A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

“The ancient Malorians had systems in place to transport water through these stone-carved chutes,” Moira said. She stood next to a giant stone, broken off from others nearby. “Back when water was plentiful.” “Why did the water disappear?” Anton asked, walking away from her into the open wasteland. The sun was coming up over the horizon, soon to blaze hot in the sky. “We should get going.” Moira looked over to find the sun rising, then jumped into his eyeline. “Remember what I told you,” she said. “Don’t look directly at the sun. You can hurt your eyes. People used to have ways of preventing damage once, even fixing people’s eyes to see again. It was a prosperous time.” “Posper-nouse?” “Prosperous,” Moira corrected. “It means a time with a lot of good things happening, when people could enjoy themselves.” Anton kicked a rock on the ground, hitting the remains of the carved stone chute. The only thing that remained now were these old things, as they crumbled to sand. “Are there any magic...

“Just look up, and you’ll see me, free as a cloud,” she used to say. She knew about it back then, having knowledge beyond my understanding of internet systems. She said it in response to my worry when she holed herself up in her room for days with her brightly “Do Not Disturb” sign glowing orange neon on her door. She did tell me what she was doing, but I was never interested. My interests were in the ground, taking samples and studying the compositions of earth from all over. It all started from plants, and learning about the hydrologic cycle and how it cultivated the world at just the right temperature. Water evaporated into the atmosphere, condensated, and fell back down at another location, helping plants drink nutrients from the soil to produce oxygen, pollen, and fruit, all while eating carbon out of the air. It was beautiful to be a part of the cycle, especially with humans both adding to the plant cycle and benefiting from it. Cloudforme was the compound in question. Vivian exp...