felt silky to the touch - like a bath full of luxurious soap (the kind my mother used to buy, back when we could afford it).
"Emilia." A voice spoke calmly, distracting me. Looking to my right, where the voice had sounded, I saw a pair of slim legs, clad in neatly pressed white trousers.
Looking up, I recognised the voice to belong to Noah. Though it sounded different here, almost like the wind carried the sound, I could practically hear whispers of my name surrounding me for a brief second. Taking the hand he had offered me, I allowed him to pull me to my feet.
Noah wore a t-shirt, the exact same pearly white as his trousers (the same as the mist), and freshly ironed. I guess you could say it was perfection. There was something different about him... something it took me a moment to recognise. Noah's skin looked gorgeous in the light up here, a little more sun-kissed perhaps, than it had looked on earth. Almost like he was glowing from within.
"I hear that they're letting you stay." Noah smiled at me, and somehow it was more overwhelming when he smiled here, compared to on earth.
"Um, yeah." I confirmed, looking down at my feet (or at least, where my feet should be).
"It's cloudsoil." He told me, seeing the direction of my gaze.
"Cloudsoil?" I repeated the word, frowning.
"It's what the land here is made of. It's pretty thick, so angels can stand on it. And it's always covered in this stuff." He swirled it around with his foot. "Cloudfog, though we tend to just call it the mist."
"It's like nothing I've ever seen on earth." I had only been on a plane twice in my life, though I distinctly remember looking out the windows and seeing the clouds, longing to reach out and touch them, to fly above their surfaces. Being up here... it was sort of like a dream coming to life.
"Mortals can't walk on its surface." He told me, shrugging.
"But I can." I frowned again. "So what does that make me?"
"It's never actually been tested, if a mortal could walk on it." He told me after a brief pause. "It's just something we have always known."
"How?" I asked, confused. "How can you know if no one has ever tried?"
"When we came into being we were blessed with all sorts of knowledge." He took a step, so that he was further from the court building. I hadn't noticed that he hadn't let go of my hand yet, so he tugged me along with him.
"When you came into being... how long ago was that, exactly?" I asked, wondering just how old Noah really was. "How old are you?"
"We don't count years like humans do." He shrugged. "There's no need. We were all made at the same time, we are all the same age."
YOU ARE READING
Ethereal
Teen Fiction(Previously called Wings) "From the moment I saw him, I knew that he was not from this world. He was something more, something that I couldn't quite place my finger on. Something that was inexplicably interested in me." Emilia Hill had never been po...
