At Heaven's Gates

A city made of clouds wanders the earth, walls of frozen tears obscuring it from the people below, an opaque swath of water except for a gate through which the spirits may enter. The city of the ancients is where all spirits go when they die, ascending to the heavenly city by the will of their gods.

The world never sees the darkness of night, but it never sees the light of true day. For hidden in the depths of the city is the glory of the sun, bringing light and warmth to those spirits just ascended. And only to those just ascended, as the older souls live in a worse darkness than the world below.

But the people that live do not know this, they see the beautiful city and the rays of light flowing through the gates and believe it is a realm of true joy, rejoicing in the knowledge that they may one day experience the sun for themselves, once their time has come.

And it is in this belief that their deaths are fated that gives the ancients their control over life and death. The people believe them, believe that if they do not meet their chosen demise, they will never reach the eternal city and exist in torment, dissolved into the earth or the sea. And it is in this that people fear the rain of the grey city, for when it rains, it rains spirits, condemning any and all deathly souls without bias.

But there is a group of persons, heretics, as they say, who rejoice when the great cloud rains, bleeding its souls back onto the earth where they may regress into nonexistence. Generation after generation, they bombard the great city, bringing down torrents of spirits into the malnourished lands. They are hated and feared by all, shunned across the land like a plague of locust, the people deaf to the heretics' message.

***

A young boy sits on the fields facing the sea. A wealth of vegetation sweeps down below him, obscuring the shore and the valley below. There is a cloud, over the water, which extends to the edges of the mountains that frame the ocean. It is heavenly and calm --the city of the ancients. The boy is in awe, inspired by the city and its gateway that shines with the sunlight he believes is a flood of spirits arriving at the next life.

He sits there a long while, just watching. And it is in watching that he is the first to witness the attack of the heretics on the beautifully soft walls of the city.

He watches, aghast, as a darkness forms in the wall opposite of the gate. Flakes of foam seem to drop off the clouds, revealing a more shaded and worried form of the wall. All around the city, bleached tufts drift off, even as the gods that be fight to protect the great tomb.

Then, a hole appears where the first attack was made. Rain falls distantly over the ocean, releasing the dead to the depths of the sea. Meanwhile, unblemished cloud matter rushed to close the city gates, shutting off the glow of sunlight.

The boy watches in fear and then also in confusion as the sun bursts through the new hole in the walls.

The battle is a silent one, from the boy's point of view, and that makes it all the more chilling. The city is so grand, so far away, that the figures of the heretics would only ever be seen as dulled motes of light. As it is, the boy doesn't see them; they blend with the colors of the raw clouds that seem to be replacing more and more of the outer walls.

As he watches, the world seems oddly brighter in the light of the terrible battle. The tops of the cloudy walls are brightening, while the wall below continues to grow darker, like fallen paper dampened by a nearby puddle.

Then, for just a moment, the sun rises above the cloudy city and shines brightly into the young boy's eyes, a golden sliver of what this world has never seen. The sight of the celestial light flowing down onto his face and into the valley below is more heavenly than the heavenly city itself could ever appear to be. And for a moment, the world awakens. A forlorn dove who has never lived a day in its life propels itself into the air as a majestic roc who has just learned to fly. The trees sway in the fresh breeze and glow in the light they've never seen but always craved. It is beautiful and lively and the boy has nothing but awe for the only sunrise he's ever seen.

Until it sinks below the clouds once more, tainting the tops of the clouds red with its blood.

The boy, dazzled, returns his broken gaze to the battle in the distance. The heretics have broken the hole wider, revealing the awful innards of the city walls. Clouds as dark as ink cut jaggedly into the air, dense and unbreakable contrary to the fluff that the city wore outside it. They look terrible and terrifying, but the boy recognizes them for what they truly are:

Skeletons.

Not the physical skeletons left behind when a body dies, but the skeletons left behind when the spirit has died, left to rot away within the city it once sought so faithfully.

The city frantically rushes to drive away the heretics, the clouds slinking over the dark skeletons, fleshing out the walls once more. The souls stop raining into the sea and the grey clouds begin to lighten, bleach. Tufts of cloud stop drifting away and coalesce back into their original form. The heretics have retreated, or are otherwise dead. The city has returned once more to its heavenly self.

But the boy saw the truth of the city, and that truth will stay with him forever.