Canagaradja

After Earth was destroyed in nuclear fire, five hundred survivors fled their dying world and escaped to Bluesky-a small, Earth-like planet orbiting distant blue suns. What they discovered was not merely a refuge, but a living world where matter responded to awareness and every choice carried consequence.

Bluesky was a realm of floating parks and controlled gravity, where children leaped freely through the air, glided between platforms, and rode upon the backs of immense guardian birds. Born between Earth and Bluesky, they learned through play and motion-discovering balance, cooperation, and respect for life as naturally as breathing. Their days were shaped by curiosity and freedom in a world that taught not through command, but through experience.

I sank into the armchair by the fire stove, the room cozy yet wild, green lush pressing close outside the wide-open windows. A thick cigar smoldered between my fingers, and its smoke rose in curling tendrils, twisting and folding into themselves like liquid clouds. I watched them drift slowly, endlessly, as if time itself had paused, carrying me along the pathways of memory-through savannas and jungles, past shimmering dragons and trunked jargondas, over rivers where giant birds circled in vigilant arcs.

The spirals reminded me of my own journey: the restless energy of youth, running beneath open skies and untamed dreams; the steadier, thoughtful years of my forties, when every choice and every wonder was measured with care; and the quiet, reflective fifties, where I could watch the smoke drift like clouds across a sky I now understood better, yet still found mysterious. Each curl held a fragment of those years, weaving them into a single thread-beautiful, mysterious, endlessly alive.

Outside, the fire crackled, shadows danced along the walls, and the scent of slow-cooked food mingled with the earthy aroma of rain-soaked greenery. I exhaled, letting the smoke rise and dissolve into the blue of the sky, and murmured to myself, ＂Perhaps, if you, reader, enjoyed this journey through Bluesky, I could take you further-another story, another dream. Let me wander again in this world, between these volutes of smoke and the endless blue clouds, where wonder never ends.＂

The forests, dragons, trunked jargondas, and guardian birds lingered like whispers of a world touched but never fully known. Even as the story softened, my body seemed to soften too, melting into the myriad images-the flapping wings, rustling leaves, shining scales, glittering plains-all drifting in harmony, weightless, untethered. My imagination hovered above me, and I became a spectator of my own cinema, watching the vast spectacle unfold from the top of my drawing room.

The smoke rose, unhurried and eternal, carrying the edges of the tale beyond the horizon. At last, the story dissolved like a cloud, leaving only the quiet hum of wonder, the soft glow of twin suns, and the endless promise of worlds still waiting beyond the sky.