Divided Skies

By J.L. Avey

Driven from his home for a second time, Cedar decided to make a stand. Finding himself in the middle of a global war that claimed the lives of millions, he's determined to make a stand. In order to protect those he love and reclaim his home, a guardian angel is sent to watch over him, whether he likes it or not.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.L. Avey
• Release date: May 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224700509

Book preview

Divided Sky

J.L. Avey

Copyright 2022, J.L. Avey

Chapter 1

Through the crowded misery of the airship’s cargo hold he moved, hoping to seek peace. Peace made it clear that it did not wish to find Cedar, nor did it wish to bless his neighbors any longer. War came to Evergreen. Out of nowhere and without warning the starward horde arrived, raining fire down upon the peaceful land of Verdesylvania. Once before the engines of war drove Cedar from his home, giving him a respite of a year before knocking again.

Try as he might, he could not block the sounds of the desperate and frightened as he wove through the crowd. Somewhere on this freight there had to exist a quiet corner, somewhere Cedar could collect himself and his thoughts. You should not leave her alone at a time like this, a thought not his own told him. He scowled as he tried to look up at his own mind. It started only a few hours ago, making him wonder if this was all just a dream.

No, dreams as bad as they might be, never hurt while happening. Some of the memories conjured up in them stung after he woke, leaving him unsettled for the day to come. If only it was one. He would gladly endure any nightmare just to wake up in his apartment, ready for yet another day at work. Bumping elbows with one of his neighbors, an old man who only looked vaguely familiar. Did he live in the same complex or work at one of the shops?

It hardly mattered. When a community found itself transformed into refugees, it seldom stayed together. Those who escaped Evergreen would find themselves permanently dispersed, perhaps never to see each other again. Friends who watched a football game during third quarter

were bound to never cross paths again unless on the same airship. Even those onboard this battered, dirty transport would more likely than not end up in different sections of sprawling camps that soon would form.

In the eyes of those around him, Cedar saw fear and uncertainty. This was all new to them, not a one of them knowing what to expect. Except him. This was not the first time he found himself a refugee. He was separated from those he knew back in Tavor, though for the most part it was not much of a loss. He found himself from time to time wondering what happened to his family. Did they still live under occupation, or had they managed to escape to different parts of Verdesylvania? Where they now finding themselves under a new occupation?

Just when his life was starting to get back on track, the world showed him how much it cared for anyone’s plans or ambitions. The Kais rolled over any in their way, sweeping across starward lands towards the sun. Cedar tried not to look around as he moved through the hold, an impossible task if ever there was one. He could see the uncertainty in so many eyes, the fear, the despair.

He found the main hold too noisy, too crowed and too stuffy. Any other place would suit his needs. He would not mind going on deck, an option barred by the airmen running this airship. The mostly dwarven crew did not want refugees getting in their way, obstructing the operation of their vessel. The sapiens on board were not much better. They lived so long in the dwarven nation of Batavia that they thought as much like pygmaeus as the dwarves.

He stumbled across one small room, little more than a broom closet. Inside, a dim bulb barely illuminated a chamber filled with brooms, mops and other cleaning equipment. Nobody else staked their claim here, nor did he see any crewmen nearby. Slipping inside, he tried to clear his mind. Why did it all fall apart? Was there a rhyme or reason or was this little more than being in the way of larger entities? Was he nothing more than a bug crushed beneath jackboots simply

because the Kais soldiers did not even notice him? Closing the door behind him, muffling the sounds beyond, he stared ahead thinking about what led him here.

Cedar stretched his arms skyward, reaching into the sunward breeze, preparing himself for another busy day at working in his new home. Well, it was not all that new anymore. According to the calendar he lived in Evergreen for just over a year. Only a year separated his birthland from liberty and domination by the marauding armies of the House of Kais. It almost seemed like a lifetime ago.

Evergreen, with its lush green groves and thriving open-air farms on vast stretches of reclaimed land was a sight more pleasant than Tavor with its violet shrubs and hydroponic gardens housed beneath expansive and quite expensive domes. It was hard work for a town there just to grow enough food to feed itself, let along thing about expanding. Everything was far different here, even the sun. He wondered if he would ever grow accustomed to seeing it hang that high above the sunward horizon.

He glanced briefly towards the north, seeing ice capped peaks far off in the distance. The mountains were always touched by the perpetual cold breeze blowing in from starward and its eternal night. Frigid air from the star lit tundra brought a chill to all the lands it reached. To his dismay, gloomy clouds enshrouded the mountains, allowing only the peaks to shin in the dull reddish light of the sun.

