Voice from the Deep
POV character: Tsuchi Nemuru
Tsuchi receives memories of The Great Fall from 1,000 years ago through the mycelium. A vision experience where past and present intersect.
When I touch the mycelium, it is always warm. The Memory of the Earth envelops me with a warmth like body temperature.
But today was different. Cold. Not an icy cold, but more fundamental — a sensation of existence's temperature dropping.
My field of vision turns white. No, not white. Falling light. Rocks falling from the sky. Enormous islands, trailing smoke, falling toward the earth.
"— We must cooperate. Sky and earth were once one. Unless we become one again, we perish together."
A voice was heard. Someone's voice from a thousand years ago. An echo carved into the mycelium. A wave of emotion — a mixture of fear and resolve — races through my nerves.
A thousand years ago, they cooperated. The people of the sky and the people of the earth joined hands and The Great Fall — they couldn't completely prevent it, but they minimized the damage. The details of how remain only fragmentarily in the echo.
But one thing is certain. Aether Crystals and the Memory of the Earth. Buoyancy and gravity. There were those who simultaneously controlled both forces.
When I opened my eyes, water droplets falling from the cave city ceiling of Shin'en-to were rising upward. Upward rain. The second stage of omens.
There is no time.