1.
The air is chilly high up on top of the skyscraper, biting, whipping my hair into a swarm of stinging insects pricking at my eyes, hooking their way down the pores of my exposed skin. The chill of the concrete seeps into the palms of my hands, the seat of my pants, against the backs of my legs.
The cold leaches into my muscles, infusing my bones, crawling molecule by molecule into my organs, turning each of them one by one by one to ice.
A solid block of ice, clear and shimmering, soaked through with a million shades of colors. Blues, greens, reds, yellows, colors still yet unnamed, still not yet witnessed by another human.
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"My name is Alice. I’m an alcoholic and I’m trying hard not to be," she’d said before heading back to her seat, her pointed chin held high, red brushed over sharp cheekbones, and lips pressed together. Alice never said anything more after that first time. Only snuck in after the meetings started to sit on the hard metal folding chairs, then disappeared through the YMCA door afterwards with minimal interaction.
Wendy didn’t know why she still came to AA meetings herself. While she still struggled most days, she’d found her steady footing, sober for over five years. Perhaps it was the familiarity, the routine. Perhaps she’d still been searching for something, someone, but hadn’t known it until Alice.
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Once there lived a princess surrounded by forces beyond her control. So she escaped by throwing herself down a deep dark well, falling down, down, down, for so long, even time stopped. Velvet black embraced her, the thick plush weight of complete darkness.
Soon, however, the princess missed the light and the velvet grew suffocating. She wanted to leave her haven, until she realized she’d no idea how.
"Throw down a rope," she called in the direction she deemed "up". The princess waited. No coil of rope fell across her shoulders. Perhaps her voice was too quiet, or their hearing too weak. Or maybe, they simply didn’t care. Perhaps they’d forgotten her, given up on her lost so long within the well. She sunk to the ground, wrapping her arms around her knees, curling into herself.
A voice called out her name, soft and gentle and warm. She lifted her head. Through the thin sheen of tears, she could just make out the glowing ball hovering beside her. Within, she could see the face of her first knight. "Oh," she breathed, "You’ve come to save me."
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The war was over too quickly, if it could properly be called a war at all. Only two people died during the twenty-four hour period in which the beings took the whole world over: one who suffered a heart attack through sheer fright; another who had been in the process of committing suicide and gone through with it through sheer stubbornness. Before any military prowess could be brought to bear on the intruders, everything had been effectively routed and subdued.
The beings called for a representative of each group of creature inhabiting the planet to meet with them, from the smallest ant to the largest whale.
“Who are you?” asked the representative the humans selected when it was their turn. He stood before the being in the middle of a large grass plain, dotted here and there with large boulders. The being, vaguely humanoid, of a color the human couldn’t quite pinpoint, rested before him.
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