Those dark clouds circled the mountains like vultures standing watch over an ailing beast. It left Cedar with a most uncomfortable feeling that rain will start falling by third quarter. It also reminded him of the land of his origin. Similar skies appeared over Tavor days before the Kais armies crossed the borders. Cedar barely escaped with a handful of others thanks to the Batavian Air Force and Jet Force. While feeling indebted to the jetmen who helped him, he knew they did not aid out of the kindness of their hearts. The Kais Imperium tended to conscript local populations, clearing out institutions of higher education in search of cannon fodder. If not for jetmen like one Corporal Moss, Cedar would likely now lay dead in the trenches, pressed into service by the invaders who destroyed his home.

He turned his eyes away from the past and back towards the unknown quantity of trees lining the avenues of Evergreen. The people of Verdesylvania loved their trees, so much so that even their national flag bore the silhouette of the mighty redwood. None of those monstrous trees grew within the boundaries of the city. Instead, they grew on the periphery of dust free farms scattered across the fifty kilometer wide valley forming most of the nation. Having food grown directly from the ground was strange enough but the idea of actual forests still left him boggled. He would never have believed they existed had he not seen them with his own eyes.

He passed several trees of his namesake as he marched towards work. These were small cedars planted along the city’s sidewalks, chopped down and replaced periodically as they grew too large. Evergreen remained mostly silently in the first quarter of the day with only the occasional thunderous clank to break the peaceful quietude. Cedar cringed at the sound of autos rattling down the cobblestone road. Evergreen’s roads were never intended for motorized vehicles to clamber up and down them. Nor did the mechanical transport quite match the aesthetics of the two story brick buildings lining the main street.

Cedar could never afford one of the machines nor had he any desire to possess them. The machines looked for all life like a windowed box on wheel and barely moved faster than horses or oxen used in the fields. They were louder and produced a nastier stench in their passing than any beast of burden. He hoped the auto fad would not last too much longer. He dreaded to think of what thousands of them could do to both the city’s roads and air.

Autos notwithstanding, Cedar found himself happy in Evergreen, far happier than he ever remembered feeling back in Tavor. Never had he imagined a land so clean and abundant that life there did not revolve around finding enough to eat. Verdesylvania grew so much food that it actually exported it to other nations, mostly on the starward side of the world, a frozen steppe that never knew the light of the sun, guaranteeing its neutrality.

Fortunately for him, the people here mostly did not treat him like an outsider, like some vagrant migrating into their lands. Work was rather tolerable; not too hard and not too boring. He paid little attention to the few people he passed on the clean, open streets of the city, a far cry from life beneath cramp, domed cities starward. In turn, those same people paid him even less attention, wrapped up as they were in their own troubles as they headed to work.

Cedar was not an announcer, a reporter or any person who the public interacted with at the radio station. Anyone who actually spoke over the radio oozed charisma. Not Cedar. He remained content enough to work beyond the scenes. His was a simply enough job; transcribe reports off the wireless, clean up the text and deliver it to the broadcasting studio for announcement across the city. Working in radio was far easier than anything he would have found back in Tavor. It also paid better. To think that so many people criticized him for tinkering with radios in school instead of busting his back in the mines or orichalcum foundries.

As Cedar approached the radio station, he peered up at the eighty meter tall broadcasting tower with waning enthusiasm. As much as he enjoyed his job, he found that news on the airwaves focusing more and more on the war consuming a great deal of the world. When it came to alliances, it was nearly a literal struggle between sun and stars. Verdesylvania straddled the near terminator, close enough to the sun that he never saw the stars here.

Before reaching the stylishly modern all-glass entry of the station, he stumbled across one of his friendlier coworkers. He was a mountain of a man—or perhaps a high-rise of one. Cedar thought of the two-and-a-half meter tall ogre more as a large building than a rocky hill. He stood almost a meter taller than Cedar, forcing the sapien to always look up when greeting him.

That was alright; everyone had to look up to Oak after all, though not everyone did so in such a positive light. Fewer giganticus called Verdesylvania home than sapien refugees. Nobody knew exactly how he came to live in Evergreen and to the old timers, that made him doubly suspicious. Cedar thought that a most undeserved attitude given that the ogre was one of the kindest persons he ever met.

A good day to you, Cedar, the larger man said in a low, rumbling voice. Oak seldom spoke in anything louder or more forceful than a low grumble. Cedar had the feeling that it he ever found reason to yell, Oak would sound not much different from an avalanche. He stood next to the plaza’s fountain, a pool of water surrounding a statue of a tree with water flowing from it polished branches, surrounded by a small flock of birds.

