THE FALL
One thing that Sameera Ashwari remembers was falling.
She had been falling from the moment she was born, in very much the literal sense. She had always been chasing the wind.
For 18 years, her universe had been quietly defined by literally falling. Her world didn't have walls or a floor, but only the howling scream of the air. Her muscles stopped long being braces for an impact that never came.
Her life, falling down the sky, was a literal, furious disaster, for lots of weird objects fell with her.
For example, there was a white porcelain toilet which fell with her, spinning quite slowly, which she had to—er—use sometimes, because she was human and needed to do her business.
Please don't ask.
It was a rather grotesque reminder of gravity's absence.
She gripped the rim of it as the wind roared.
And next, there was this really big black tablet that fell with her as well. A tablet which contained a hell lot of movies.
It was a sun-bleached digital thing.
She had learned human behaviour not from people, but from romantic comedies, the occasional science-fiction thrillers, and horror.
She learned her education by the books that fell with her. She ate whatever fell from the air.
She learned to read clouds, bird migrations, the change of the air, and when the thermals changed.
Sameera thought she supposed falling was descending, but to her it was something else.
For her, it felt like standing still as a statue, wind blowing into her while the air rushed upwards.
The night was a mind-breaking paradox.
She had no blanket to pull at her shoulders, but she felt no shiver of cold. Her skin constantly felt numb. She didn't feel the heat of temperature biting at her skin, and only once did she feel the scorching heat of the summer, when she was dripping with sweat.
But she liked watching the stars.
She liked watching them as they weaved into long lines.
And how did she fall?
Well...
Here is how it happened.
All through her life, she had a possession with her: a small black rectangle, an old-model Samsung phone that used to fall with her, with a power bank attached.
And the strangest thing of all—the power bank never lost a single iota of charge.
No matter how many winters or summers or autumns had passed, it wouldn't lose charge at all.
The screen always flickered on.
And when she grew older, she saw what happened.
It was when she was born...
She saw it because the woman who cooed in the phone had the same shade of brown eyes as her, and the man who held the camera had the same curves—thin, the same as he did—and they held a mewling, squealing bundle in what seemed to be a hospital.
Her mother, sobbing in tears of joy, laughing.
Her father cooing.
And then the camera jolted in a violent blur.
There were screams.
And then her mother threw her in the air, screaming, last murmuring,
“Be safe, my love. Be safe.”
And the phone went black.
You can guess what happened next.
She had never wondered what kept her lungs alive and what kept her heart beating because, well, she was alive, wasn't she?
But as the shadows of the chimneys grew fangs, she stilled when she realized something.
All her life, Sameera thought she had been thrown to the wild.
But what if she wasn't?
Sameera's eyes widened in shock as she thought about it.
And all she could wonder as she landed—hands that had never touched soil, legs that had floated up in the air since birth—
What was she getting into?
After years of seeing only the blue and the wind, she finally saw something other than the bottomless blue abyss.
She saw some green smoke curling into wispy flames.
Small dots.
When she fell closer, she realized they were chimneys and shadows.
And for the first time, the wind rushed up to her from below, and the earth waited to catch her.
THE END
