A Beautiful Day

It’s a beautiful day here in the Valley. If you were here, I can imagine how you would describe it.

The sun glares low into the sands until each grain mirrors its resentful glowing. There is no night in this season of the year - time itself has been frozen by the everlasting sun that beats, again and again, on that weary sand. Against those sloping golden hills, the eye can be startled when gazing upon the pale sky, which in contrast, rises placid and ghastly in an infinite stretch above our heads. Faded blue, barely a shade above white, its gentle caress is made alarming by the lack of a single speck of cloud.

You were always quite the poet. 

The dome is lonely without you. The settlement stretches miles underground and yet I seem to spend most of my days here. In this small, glass emporium, originally meant for some sort of scientific observation. But I have the space all to myself, because there is nothing to observe anymore. You asked me, once, why you always found me here. With the city we have built underground, you said, with the turquoise lakes and artificial fruit trees that wait down below. How can you choose to stay in this cramped dome, overlooking nothing but desert? I guess you were right. We have made a new world for ourselves - with our android servants and fluorescent ceilings - but I can’t help but be fascinated by the one we left behind.

The Valley, they call it. The word itself seems contradictory. Nothing can ever grow here. 

Usually, after such conversations, you would steal me away. Convince me to run across those shadowed passages, obsidian black and cold to the touch, to dive into some crystallised pool or man made waterfall. But when the mood took you, you too would sit in silence by my side.

Despite the relative shielding provided by the glass dome, there was still a certain warmth in the air. One that was not present in the winding tunnels and carved stone buildings of the settlement. It wasn’t uncomfortable - indeed, it was almost pleasant, like the warm breath of a June morning, a month we had never known. 

In the later quarters of the year, the sun would set on some rare occasions. Then it would slide down the buttery sky like the orange yolk of an egg, turning blood red before surrendering to its cool mistress, the night. There would be nothing but us and the desert, nothing but a sky of ink and the rhythm of our breaths. No stars ever made their appearance, and a certain heaviness stayed in the air, but we stayed still and silent. Grateful for those few moments of pitch black before the sun made its inexorable trek upwards once more.

It was the only real night we had ever seen. Besides, all of our eggs are made synthetically. 

I remember that it was in one of those moments that you confessed. If its no, we’ll forget about it right now, you promised solemnly. Only the dark will remember my blunder. I remember that I laughed before pulling you in. 

I remember the tears when they told me. I don’t know who they belonged to, though. 

So now I sit, in this bubble, hidden from the rest of our kind, with only the merciless sun to judge me. It floods the desert and me, lashing us with its rays. Gold and diamonds, but no life to come and trouble our pleasant slumbers.

It is a beautiful day here in the Valley. But not for me.