I wander, the tunnels now. Each day feels empty to me. Where once there was a reason to push out and create a system to guarantee our expanse, all I can do now is check the walls and ceilings and floors for any structural damage. Nothing makes me smile anymore.
I have a place here, yes, but it feels futile. Even before I was around the periphery, looking inwards on the laughter and joy. That lure is gone now, and I without connections in am adrift. I can't leave this place, there would be no surviving, but where I once traveled out away from the rest of them with thoughts of the well being of the community, I now seek quiet and separation.
It makes me wonder how much of a loner I really am here. When the sky fell people were shattered apart, broken into factions. Some of them want to leave, to expand out and recolonize somewhere safer with no constant memories. Other would stay for the graves alone. Each and every one of them is a group. I fit in none of them. Perhaps I might side with exploration if my preference was asked, but I wouldn't fit in with them.
So I walk the tunnels, farther out on the worst of days, closer in when I feel the ache of that loss of a community to really call my own. Today I pass a broad door into an arched hall. Inside I can tell the whole place is carved out of a huge single stone. I never looked inside, never had a real interest in churches. The place is empty, dusty. Whoever came here before either died off or left for good.
Benches are carved up out of the floor, blocky with their grey-white forms thrust up into the space with a precision to detail. Along the sides, Roman-style columns stretch up to the high ceiling, up at least fourty feet. At the tops, small cherubic angels sit, bracing the ceiling with their backs and holding all manor of trinkets like wreaths, trumpets, or stone candles complete with stone flames. The whole thing must have taken each and every one of the years we had been here, been started almost right after we arrived in this hole in the ground. And now it sits empty. Behind that a tall, large stone column is carved out, just barely worked on at all. Probably designed to be a cross eventually. The stillness pushes at me, moving me back and away, out the door.
The next week I find myself walking in through the doors again to stare up at the columns and the angels above, all their eyes looking down, each watching over a specific spot of the church. It strikes me that if anyone had thought to seek refuge here, it would have been the safest place to be, when the sky fell. All one piece carved deep into a massive boulder, a rock to hide within in time of crisis. I don't come back for another two weeks.
This time the huge column at the center draws my eyes. It feels unfinished, the centerpiece of the whole place just left as a flat column. The next day I come back with a chisel and just stare at the thing. The pure blandness soaks into my mind. all the dimensions filling me. I'm not good enough for the task ahead, so I don't raise the chisel. Through the next week I experiment with the chisel, learning more finesse. I always was more comfortable with the drill, but that is not a tool of art.
When I come back to the church again, more confident, the blandness in my mind's eye melts away just a little. I take small layers off the surface, learning the feel of the rock and shaping the column toward the curves I see in my mind. My quests to keep the tunnels inspected and safe stops, replaced by slow and steady progress on the column.
The first thing that emerges is a leg. A long, womanly leg that wraps around the column of stone to rest daintily on the floor. The other three legs emerge more slowly, more difficult to carve out. The first form's other leg holding her weight. The bodies follow afterwards. Weeks pass as they emerge from the stone, small improvements to technique smoothing over the earlier, rougher work. Two figures embraced, both women of grey-white stone. The first figure exudes confidence, her wild hair framing her mischievous grin, arms wrapped around her counterpart. The other figure with shorter, straighter hair and a shorter build looks up into the wild eyes of her sister. The statue is not load bearing, so I cut slowly trim the topmost section into one thin arm raised by the taller woman to touch the ceiling with but one finger, holding the ceiling up for her sister, whose mild smile spreads subtly from cheek to cheek.
The elder of the two I name as wild Terra, strong and bold. The younger, Humanity, wrapping her thin arms around the broad back of her sister. They are finished on the anniversary of skyfall, resting on a slightly raised pedestal, the only remains of the column's original diameter. The figures are done, but the piece is not finished. Weeks longer I sit there, circling the pair, glancing up and down at them.
I had not gone back to the Split-Moon Chamber since I started the work. The only change is to the holes in the ceiling. At first they were designed to blend in with the original architecture, but they stuck out as bad imitations. Now someone had carved into them, widened them and shaped them. Two large suns and innumerable stars, holes filled with lanterns, hung up above. Even with the Grim monument to death sitting in the center of the chamber, the beauty of the sky was restored to the space. I smiled, just a bit. The inscriptions shall read thus "Night gives way to day as day moves ever onward towards the night."
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