2. The Big Stairs
After centuries of empty skies, Cosmo had never expected to hit a piece of wood just underneath the first Cloudbeings.
It was so unexpected that he bumped into it twice more, before realizing he couldn’t fly through. But he also couldn’t fly underneath it, or even around it.
Large blocks of stone lay on a skeleton of wooden planks. They formed a staircase down. Are they building a watchtower? thought Cosmo. Or is this another creative project by the Gosti that we don’t understand?
Cosmo considered flying past and ignoring it, but his heart protested. Centuries of empty skies, he thought. Could it finally change?
Maybe the animals wanted to live between the clouds. Then Cosmo could finally fly amidst other creatures, instead of hovering above them at his lonesome. If he had to do this for another thousand years, he would go mad. The bird god who died of loneliness, that’s what the animals would call him.
The stairs were already quite high. Cosmo actually thought it impressive that they built such a structure. Here and there, drawings were carved into the stone or flowers provided decoration. Besides the Throne of the godchildren, he knew of no structure that reached higher.
But if they built even higher, it would have terrible consequences.
He landed on the step that showed an imprint of his head. Dizzy, he walked down, step by step, not entirely sure how sturdy this staircase was, until he met the first creatures.
Two Equids held a branch between their teeth, one on the left and the other on the right, and walked up.
“Noble creatures, what is the purpose of this?”
“Sorry. Concentrating. Don’t want to fall!” They trotted on without even looking at Cosmo.
The next creatures were just as busy. A row of rabbits hopped four steps at a time, stones collected in a backpack tied to their belly.
“Why are you building a staircase?”
The rabbits looked at each other. “Just because.”
“Everyone’s doing it, right?” the other offered after a long silence. “Right?”
Cosmo sighed. He reached the base of the stairs, cleverly placed between the Maybemountains, around which animals swarmed. He coughed loudly; the area fell silent.
“Who are you? And why are you building such a high staircase?”
Only one stepped up to him. “My name’s Fiante. I have a daughter, Dilova Onefoot. She really wants to talk to that Ghostbird once.”
Cosmo frowned. “And for that hundreds of creatures collaborate on the biggest construction ever? You should have asked me.”
“Asked you? No, we’ll ask the Supreme God.”
“Supreme God?” Cosmo looked around, increasingly confused, feeling like he was the butt of a joke. “Listen, that Ghostbird is my child. If you want to see it up close, I’ll ask it to come down. Though it will most likely destroy everything in this field.”
Fiante laughed and pushed his foot against Cosmo’s wing, as if they were best friends.
“Good one, Cosmo.”
“It’s impressive,” Cosmo admitted. “Where do you even gather the materials? The motivation? I’ve never seen so many animals cooperate.”
Fiante smiled. “By not saying the stairs have to be this tall or that tall. By not looking at the end, but simply saying every day: one step at a time.”
“How long have you been building then?”
“A week or two.”
Two weeks? thought Cosmo. At this pace they’ll surpass the first Cloudbeings in a few days, and in a week might be so high that …
“There’s nothing up there!” he called out. “No Supreme God. No heaven. No oxygen. If you leave the atmosphere, you’ll die quickly and that’s it.”
Fiante pointed at him. “Of course you’d say that. You don’t want us to reach the Supreme God.”
“Where does that idea even come from? There is no—”
“Yes yes, you’ll keep denying it.” Fiante whistled at a few creatures who were standing around listening to the conversation. They immediately grabbed new blocks of stone and carried them up the stairs.
“Okay, pretend there is a Supreme God. Why do you want to talk to him so badly?”
“Like I said, my little daughter really wants to. And well, don’t we do everything for our children? Everything to protect them? Even if you have to take drastic measures for it. Like … impose strict rules, such as your Dracs?”
Cosmo didn’t believe any of it. He had a vague suspicion who Dilova was. He felt sorry for her and wanted to help, but this staircase was nothing but a waste of time and a gigantic danger.
Three Protobirds stormed towards Fiante. Feathers flew from their wings while their beaks clattered loudly.
“It happened again! More eggs were stolen!”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Fiante said reassuringly. “We’ll find the culprit,” he turned to Cosmo, “and the Supreme God will show his justice.”
Cosmo could no longer bear this nonsense. It was bad enough they didn’t believe in him and his family anymore—that his family had turned into something more akin funny friends—but this whole idea was ridiculous.
“You know what? I’ll find the egg thief for you, and you stop building the stairs.”
“Thanks for the help,” said Fiante, “but those stairs will be built. One step at a time.”
Cosmo pulled his beak taut. He pushed himself off the ground without another word and rushed straight to the Rainbow Woods. Hopefully, Eeris was home and hadn’t let herself get carried away on another adventure again. During the Third Ice Age they had lost her for a month because she had met a mammoth who needed aid.
Relieved, he saw her yellow shape on the flowery throne. She was telling a little story to some rabbits, but Cosmo didn’t want to wait and landed next to her.
Eeris pretended not to see it. “And then the prince came to wake the princess with a kiss, but never mind, suddenly a gigantic bird was standing next to him to interrupt this important action. Ridiculous! Then the fairy tale will just have to continue another time, he thought.”
The young bunnies giggled and hopped back into the woods.
“Pardon!” Cosmo said. “This can’t wait. Crane your neck, look East, and tell me what you see.”
“Cosmo, why can you never just say what you want to say?” Eeris did as he asked anyway. “I see some kind of structure?”
“A staircase. A gigantic staircase. The creatures want to go higher than the clouds.”
“What’s wrong with that? Are you afraid of stairs? Do you have a fear of heights? That would be funny! Oh, I can make up a whole fairy tale about that.”
Cosmo used his wings to settle her bouncing head. Eeris frowned and mumbled: “But why are they doing that?”
“I have no idea! But if they go above the clouds, they’ll die. They can’t breathe the air. That’s bad enough already!”
“But our Dracs don’t say building a staircase is forbidden. Would be kind of weird too. We just proclaimed we want to help the creatures and allow their ideas.”
He waited until Eeris stopped smiling and looked as serious as him.
“But we’re still recovering from the disaster with the dinosaurs. If all those creatures die at once, we’ll lose so much life force … I don’t know if we can survive that.”