Cedar nodded a greeting. How are things going for you today?

Oak, dressed in simple coveralls and thick boots, grinned. It’s a bright red day for me so far. A little cloudy starward but what can you do?

Cedar looked towards the sunward horizon, eyeing the dull, pulsing red orb, nodding not as much in agreement as acknowledgment. It was always a bright red day, except when clouds migrated across the pinkish sky. I’m glad to see the sun is exactly where I left it.

Oak chuckled softly. I would be surprised if it moved as much as a meter since the day of creation. Cedar was not about to take that bet. The sun never moved in the sky, hanging forever high enough above the horizon to bath Verdesylvania in a perpetual glow.

Cedar turned once again to the ogre. Oak always appeared so content, even happy with life. Perhaps he found inner peace in accepting what would never change. He worked for half as much as any sapien in the station’s mail room, situated in the basement far removed from public view. Perhaps it was just as well since the architectures who designed the building never took an ogre’s stature in mind. Only the mail room’s domed ceiling curving high enough out of the way allowed him to walk upright—though he did have to hunch down to squeeze through any doors inside Riverside Broadcasting.

Its name said it all. The four-story structure sat on the banks of the Pine River. The plaza itself was built alongside an embankment of the reclaimed river. What naturally would have been a slope of sand and rock, construction crews buried beneath a concrete platform lined with limestone bricks reaching down to the waters of the river. On occasion, ducks congregated at the base of the man-made cliff, waiting for any crumbs that the strange creatures above might offer. Usually, the strange creature in question was Oak.

Not today. A flock of finches surrounded Oak, all chirping for grain. Oak reached into a pouch clinging to his belt. He obliged the birds. The finches bickered over the seeds in pointless competition. There was always more than enough to go around when Oak was near. When he was not tossing seeds, he obliged resident ducks by tossing out stale bread.

After knowing the ogre for the better part of a year, he remained uncertain about such a frivolous expenditure of food. The people of Tavor had that in common with the Kais at least; the hesitation to waste anything. Food not eaten ended up recycled, transforming it into fertilizer and fed back into hydroponic farms. You always have a crowd.

They don’t care what species I am just as long as they get fed. He paused for a moment as a broad smile crossed his face. Director Cyprus asked what my secret was for being so successful with the chickadees. Oak laughed at the joke, though he was fully aware of his status in Evergreen society. He did not seem to mind being the bottom rung on a ladder. Any sapiens treated that way might eventually snap. Not Oak. He was as peaceful as any of his kind, a people with an exceptionally thick skin who took a lot of abuse before throwing punches. Of course, nobody sober ever tried picking a fight with a man two or three times his size.

Do you actually have a secret? Cedar wondered and not as casually as the director.

The path to the heart goes through the stomach, he said as he tossed another handful to the finches.

Cedar accepted the answer, unsure what else he expected. I better get to work.

News can’t wait the way mail can, Oak said, looking sympathetically at Cedar. Somebody gets a letter a day late, no big deal but they will have your head if the news is even thirty seconds late.

Tell me about it, Cedar looked at the glass doors of the broadcasting center, beckoning for him to enter. Another day, another dinar. Take it easy, Oak. Cedar headed towards the glass and brick structure, wondering what awaited him on the wireless today.

Cedar spent the better part of three hours listening to distant transmissions. Other stations in other lands possessed far more powerful transmitters, each of which capable of bouncing signals off the upper atmosphere and over the horizon. Thus far, he found that none of them from starward had anything worth reporting. In Cedar’s view, their silence told more than a thousand transmissions. While they would never announce their plans to the world, they did radiate out a great deal of propaganda and it falling silent left him more unnerved than their usual bluster.

There or not, the people must have their news and the station’s producers insisted that its employees locate it. He was not alone in this quest of knowledge. Six other transcribers at in the same room as him, none of them finding anything they deemed worth of reporting. Cedar hoped that meant today was going to be a slow news day. No news was good news as they say. Those same people also said news meant something either went seriously wrong or seriously right.

Usually, his days involved the clatter of typing machines and chatter of coworkers. Today, it was as quiet as the land before a storm. He thought again about the distant storm clouds—clouds not nearly distant enough for his taste. Were the airwaves this quiet before the invasion of Tavor? Having only graduated when they invaded, he lacked the same level of access to the world’s news he enjoyed in Evergreen. Perhaps it only meant a lull in the war. With two warring parties mostly locked in their trenches, it was not uncommon for both sides to do little for weeks on end.

