Wilderness

Let me take you far away from here. From your home, your city, your state or territory, your country, the continent you're on, the Earth you sit on.

Zoom out of it. All of it. All of Earth, until it's gone. It's too far now, a part of the endless span of space.

Let me take you to a stranger place.

This place is infinitely far from us, and thank God it is.

It's a planet, like ours, at least as we can see it from far off. A blue and green orb, maybe a little teal. We can see the seas and the continents, and although it looks familiar, it is definitely not Earth.

Let's try to head in for a landing, but as we get in close there seems to be something odd sticking out of the surface.

It's a tower. A big black tall tower so high that it nearly escapes the ozone layer.

It's vast, impossibly tall, and incredibly large, but it is not surrounded by any others, or even a single house.

Don't feel lonely though. Something so big may be lacking in neighbors but within this place is its own unnatural world.

Break into the ceiling at the the top of the tower. Sink into its dank crumbling maze of what once was a civilization filled with creatures non-human.

Halls and corridors, chambers and rooms.

Big marble rooms with pillars that lead into more rooms with balconies that lead into rooms so vast and open that they have houses that lead into cities inside of them.

One of these abandoned towns is suspended in the air by giant pillars. It's a circular platform against the wall with dirt on the ground almost as if it was a slice of the surface world. Sitting on the surface of this platform are abandoned houses like dead rectangular bricks chipping their concrete off.

Look closely. In between these vacant structures, lightning up the chamber, walking on two legs up the roads, is a gwenen.

His name is Felix, and although he is a gwenen you might mistake him for an anthropomorphic rabbit or a squirrel.

In the most basic of terms he resembles a white rabbit with a long narrow head, a black 'v' shaped nose, black finger tips, toes, and a thick black stripe following the back of his big, bushy, prehensile tail. It would be more similar to a squirrel's tail if it wasn't as thick as a cat's.

On his neck is what looks to be a metal bagel sitting snugly over his shoulders. It's what he calls, his collar, and it has a black spot around the circumference every six inches.

Besides his collar he wears clothes just like us, well everything but shoes. He's wearing a backpack as well. To light up his dark and far off world, he holds a lantern. A small cylinder of light that illuminates every crumbling brick, and signs of life.

Small slimes and snails slowly traveling up and down walls.

Tiny lizards without eyes twitching out of his way.

Ugly colorless birds appearing in the void sky when they glide close enough to reflect the light.

***

Felix held his lantern up to the ground. In the dust a paw print had been stepped over a few times. A creature had passed through here. A big creature with talons.

Felix handed the lantern to his tail to hold and took a notebook and pen out of his pocket.

In the book he flipped to an old page.

A two dimensional map of the tower if it were split in two.

On it was the large chamber filled with floating platforms. The platforms weren't really floating but it seemed that way to someone who didn't want to accidentally fall off looking for one.

The platform he was standing on was against the chamber wall to the right, more like a balcony. It was the highest of the chambers, but Felix still couldn't see the ceiling no matter how high he held his lantern up.

He doodled an 'X' next to the platform, and then flipped through the book to the most recent page.

With haste he doodled the remains of the footprint amongst many other doodles of strange creatures.

Hissing.

Felix looked up.

The flap of gigantic black bat wings reflected back from Felix's lantern.

He closed the book, gave the lantern to his hand from his tail, and turned the device to lower the light.

The wings dove in closer. Felix scrambled into a crumbling structure and sat in the corner. At first he tried hiding the lantern behind him so it would at least get a little light, but nearly everything in the wilderness was lightless, and he would stick out giving any light away.

He turned the dial on the lantern until it shut off and held his breath. The beasts were coming into the little room. Their claws dragged on the ground with every step.

Felix felt the air in front of him fluctuate. With his hand still on the dial, he turned the light up bright again to see the grey long snout of a dragon.

The creature recoiled and gave him a sideways look. It had crooked white horns, fin ears, spine spikes, and an overall slender body. Others in the room were stiff, looking at him. Their eyes dilated and shiny in the light.

The one in front moved in closer, its snout only inches away, breath fogging up on Felix's face.

The dragon opened its mouth and put its teeth around his collar. It wasn't very aggressive, but Felix couldn't just let his collar be destroyed. He put his hands on the beasts snout and tried pulling him off.

The dragon pressed down harder and pushed Felix into the wall.

It was getting harder to breathe.

"Stop!" Felix whimpered.

The entire room swiveled their ears to Felix's cry.

The dragon with its mouth on Felix's collar let go and licked its lips.

The entire flock began to step out of the room until their collective barbed tails whipped out the door frame.

When they were far enough Felix stepped out of the structure and looked to his right. The wall that the platform was sitting against had a hole in it. The dragon tails whipped into it, vanishing into the dark.

