This world.. whatever it might be …

We're soaring in the skies on this giant amethyst mammal. The wind pushes into my face, and I hold steady by extending my arms. My balance is a little shaky in this world. The airborne mammal I am riding certainly doesn't have the grip I need to sustain control.

"Hold on to me before you fall off, Ymoh, and become patty on the ground."

I do as Zera asks by grabbing her hips. They are muscular.

It's a pulchritudinous but haunting landscape below my feet: the outskirts are a wasteland, but the Center is unscathed with a colossal architecture and a city within a city. The clustered suburban areas are a travesty. There are enormous decapitated white heads with black eyes in the streets. Their mouths are still moving.

"Nipal, fly lower!" Zera flicks the whip. I believe Nipal grunted in retaliation, but the gurgle came from his back end rather than the front. I feel the need to ignore what might have transpired.

He barged his way closer to the ground, flapping his fin like a manic wing; he waddled in the air, almost throwing us off, and incoherently mumbled while Zera stomped her high heels into his head. They bounced off him like rubber. I didn't think he felt it too much.

When the turbulence eased, we sailed through the skies once again, and I can't keep my eyes off the city below. It was massive, unreal, and an uneasiness crawled through my veins. I peer upwards to the clouds, and as I squint through the light's blaze, the sky shimmers and ripples. Like the surface of water.

The sky is turf and the ocean is the atmosphere. An reversed world.

Zera's top hat, now blue, rushes off her head and bounces off my beak, but I catch it before it goes solo. Her ears, fur, and the frilly bits on her tuxedo are flapping in the wind. It was difficult not to notice her facial profile. Even from the side, I can tell she holds turmoil in her soul.

She turns to me, her left ear whipping across her forehead. "If you stare in this land, you are sentenced to death by jellyfish."

I do not want that to happen. "How does that work exactly? That's not an acceptable form of a public death in my world."

"I cannot speak of it," Zera winced and moved her ear out of the way. "Where did you come from, Ymoh?"

"My name is Leonardo. Please. Call me by my name. I've already asked you once before."

"You are not my Familiar; newcomers are called by their species."

Nipal announces, "Docking in five etunim." But Zera pays no attention.

"A Ymoh is your turtle species then?" I ask and slightly lose my footing that I hope nobody notices.

Turbulence hits Air Walrus again, and Nipal shouts a battle cry in a foreign language. Zera stands tall, extends her arm, and her whip transforms into a different weapon, sending razor-bladed glitter through the sky. I use my forearm as a shield. I wish she warned me!

"May I call you Zera? Calling you Fennec Lady seems rude, at least where I reside." The tossing and sliding on the walrus begins. "Is that a monk's spade?" I point to her weapon, still holding on to her hips for dear life.

"Am I a familiar to you?" She arches her weapon back, looking straight ahead. "This is Sinai, my companion."

"Yes. The only constant here. Other than your changing top hat and weapon," I casually compliment and try not to fall off the roller coaster mammal. "Hello, Sinai. It is nice to meet you."

Sinai hums in a glow. I bow to it.

Zera didn't reply instantly; she bends forward, and her backside is in my face; I quickly shift my body and reach over to the side to scope the trouble before us. Something zooms passed my head and my ears ring.

"Nipal! Fly closer!" Zera braces herself. "Hold your breath, Ymoh. We approach a no-fly zone against the Lucarac's BabaBusters."

"What just almost hit me?" We come to a stop finally.

"One of the fires from its wings. Do you see them now?"

She moves from my view and in front of us, hovering in the sky's center, is a row of flaming winged …. billboards. Billboard ads on chicken legs. I can't read what's on the billboards because my eyes twitch. Why are they twitching?

"Focus, Ymoh," Zera whispers and her ears fold back. She twirls Sinai and points the bladed end towards the enemies and continues speaking to me, "The message is for you. It can help resolve our situation. If I help you, I will perish."

No matter what I do, I can't understand the billboards. My brain jumbles the words and images, and since everything feels so real, I avoid trying to slip off to my doom. If I fall, will I catapult into water or shatter on this world's terrain?

The BabaBusters, as goofy looking as they are, waste no time in protecting their fly zone.