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StarMountainKid's Story Blog

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The Dome - Chapter Eleven


StarMountainKid

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So I walked quick, trying to get to the other side of the Dome, far away as it might be. I kept looking up and looking around. I thought maybe this dome was more scary than I thought, me being alone and all. I finally reached where this part of the dome ended and stores and stuff stopped. I didn’t know what there was around here. Just doors and empty walls. I walked along these empty walls for a while. There wasn’t too many people in this area, so I felt a little better.

I relaxed some. Maybe my nervousness was just in my mind. I’d got used to things some, but I realized there was probably a lot more to this than I figured. I thought it would be a simple place, but I was thinking maybe it was more complicated.

I was looking for something different. Maybe there was some here more like me, or at least someone I could talk to who might understand. So, I kept walking along the wall. It was just wall where I was, grey metal. I wondered how this dome was built, and why. I supposed there had been some bad thing happened long ago in the past, and the survivors had built all this for safety.

But what about the village and us villagers? Why weren’t we included? I recon everybody in the village thinks about this from time to time, but nobody really knows. When I was a kid it was just the same, and the same for my parents and maybe before, for theirs.

Dirth said there was more to the Dome than was known by its people. There was some mystery about it all and I wanted to find it out. I had the advantage of not being one of them, so I figured I had an advantage.

I strolled along for a while. Pretty soon I heard voices, lots of voices chanting. I looked over into the Dome floor and lots of guys dressed in black robes were marching through. These must be the followers of Zara, the Clerics, I thought, like Dirth said.

So I hunkered up and followed them. They just walked slow, four abreast and about ten lines of them. They were chanting something low I couldn’t understand. It was kind of soothing, though, the sound of them. So I got in behind them even though I wasn’t dressed in black. We all walked pretty far across the dome floor, the Paratakes moving out of their way without paying them any attention.

Pretty soon up ahead was this front of a big black building, just the outside of it poking out into the Dome floor ahead of it. The rest I supposed was inside the wall. Big doors swung open as the parade got near, and the clerics marched in. I stopped in front of the door, but then I though I’d just follow them in. What’d I have to loose?

Inside it was all pretty dark, but dim lit from a high ceiling. The Clerics marched down this wide isle with seats on either side. One by one, the Clerics peeled off and sat on the seats. Up front was this big desk you had to go up steps to get to. The walls and everything were in black, but shiny ditties tacked on them everywhere. There was a big circle behind the desk with tiny lights all inside it. It was some kind of sign I figured that the Clerics knew what they meant.

I sort of laid back and sat on a seat separate from the others. Nobody seemed to notice me, so I just sat there to see what would go on. Pretty soon everybody was in a seat in front of me, all in their black robes. Then this guy came out of some door in and climbed the stairs and stood behind the big desk. He was in black, too. He just stood there for a while, and everything was quiet.

Then he began to talk. He had a loud enough voice so everybody could hear it, and it was deep and sounded powerful. He talked for a long time. He said a lot of stuff that sounded true to me. Stuff about how life is a mystery, but a good mystery. Stuff about how it’s a wonderful thing that we’re all here in the Dome, away from the hard conditions on the outside. About how we should all look after each other and comfort each other when we have troubles, about how rare our life is ‘cause it doesn’t last long. How we should always think about this great thing that started it all. This big important something way up above the Dome, above the air, way up in the stars.

I had seen stars sometimes at night when the wind blew the clouds and mist and dust away. I could never make out what they were. They looked so far away, pretty and clean. I guessed they were all set out there for some reason, but what reason could it be?

I knew what the sun was for, to cause daylight and heat, though it was almost always dim and buried in the clouds. The moon was mostly buried, too, but I could just see it, soft, floating up there at night at odd times. I didn’t know what it was for either. Maybe it was just a dimmer sun that had mostly burned out or was too far away to really do anything.

Anyway, in the big room I just listened to the guy behind the desk. I’d never heard anything like it before, what he said, I mean. In the village it was just dog eat dog, as they say, scratching to survive in the shacks and in the dust, clawing through garbage for something useful, looking out for yourself and not caring for nobody else, ‘cause that’s what you had to do.

The way that guy talked, quiet like but strong and sincere, made me remember something inside that I’d almost forgot. It took me back to me as a scrawny little kid and my mother and brothers, how we lived and what they meant to me way back then. They’d all been gone a long time, but the memories I though of about them came rushing back. They didn’t make it like I did, not strong enough, or not hard enough, or maybe times was rougher back then. Especially mom. She was always kind of sick. She was thin and ragged, but I always thought she was beautiful. More beautiful than anybody.

She didn’t last long after I was grown up some. Too much sadness when my two brothers died as just little kids, younger than me. That was pretty common in the village, little ones not lasting too long, especially babies. I thought how much I missed them. I cried some then despite myself. I hadn’t cried for so long, it surprised me I still could.

When the guy behind the desk stopped saying these things, he stood there for a while, just looking out at everybody. I never saw nobody like him. It’s hard to explain. He was like somebody real important, but not a bully or a sharp, like in the village. He was strong but a gentle kind of strong. I though nobody could take him, no matter how hard they tried.

The way he looked, it was like he knew something nobody else knew. Something big, and he was trying to tell it, but he knew nobody would understand, and he was sad for it.

Then he turned and walked back down the stairs and through a door on the side and was gone. Everybody in their seats sat there for a while, quiet. Pretty soon they all got up one by one, slow, and walked back through the isle past me. They didn’t look at me at all. I guess they were in their own thoughts, too, like I was.

I figured when they got passed me they went through another door someplace to another part of the black building. I didn’t turn to look. I knew there had to be a lot more to this Cleric place. Then I thought, well, maybe I’d take a walk around and see, maybe meet somebody I could talk to, maybe even the guy behind the desk. I felt like talking just then. I wanted to know what this was all about, this Cleric stuff. I didn’t even care about the Dome much anymore. Dirth said this Zara guy wanted everybody to believe something, something important.

Maybe this Zara knew what the Dome was all about. Maybe he knew more than that, knew something even Dirth didn’t know. I wanted to find out what it was, what Zara knew. Maybe Zara even knew what the stars were for, I thought. For the first time in my old life I had some hope in me. I felt a little scared again, but this time it was a different kind of scared, like something good was about to happen, something that would answer all my questions, and at last I’d see clear, and the sun wouldn’t be buried anymore.

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