He woke to a foreign voice, sweet and sincere, and he wiped a tear because he feared he'd dreamt it. But working under a shaft of grey light he heard it again, far above his head, and was afraid for a moment because nothing good came from above. God was below, in the infinite depths of unseen rock, molten and scorched. But it was such a pure voice. Perhaps one of the first voices, still seeking a way out of the cold and empty.
So he searched. The dark rooms and dark halls. Occupied only by his sweat soaked and soot blackened companions, banging and clanging and toiling in the blackness. And, feeling his way blindly, he struggled from the earth's beating heart. Pulsing like a piston against its braces. Where the only noice piercing his ears was the straining of steel and rods and hissing of steam. The great machine rumbled its engines as he pushed his way through shafts of dirt and rocks, breathing his first crisp breath on a desert road.
His hair blew and he searched the reaching sky for a fan or turbine but saw nothin but space, dark, perforated by light. Nothing to explain the wind. Never had he felt such wind, blowing cool and fierce against his face. Dust swirled and circled in the air like some pale dancer and he wondered at this new place with no ceiling. Where wind blew of its own will.
Then he began to walk...
10 years ago