The only unusual and perhaps only newsworthy information he uncovered came not from foreign media but rather from military channels. He managed to pick up a partial transmission from the Batavian side of the front. A Batavian air force was keeping a close eye on an Imperial air force of roughly the same size only to lose it in the clouds. The only clouds Cedar knew anything about were those too close for comfort.

The officer on the receiving side of the transmission, a pygmaeus Cedar judged by his no-nonsense replies that came in as few words as possible, sounded less than pleased. He demanded to know how one could lose an entire enemy air force, a very good question in Cedar’s opinion. He scratched down a few lines on a piece of scratch paper. The Kais might have a new offensive set up somewhere and that was always newsworthy.

Cedar looked up out the window into the hallway, his note taking disrupted by a sudden commotion. Yet another tour group marched through Evergreen’s state-of-the-art radio station. Given how young the technology was Cedar had a hard time imagining an obsolete station. Nor had any of the children on the guided tour, all of them appeared to never live in a time without the radio. These sort of tours picked up as the school year approached its end. In a few week, all those kids would be out lending a hand with the harvest.

Cedar decided to keep busy for the duration. No questions were ever asked of him, a fact that did not greatly upset him. Instead, one of the station’s three public relations people—why the station needed three, Cedar could not say— handled the arduous job. He took no notice of the tour as it entered his workspace. Almost all of them were still in primary school, though a few were of the older secondary classes. When Cedar glanced briefly up from his notepad he noticed on of them watching him. Normally, he would scowl at gawking tourists, though he would make an exception for this one.

A pair of light blue eyes gazed at him with recognition. Cedar instantly knew the individual standing before him in her pale green dress. She stood taller than the little kids, though not quite as head-and-shoulder above them as Oak would in a crowd of Sapiens. She kept her blond hair cropped at neck length, framing her delicate face beautifully. She smiled at Cedar, ignoring for the moment what the tour guide said. Hello there, she greeted Cedar.

Cedar returned the smile. Well, Alder, how did you get talking into this?

Alder glared at him in mock fury. Talked into it? I’ll have you know I happen to enjoy shepherding these kids.

Cedar knew very well she enjoyed it. I imagine you will ace this chaperoning assignment.

Naturally, Alder beamed. She passed just about everything in school with little apparent effort, though Cedar also knew she worked hard to achieve it. Even so, if she was not a prodigy then she was the next best thing. Say, are you coming to the game third quarter? It’s the last one of the year.

Wouldn’t miss it. He had not missed any football game since settling in Evergreen. There was precious little entertainment in the small town. He took his eyes off Alder long enough to look past her. You better hurry or you’ll get left behind.

Alder glanced over to where Cedar’s eyes focused. Oh dear, you’re right. She hurried after them. Before the tour guided her and the other students out of the room, she glanced back once more at Cedar. See you later, she said with a wave.

Cedar managed another brief smile before putting his nose back in his work. He easily ignored the stares of his coworkers. When one looked as if he was about to speak, Cedar immediately cut him off. Shut up, Birch.

What? Birch looked at him, wounded by his words. I didn’t say a thing.

You don’t have to, Cedar shook his head, imagining what sort of observation his friend would have made.

Birch, of course, knew about Alder. He was the only one of the employees in the room who knew about her. Cedar was not much in the habit of discussing his life outside of work with others. He certainly never mentioned Alder to any of them, though he knew they would speculate now when he was out of earshot. Not that there was much to tell. She was the girl next door—or rather the girl on the same floor of the complex Cedar called home.

He met her shortly after settling in Evergreen. A small space for plants existed in the middle of each floor on the multi-floor apartment complex he found. To his surprise, few too advantage of the small spot. Perhaps it was not too surprising consider just how much arable land Verdesylvania managed to reclaim from the desolate world. As a refugee from a harsher land, one that still suffered occasional dust storms, he knew how to make the most out of every available millimeter. He grew in that spot fruit and vegetables. One such species, the simple strawberry, was how he met her.

Cedar ventured outside to water his plants one fine day when he saw a young woman picking his strawberries. Needless to say, Cedar was quite crossed. It irritated him even more than finches or sparrows to see a native of this abundant land helping herself to his food. He sternly asked if he could be of any assistant in harvesting his garden. His question startled Alder enough that she dropped all the berries she picked.

