Book 1 Prologue: The Fallen
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As Sui fell to her death she thought it surreal, a particularly strange dream (or nightmare?) that sparked within her unconscious mind and—with the hiss of a match catching flame—flared into being. Reality wavered at the edges.
"Hi Sui," said Lon, dropping abruptly into her narrow cone of vision. She peered curiously into his eyes. Lon, Lon, why the wooden face?—she tried to say, but her mouth remained stubbornly shut. She imagined he heard her regardless, and he gazed back with a mournful expression. His lips moved to say something else, but his elbows jerked suddenly, snared by thin wires, and—
(Oh I see you're a puppet. Sorry, my friend Lon is not a puppet.) The wires snapped with an audible crack, and the caricature of her best friend faded away.
When she was a little girl her mother had gifted her a dollhouse. It was an odd thought, but she now saw herself kneeling over it, and reached out a hand. She blinked; it was no longer a dollhouse, but a toy-like skyferry, perfectly detailed in miniature down to a functionally spinning glossair ring. There was a dizzying blur in her perspective, and it occurred to her that she was reaching up toward the airship, not down.
An array of bright spots exploded in her vision, blotting out the image. She blinked rapidly, trying to assuage the decidedly uncomfortable burning sensation behind her eyes, and then she was weightless. A severe chill wracked her body with a violent shiver. Very suddenly she was awake and (Oh god I'm falling) and the nightmare was very real indeed. Lightning flashed again, and the skyferry above her was painted starkly against a backdrop of black cloud. Debris rained from the broken airship, amongst which Sui was just another speck, another body—
(Oh god the bodies.) Young and old, Hume, Bangaa, Seeq. There was no discrimination among the fallen. Mouths open in screams for deliverance, loved ones, or the sheer terror of it all.
Sui waited, yet that epiphanous moment of waking never arrived. Her scream of frustration was weak, and gasping for air she choked and coughed until her throat was raw. Her eyes stung. She shut them, but the harsh wind nonetheless wrenched tears from tightly lidded enclosures. She was left breathless and limp, a rag doll buffeted by the turbulent air.
The blackout was inevitable, but the last sensation Sui felt was strangely comforting, like two strong arms carrying her away.