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This city is a creeping thing. It sprawls out senselessly, forced to cannibalise itself for parts, cut off as it is from the outside world. Bridges span the darkness like the spindly legs of a monstrous spider. Nothing about this place is welcoming.
The upper levels of the city, those sprawling spider's legs, see very little foot-traffic. There is nothing to stop folks from going up there, there is just very little reason to do so. Aside from the workers who maintain the aqueducts, repoint the bricks, and clear the waterways, few ever have any reason to look up.
Which is how the little poet knows that he isn't going to be disturbed.
One hundred and forty-seven steps are not easy to climb with an injury such as his, but he supposes the fact that there isn't likely to be a return journey at least means he won't have to worry about the pain come morning.
So, slowly, with a twinge in his lower back and an ache in his left knee, the boy called Barde climbs one hundred and forty-seven steps as dusk settles upon the city, in a dark shade of grey barely different from any other hour of the day.
With each step carrying him higher, he offers himself one soft, repetitive reassurance: If I see even just one star… I won't jump.
He reaches the top with a soft groan and hauls his light body up over the final ledge. He sits, at first, facing inwards, with his legs kicking above the trench through which trickles a meagre flow of water. It is not promising, he muses. There has been less water lately. For washing, for cooking, for drinking, and he hasn't been the only one to notice.
The nearly-dry aqueduct tells him all he needs to know of the scarcity that their god has not yet mentioned.
None of this should matter to him.
Drinking water will no longer concern him, come morning.
(But what of Elisia and her new baby? What of the sick and the hungry? What of the miners, labouring still in the quarries for what scarce stone is left to be dredged from its bed in the mountainside? He was one of them, once. He remembers the dryness of his throat and the dryness of his hands and the way the skin of his lips would crack until they bled, until he fell into bed without a single thought left for poetry or art. He thinks of them and wonders if they know the city is dying).
And isn't it cruel, to abandon them to their fate?
Well, perhaps if he could change it, then it would be. But he is only one boy. What can he change? Nothing. Nothing but the number of days he himself must persist in this wretched, dying place. He tells himself it is not selfish to seek freedom from all of that, and to leave the rest of them behind.
Slowly, he lowers himself onto his back, upon the cold stone lip of the duct, and gazes skyward—or faces up, at least, where the sky should be but isn't. There is nothing to see yet, but he tells himself that if he waits long enough… if he waits until the true dead of night, when the sky is at its blackest, then perhaps the light of one small star stands a chance of shining through. Just one is all he asks for.
And, maybe, when the night is its darkest, and he can no longer see the ground from up here, the fall won't be quite as daunting.
He speaks to no one but himself as he explains that he has read, once, that people's fates are written in the stars.
"But if the stars cannot see me, does that mean my fate is not yet written?"
He stands and walks to the very edge of the stone shelf.
"Is it true? That our fates are predetermined? Do the stars know if I jump or not? Is there any point in ever doing anything again if the outcome is already written upon a sky I shall never see?" He tips his head back and looks up, up, up. "Is it true? Should I ever bother to think for myself again?"
"Well, I can't see you, so I don't believe that it's so. You'll have to show yourselves to me first before I'll believe you have any power over me."
His voice shakes, and his eyes burn. His vision does not blur because there is absolutely nothing for him to see up here. But he can feel the hotness of tears wetting his face.
"Show yourselves," he pleads. "Just... show me that I'm not alone. That anything I have ever done has mattered. That I matter!"
He sits at the edge of the bridge and looks down. It's dark enough now that he can't see the ground. He was right. The fall doesn't feel as scary when he can't see it. It doesnt seem as final. He deflates slowly, his little body coming to terms with what comes next. "It's okay," he murmurs softly, both reassurance and acceptance. "I know that I don't matter."
There's no use for a poet in this city. He has served no useful purpose since the mine collapse that rendered him unfit for physical labour. He lives only by his own wiles and the mercy of his fellow man. He is nothing more than an extra mouth to feed in a city with no food left to spare.
He takes off his threadbare wool cape and folds it neatly. It would be better suited to swaddling a baby, warming new life, life which still holds potential.
He scrubs tears from his face with vitriolic frustration.
"Why am I crying?" he demands. "I shouldn't be sad! I'm not—I'm not sad. I should be happy. After tonight, I won't ever have to feel hungry, or cold, or lonely again. My back won't ache, and I won't be sad ever again. Isn't that something to be happy about?"
He takes his boots off and sets them with his cape. They are good, sturdy workboots. It would be best not to ruin them.
His hands shake violently. He folds them in his lap.
He bows his head and prays, for the first time in many years—not to Decarabian. He just... prays. To whoever will listen and hear him. Please, just let me see one star. Just one star and I won't jump.
And softer…
I don't want to jump.
He sits in silence for a very long time, inhaling thin, shaky breaths through clenched teeth, delaying the inevitable.
When he finally opens his eyes, there is a single, twinkling light in the sky. It descends slowly to greet him. He is so awed and surprised, he can do nothing more than hold out cupped hands to catch it.
"Are you a star?" he asks, dumbly. His voice is barely more than a hoarse whisper.
He has read once, in a book somewhere, that falling stars are meant to be wished upon, so he holds the little light close and whispers a secret:
"I really don't want to jump." He admits it like a guilty confession. "I wish to see the true sky. To see the storm walls fall, and the city freed. I want to see the outside world." His voice is soft. The star in his hands warbles and looks up at him with wide, impossibly innocent eyes. His chest shudders with the mere effort it takes to draw breath.
"I want to live to see it done. I don't want to die in this city. But I know that's a lot to ask." His head bows under the weight of these feelings. "I suppose, if I only get one wish, as the stories say… I want to matter. To somebody. Anybody. Just one person, even. I would like to have meant something before I go."
His chest cracks open, his heart broken by his own admission.
Of course he is sad. He does not want to die, but this cruel and heartless city is impossible for a person like him to survive in, let alone live.
His gaze turns wistfully to the little light resting on his palms. “But I don't suppose you could truly grant such a wish, little star.”
Even so, he supposes he must keep his promise to live another night.