A Once Crowded Sky Novels & Stories

Two days later, the evening finally arrived. The sky was a deep, velvety blue, and the entire area outside the grandest hotel in the city was buzzing with intense excitement. This hotel was a massive, ultra luxury skyscraper, famous for its grand architecture. Its open courtyard and entrance space were so vast and wide that it felt large enough to contain a million people without anyone feeling crowded.

The sky over Aurelia was no longer a vast, unpredictable expanse of blue and gray. It was a grid of shimmering tension, divided by the invisible lines of the "Assignment." From my balcony in the newly constructed "Audit Tier," I watched the city pulse. It didn't breathe; it computed. Every movement of the people below was a stroke in a master ledger I was forced to maintain.

I took off for the wild yonder, gazing up at the Milky Way sprawled across the night sky. It was my son's dream. He was a stargazer, an astronomy buff since he was knee-high. On his birthday, he saw his first meteor shower in the wild. Tragically, that same night became his last. I was determined to make his dream come true. The divorce papers, signed by Elias, landed in my mailbox. Maybe it was guilt, but he rewrote the terms, leaving me with a lion's share of our assets. I took it all without batting an eye.

“It became the only place I knew how to be.” We sat together in the quiet that followed that for a while. The insects kept their steady conversation. The wind moved through the trees in the distance. Above us, more stars had appeared in the time we had been sitting there, filling in the dark spaces between them. That’s how it looks when the night is fully settled, until the whole sky is crowded with them, impossibly many, the kind of sky you only see when you are far from anywhere an empire cares about.

‎ ‎Before long, the bus came to a stop in a wide, open space, and the tourists quickly rushed off the bus. ‎I stared at the sky in front of me, utterly stunned by the breathtaking sight.The landscape here is vast and open. The sky stretches endlessly, almost as if it’s hovering just above the ground, so close you feel like you could reach out and touch it. Blues, purples, and greens merge into the Aurora, an infinite expanse filling the entire sky, interspersed with white nebulae that resemble a deep, unfathomable Milky Way shimmering and graceful. ‎

Cyprian and Ivory, who were also present, stood up, their curiosity piqued. Leading the way, I briskly walked outside with everyone trailing behind. As soon as I stepped into the open, the scene unfolded before me. The sun struggled to cast its light through a dense grey smoke that enveloped the sky. It wasn't the usual appearance of rain clouds; this was different, resembling more of a blanket deliberately used to obscure the sky. The ominous sight left us all in a state of uncertainty.

Olive's eyes slowly flapped open to see a sky so clear and bright, she thought she was on the other side of life. The last time she looked up, the sky had looked dangerously angry and looked lit up with hot coals. But this sky now was beautiful in its natural form. Birds sang afar off and she could see hawks hovering over her in the clear skies. Funny, hawks hovered in the sky that way when there was a fire somewhere below and the smoke was reaching up. Right?

In a split second, countless insects filled the sky and surrounded the three Grand Elders without any seams. Swoosh... Bzz... The next moment, an endless swarm of insects rushed like a tide, covering the sky and obscuring everything.

It was that time when Pidge was so excited to have Maddox back. She knew Vlora had gone to bring him back. The black sky gradually turned into dim grey and the illumination of stars got languidly lusterless. Millions of stars in the ebony sky started hiding their brightness and got slowly dissipate as if someone was going to coming. Divergent birds were gently flying in the manifest sky and their dulcet dawn chorus was easily audible.

After a massive lunch, we started eating the apples and pears peeled and served by Quinn. We decided to rest for a while, I lie on the ground and looked at the clear blue sky. Rendall did the same, Quinn rested her back on the oak tree. “Are those?” my brows furrowed with what we saw. A flock of crows almost covered the fresh blue sky as it flew very fast as something scared them away. “Crows.” Rendall stood up and take a closer look, the sky became dark as the sunlight is being trapped on the crow’s wings.