Story:A World Turned Right-Side-Up

She sat on the worn porch step, dhaas-roll smoldering, as she tended to do every cloudless night. I could smell the smoke from my open window. It stifled the ordinarily sweet air that was now customary for summer nights. I didn't particularly mind the odor, but I found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on anything besides it. I figured I would ask her to move somewhere else. I had never spoken to my downstairs neighbor before, but I knew a fair bit about her life from observation. She smoked exactly twice per day.

I rolled my window all the way up and peered down. "Excuse me!"

She wasn't startled. She craned her neck up slowly, puffed in my general direction, and stared.

"I hate to ask, but could you smoke somewhere else?"

"Could I? Would it make a difference?"

"For you, no. But it would clear the air for me."

"But it would dirty the air for someone else."

"Surely you could find somewhere to smoke alone."

"I was alone."

"Well now you aren't."

"I'd like to be alone again, then."

I withdrew from the exchange for a moment. The sun had begun to set, and there was nothing to obstruct its grotesque, piercing light. I had come to loathe these new sunsets. It had been so long since the last drop of rain graced my palm. I dreamed of it every night. I turned away from the window and stared at my bedroom-workshop, paints and pigments and canvas littering the floor. My hands were caked with dusty clay. They never seemed to come clean.

"Where did you buy a smoke-roll like that, anyways?" I had returned to the window, addressing her from above.

"I know someone."

"Not very helpful."

"What? You want some?"

"No, no—it's just, it doesn't seem... from here, if you understand." I knew full well what dhaas was.

"Surely you aren't one of those SDMA bastards."

"If I was, I would have reported you by now."

"It's dhaas. The Modhes make it. One of my friends happens to live in Viqho." Her voice softened a fraction.

"There are plenty of Modhes here. Why traffic it across the whole coast?"

"N'isi doesn't have real Modhes. It's all converts."

"So?"

"So they don't know how to make the good shit."

I was enjoying the conversation despite myself. It had been a long while since I had a real talk with anybody. She was a genuine person. Or maybe it was the dhaas.

"If you don't mind me asking, what do you do for a living?" I had seen her return to the apartment exhausted every day since she had moved in. I had never pieced together from what.

"I make decisions," she replied.

"Again, not very helpful."

"Neither are the decisions."

"And why would that be?"

"There's no point in making them."

"So why continue?"

"I ask that question very often."

"Okay, you don't want to tell me. That's fine. I understand," irritation crept into my voice. "If you were curious, I paint. Pictures mostly, sculptures occasionally," I offered, as some sort of intellectual token of trust.

"I knew that already."

"Oh," I felt somewhat flustered. "Have you seen any of my work?"

"I have."

"Well?"

"Well what?" she spoke obtusely. I started wondering if she was always this intentionally dense.

"I mean, what do you think about it?"

"I would find it beautiful," she responded, "if I had never seen the sky before."

My breath hitched. I felt more embarrassed than offended. I had thought my paintings were at least a little impressive.

For the first time in our conversation, she spoke of her own accord. "All those pictures of the horizon. Cloudy days, clear days, rainy days. They're well crafted. But why would anyone look at them when they could look at the real thing?"

"I paint what I feel. It doesn't matter to me whether people want to look at it," I lied.

"The most interesting part of your pictures, I think," she spoke while directing a cloud of vapor onto the street, "is that the sun isn't in any of them."

That was true. I couldn't think of a good way to articulate why.

"I've just never liked it," I reasoned. The words sounded as stupid in my head as they did coming from my mouth. But I had to say something.

"Your childhood was before the Calming," she stated, in apparent non-sequitur.

"It was."

"And you grew up here."

"I did."

"So it must have been jarring."

"It really was."

We both paused for a while. The sun barely poked above the blackened wall of the ocean.

"You wish you could go back," she said.

"I do."

"Before the clouds disappeared."

"Before the clouds disappeared," I echoed, "before everything turned upside-down."

"I understand that."

"Are you a psychologist?"

She chuckled. "No. But I might as well be."

"You deal with mental burdens."

"Whether I like it or not."

"That must be stressful."

She held up her dhaas-roll. "Of course it is."

"I don't understand you," I blurted out. "Well, no, what I mean is, you don't really seem to care what happens. In general. I worry too much. I don't know how you shrug it all off."

"You don't get anything out of worrying."

"You don't seem to get anything out of not caring."

"Is that not the point?"

I didn't have a response for that. The two of us watched the horizon wordlessly. The sky was a dark gray weight atop a charcoal sea. It was beautiful.