There had been a dream. In his dream world he had been in hallways, doorways, moving from room to room with no space in between. He had left the first room to find...something, couldn't remember what. He had a message to give to someone he knew. The hallways took him past other rooms like his own, and then down a flight of stairs. He had recognized the building, even though it looked nothing like the one he thought it was. Down the stairs, and past an opening to a larger room, some sort of gathering space. The door to outside was partially overgrown, as if whatever maintenance crew had preferred to leave the ivy wild along the outside. In the garden too, there was an archway. Nothing here seemed to have been tended to lately, scarily uncomprehending vines covered the beds, blending with the shaggy grass. He turned, to look back at the way he had come, feeling some background, unnamed fear. When he awoke in the next second, his mind was filled with a memory of brilliantly-colored stars floating in the air.
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The morning was filled with bright promise. He was happy because this was a special day. He dressed in his favorite tough pants and a shirt that hopefully felt a little more mature than his usual wear. His adventure jacket topped off the outfit; one of a boy proud to show his best self on a trip to The Fort.
It wasn't just any big tower, or any old fort. This is Fort Resistance, the headquarters of the olden-time battles on the plains. From the fort, the general could see his forces, and the enemies, in their tower on the other side of the field. The Kun army had won that war of course, and now the fort was used for other, less exciting stuff. It was still the headquarters of their military though, and the Fort still held weapons, machines, and quartered soldiers just in case they were needed.
His uncle worked in the Fort's tower that still looked out over the plains. He had some job keeping all the equipment working right up there. The equipment measured things and told the people who worked there stuff about what they were seeing from the windows. Sometimes scholars or other scientists would visit the Fort and ask the people in the tower about what they had seen and measured lately.
The boy had never been up in any tower. He had seen the view across the plains depicted in books. He liked the ones that were about the old battles, and he especially liked the illustrations of the landscapes. They seemed so open and filled with light. The fighting men and exploding trees in the scenes seemed almost calm and placid when depicted by the soft watercolors.
All the boy's young life so far had been lived in the grassy lanes and lawns of Dome Valley. His family lived in a nice home on the Shagbark Way, on the edge of the semi-rural village center. He had always played in the tall wild grass, finding wonders in little wetlands and magical thickets that glowed green in the sunlight. The sky was such a distant thing: a twinkle of blue high above the tips of the canopy. Along the roads it opened a little, forming a wider strip until branches poked in when they neared a tree. He wondered if there would be any shadows in that view from the tower.
The play of shadows was a constant thing in their lives, and of everyone they knew. Whether field or forest, there was no escaping shadow in some way. It was sometimes claimed that there were rooms in the city with no shadows, but the boy knew that was probably not really true. He had been to the city a few times with his parents. It had been exciting, but the inside of the city just seemed busy and slightly unnatural. He hadn't had a chance to look out from any of the city windows, or from the decks, though he had tried to see what he could from the pod side windows as they drove by.
After promising for a long time that he would take the boy up to the tower to see the view over the fields, his uncle had finally said that it was okay. He had said there were no scheduled meetings today, and everything was running well, so he had told the boy's dad that they could come and he would show them around. It was quite a treat.
Once he and his father had eaten breakfast and prepared for the day, they set out in his dad's little speeder-car and headed for Fort Resistance. The Fort sat at the eastern end of the township, on slightly higher ground than the village. It occupied a small bit of scrub woodland that dominated the eastern skyline with its island of deep greenery. The trip itself was not too long, and soon they were turning down the main street of the fortress grove. Offices and storehouses lined the narrow way, flanked at the entrance by large metal pillars. The whole grove was a secure area, and the boy could identify guards stationed at positions among the general bustle. They had passed through a security checkpoint when they first turned onto the Heart Street, and faced another one when they turned into the central plaza. Telling the guards their business, his dad was directed to a small parking area near the base of the tower tree.
The tower tree of Fort Resistance was an elderly buck-thorn bush, twisted and brittle with age. The lookout structures had been built into the living wood, immortalizing its shape and position in the grove. Though the small tree was still alive, the tower's metal supports had long since become critical for its upkeep. It soared above their heads, glistening with its metal augments. The sight was impressive for one who had spent most of their life in the open field.
The boy loved the bustle of the military fort. As they walked into the main building complex, and followed directions to his uncle's office, he marveled at the people, devices, and scenes which he saw all around. The place was not really all that busy, but it seemed so to the boy who knew mainly his own village. It was almost like the quiet hum of the market square, except he didn't understand anything that was being said or done, and most of it was taking place in separate rooms. He thought he understood what his uncle did, mostly, and now his uncle's job seemed more important than ever.
The first view the boy got was from the top landing of the elevator. They stepped out into a small hall with a window and platform overlooking the central grove. They were still under the canopy's shade, but far above the road and buildings. He thought: this must be how birds see things, when they flit between the trees. The vehicles from this height looked a little bit like toys, moving around in a wondrously-detailed scene.
The uncle led them into another structure, this one built entirely on a reinforced branch of the buck-thorn. The boy was marveling at the experience of being so high off the ground, and still on solid floors. Though he had never walked out on the decks of the Dome city, he figured this must be kind of similar. The city inhabitants saw views across the plains all the time. Maybe one day, he thought, I'll live in a city with a view from high windows. This thought quickly passed though, as he saw where they were headed.
The hallway led upward and outward along the limb of the tree, ending in a wide gallery. Banks of windows opened on nearly all sides, and a large table stood in the middle of the space. At points along the windows were scopes for seeing details in the view closer to hand. As impressive as the room and structure were though, the boy was entranced by what he saw through the glass.
Framed by the fringes of deep green buck-thorn leaves, a sea of golden green waved gently at his awareness. It looked just like the watercolors of his books, only more special, more fascinating. And the land rose beyond all the meadows and tree-islands and dancing foliage. It rose into rich green woodlands whose feet stood higher than even the city itself. Deep woodlands such as he had only seen in books of faraway lands. There was a whole world actually out there, with wonders totally unknown by his young mind. His uncle was telling them something about the differences in flora-growth, and he had an incredible realization. It seemed such a simple thought, and one which he surely knew already, but had not pulled at as a conscious being. Though he did not know those woodlands, or those faraway lands he had never seen even pictures of, other people did. Other people lived there, and knew those lands as well as he knew his own meadows and groves. Other people might be looking back, even now, and marveling at his homeland just as he did theirs.
Later he would not know where the vision had come from, whether it was triggered by his expansive thoughts, or the excitement of the day, or just something he had had for breakfast. The boy had been looking out of the windows, admiring the way the grasses and marsh-reeds danced in the wind. They had a rhythm that was chaotic, but didn't feel that way. It felt like if he watched it for long enough, he would be able to discern a pattern. The pattern never came, but the colors of the scene changed here and there. Clouds passed across the sun, and his eyes habituated strangely to the glare of the view. The reeds looked almost orange at times, or red. He thought maybe there was some berry bush growing down there, but then a cloud would come and the color would disappear. The grass tinted yellow, and seemed to whirl up into the air. It was all a trick of the wind; he was not used to seeing its currents from this vantage. When he thought back to the moment though, the boy could not account for the vast array of colors his mind remembered seeing. The view from the tower merged a bit with his dream from that morning, and it seemed that those fiery-colored stars had really been there, swirling over the field.
In the days to come, the boy never explained the dream-like quality of that view from the tower, but the image of the colored stars stuck with him. They were actually almost leaf-shaped, but shriveled and warped into flecks that whirled in the sky. In his memory they flurried the scene, painting it with vibrant strokes of yellow, orange, and red.
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