Felix took his notebook out and scribbled down a picture of the hole in the wall. It really did keep going didn't it? A new location through the wall that held the platform up. He had never before been anywhere farther. For now it was filled with dragons, but maybe another day he would be ready to travel into it. It didn't exactly matter when anyhow, there was just so much to think forward to.

Turning to his left Felix followed the sterile dirt path in between houses. An antlered deer-like amphibian in a crumbling structure scrambled deeper into the building as Felix passed. Snails retracted into their shells, beetles the size of Felix's hands flew away into the empty sky.

Swaggering to the middle of the empty town, he approached a stone brick stair tower. It was super wide, with steps just a little too big for him. Felix sighed, but smiled anyway on the start of his climb. Up the higher parts were gaping, bare, rectangular windows that looked like a doors to nothing. These windows were common all the way up here, but only made Felix stick to the center of the stairwell.

The top the staircase led into the ceiling of the vast room the abandoned town occupied. The chambers here were covered in dust, but oozing with water. The cinder block maze up there was filled with stone statues of dragon-like figures, decorative fountains, and big, long, wooden boxes. Slimes ate the fungi off of the hot water fountains and the whole place smelled of a newly wet sidewalk.

Felix got around this wet steamy place by following markers he had scratched in the cinder blocks, but now he mostly went by gut and specific statue landmarks.

Eventually he walked back into the entrance room to these Statue Chambers. It was the longest highest room in there, and had a statue of a dragon-esque figure sitting up with their eyes closed. On both sides of the statue were two waterfalls slipping clear into drains below, and two doorways beside those. Felix always came from the right door, but now it was time to leave this statue and go out to a bigger maze.

Leaving the entrance room was like exiting an outlet at a mall. Here emulated being in a dead empty city with no moon or stars. It was cold, and nearly silent, but not dead.

Walking through the city Felix saw a two legged lizard with large whiskers and no eyes. It was in his path, and standing still. A caecusraptor. When Felix paced close enough, its head twitched. The raptor then used its legs to jump up into a two story window. The glass of such was long gone.

Staying on the road and passing many doorways to ancient restaurants, theaters and homes, Felix ended up at what used to be a dead end. Water had eaten away at the dead end, gnawing into the wall, but not all the way through. What was left over was a crawlspace within the wall itself.

Felix crawled into the hole. Inside the crawlspace, another caecusraptor noticed him and hurried back the way it came. Felix followed it, but didn't intend on going very far. A hole leading to the other side of the wall was close by. When Felix got to it he stepped through and into a much smaller chamber than the City Chambers before. This space was much more him sized, and hummed with mechanical activity in the walls.

The corridor here was wide enough for three of him to walk shoulder to shoulder, and had doors leading to decaying apartments on the sides. The heavy steel doors to these chambers were still on their hinges.

Up above, a balcony of more apartments looked over the corridor. Felix stayed on the bottom floor, and walked forward to a doorway guarded by a rotting slab of carpet instead of a door. He moved the carpet slab he had put there, walked in, and moved it back in place. This small chamber was a library, with bookshelves and books still intact.

The space was just as dusty as ever, but so incredibly comfortable and small. Unlike a lot of the other chambers, this one was completely dry. The carpet was old, but soft, and the books were fading gracefully. The cold, hard marble and brick he was walking on before melted away as the carpet comforted his bare feet. The hardest part of his journey was over now. Felix was at his library.

In the back corner was a decaying comfy chair surrounded by stacks of books and dormant candles. He passed it and headed for ladder leaned against the wall that led up to a vent. Felix climbed it and crawled into the airway. Once he scooted his way in enough, he gave the lantern to his hand, turned it off, and used his tail to put it in behind him. Without the lantern light it was truly dark, but it wasn't for long.

Felix scooted through the vent for a little longer before pushing his hands up into the ceiling. Pushing the ceiling tile out of the way, he revealed a lit room up above him, although under some sort of furniture. He crawled out of the vent and under the furniture before putting the tile back. On his belly, he crawled out from under his bed and into his room.

His bed was practically a part of the wall, almost like the wall was carved out and somebody had wedged a mattress in between the space. A little bit of room under the bed was left over, almost like it was floating.

Within the same wall were some cubbies with plastic bins in them for his stuff. The wall parallel had a television screen. The thick glass had years of scratches on it.

The wall furthest away from his bed had a door, and the wall closest to Felix's library had a desk, a chair, and a working computer. A very, very new computer.

The walls were made to be sterile. White paint with a little yellow mixed in. Carvings and strange paintings still gripped to the walls through, decaying, but not to a degree that the Wilderness Chambers were. Stickmen, messy angry things, black masses covering up things never to be seen again. These were the artworks of bored adolescents. Bored adolescents like himself, as he was only seventeen.

Felix walked to the door, put his palm on it and allowed it to slide open. He walked out to a vast, well lit area of balconies overlooking a carpeted common area. Doors that belonged to living gwenens, just like himself. These fuzzy children weren't swarming at the apartments, but some of them were playing card games in the common area below.

Although Felix himself looked like a white rabbit with a squirrel's tail to any human, gwenens didn't always resemble rabbits. Gwenens had all sorts of ear types, from something that might resemble a bear ears, to a bat's. The tails they all shared weren't as diverse though. All of their tails were equally long and dexterous, but some were shorthaired, longhaired like Felix's, or shorthaired with a longer tuft at the end. As for the rest of their bodies, they were mostly similar to a human's physique, except for their four fingers and three toes. They also had little claws, wore clothes, but didn't really wear shoes.

Standing on the balcony next to Felix was a koala eared gwenen with a tuft tail named Tito. He had a circular head and was black and white in color. Most of him was black including the top half of his head up from his nose. Excluding the inside of his ears, the tip of his tail, his palms and soles of his feet, the rest of his body was black. He was fourteen years old.

"Hello Felix, didn't expect to see you today," Tito said.

"Oh hey, uh, do you know where Una is?" Felix asked him, his tail curled around his leg in anxious comfort.

"She's at Law Lake practicing her boat races. I know it's not the most popular sport but always doing the same thing is also boring," Tito said. He was in charge of scheduling events and publicizing them, especially in the athletes' careers. The lad was just charming enough to pull off being popular.

"Thanks!" Felix gave Tito a thumbs up before rushing through his balcony to the stairs where he could go down to the bottom.

In front of him was the first floor out of many tall halls, balconies and the chambers that these transitional spaces led to. It was like a large mall, and each 'shop' was meant for a specific fun activity or setting. Law Lake was one of these settings.

When Felix arrived, the entrance to the lake was protected by gwenens holding bats and wearing sports padding and helmets. They glanced at Felix but didn't seem to mind him walking through.

Before the lake itself was a tiny rubbery beach. The lake in front of him was a large loop of water surrounding a rubber Island covered in fake leafless trees to play on. The ceiling was high like a gym, and had condensation running down the walls. Gwenens horseplaying in the shallows made splashing booms and kicks that echoed, leaving the entire chamber with just this sound.

Around the bend Una was in a canoe with her team of six, known as Team Shell. She lit up when she saw him and began paddling over. The group clumsily ran into the shore.

"Hey Felix. What's up?" Una asked him. She was dark brown gwenen with a tan undercoat. She had a round head and short circular weasel ears. Her tail was shorthaired.

"I just got back from well... you know where. But something really amazing happened and I wanted to tell you about it," Felix said.

His secret life in the outside world was safe with her.

One of Una's teammates in the boat spoke up.

"Not right now Felix. Una's practicing for a race this afternoon. You wouldn't mind if we kept her for a bit would you?" a gwenen called State said.

"Uh.. sure, I can wait," Felix fiddled with his fingers.

"Wait guys," Una spoke up and looked at Felix, "Are you sure that's alright? We've been practicing a lot already. I can take a break."

Felix looked to the rest of the teammates. Their faces desperate to sigh and groan in annoyance.

"Do what you need to.. I won't get in your way" Felix said. He barely moved.

Una sat back in her seat.

"If you say so.." She didn't look convinced, but Felix said what he said.

Una used her oar to push the canoe off the shore. Team Shell then continued to row around the artificial lake on the count of two.

Felix sat down and watched them confidently go around once, and then as they were making the turn back, they appeared to be speeding up, or no, Felix was speeding up, the kids on the fake trees on the fake island were speeding up too.

Before he could really comprehend what was going on he was being flung to his left like a careless child's toy. He thought the force of such a violent push would slam him straight into the wall, but he instead plunged into the water and dragged to a halt. Reorienting himself to the surface, he took a look around above the water. Next to him the boat had capsized, but the rowers were ok, swimming confused nearby.

Una looked to Felix.

"Pft!" She spit out water, "What was that?"

"How the hell should I know?! It looked like we were pushed by nothing up in the air all of a sudden," State said.

"I wasn't talking to you cardboard brain!" Una said.

"Then why the hell would Felix know?" State spit, and gestured an arm to Felix.

Felix looked to them.

"I don't know what it is... actually," Felix said to the group, "but I can try to find out." It felt odd having all eyes on him for once.

State found this to be an opportunity.

"Alright then, tell us when you get back but we need to continue practicing," State said.

***

'Major mall

Walls n halls

Homes for hedonistic values

Well protected by bricks and bots

Missed by depressed adulthoods'