She apologized to him, saying that she could not help herself. She loved strawberries and saw that nobody ever picked them. That much was true, as Cedar explained to her. Not only did he not pick anything he did not plan on using that day, he also waited until the berries turned a dark red before harvesting. Impressed with his casual knowledge, she stuck around a while, asking him about his garden.

When she left, Cedar assumed he had seen the last of her and continued with his work. The follow day, as he was chopping down some mint, Alder returned with a box of flowers. She asked if it would be okay if she planted them. Since then, they grew better acquainted as they tended the space together. She attended the local school and happened to be the youngest in her class, making her about three years younger than Cedar. She was a scholar and a novice elementalist, studying the brown and to a lesser extent green elements. Cedar could see the value in studying the element of life though he was a bit perplexed as to why she chose the element of earth as well.

She said that the study of elementalism and its practice helped her clear her mind, allowing her to better focus on tasks at hand. She was even a bit of an athlete, leading the cheer for the school’s football team. Cedar knew nothing about organized cheering at it simple did not exist in the land of his birth. Verdesylvania was a rich land indeed if its youth could afford to expend energy like that. She showed up one first quarter in her green-and-white uniform, asking Cedar what he thought. He could only stare and nod approvingly.

She was an amazing young woman. She studied hard, trained her mind, cheered on her school and still managed to find time to tend the garden with Cedar. Of course, as with anything new, she made her fair share of mistakes along the way. Once she pulled up all the recently germinated melon plants. She was trying to help Cedar out, weeding before he emerged from his apartment for the day. Cedar took his time explaining what was and what was not a weed and how to tell the difference.

It was not as easy as he first thought. If plants grew in more or less straight lines, that was indication of sowing by intelligent hands. Yet while weeds did grow out of control, strawberries propagated out of control as well. He could hardly call them weeds even if they would crowd out other plants if left alone. His temper quickly cooled. Though he looked forward to fresh watermelons later in the year, he found that he lacked the strength to stay angry at Alder for long.

Cedar planned on heading to the football game later. His work would not take too long; his job only requiring him to work the rest of first quarter and part way into second. He did enjoy the sport, even more than he enjoyed watching Alder on the sideline. He wanted to show her his support, not that she really needed it. She was popular enough without his assistance.

There was a certain sparkle about her that caught everyone’s attention. Whether it was her eyes, smile or pendant, Cedar could not say for certain. He smiled slightly at the thought of her pendant. Cedar purchased the aquamarine pendant from a local Batavian jeweler, a dwarf who spent the better part of the past two hundred yeas forging such items. The jewel reminded him of Alder’s sparking eyes, as light a blue as aquamarine. He gave it to her for her last birthday, uncertain how she would react. She was quite happy, hugging him and asking if he could help put it around her neck.

Seeing her wear it pleased Cedar, though he could never explain why. It was a little pricey, not too expensive yet still a luxury of which Alder and her family could hardly afford. Come to think of it, Cedar had never seen her wear any other jewelry. Still, it was nice to add a little sparkly to her life, even if she probably wore it on account that it was the only pendant she owned.

She wears it because of you, a strange, unfamiliar voice whispered into his mind. At first, he thought somebody snuck up from behind him. He glanced up, scanning the room for any newcomers. He saw nobody save the other transcribers, all as bored as convicts in a cell waiting for the day to end. Cedar shook his head, returning to his work. He hoped stray thoughts would not break up his working rhythm too badly. When no more materialized, he promptly forgot about it and returned to looking forward to life outside of work.

Cedar shivered as the chilly starward breeze flowed down from the mountains. The dark clouds once covering the distant peaks slowly drifted sunward across the Verdesylvanian sky, obscuring the sun to leave the valley in gloomy light. The two thousand who gathered in the small field next to Evergreen’s school remained mostly oblivious to the approaching storm. They will not be for long, the strange voice from earlier returned. Cedar scowled at the noise in his head. Twice in one day; he hoped it was not developing into a habit,

He pushed the stray thought away as he tried focusing on the action upon the field. He had a hard enough time finding a suitable seat in the crowded stands. Most of the spectators were more interested in watching the ball bounce from player to player as the local boys tried kicking it into the net than give him room to breathe. Football was a popular enough sport, the world’s pastime he often heard it called. Legend said it dated back to the ancient times of long, lost history. Cedar found the game entertaining enough. Every so often he would lose track of the ball as he watched Alder.

She somehow managed to spot him in the crowd from the field, waving at him a couple of times. Cedar waved back, smiling as he worried about her. The air was already too chilly for his liking; what was it like for somebody in a skirt? If she was feeling the chill, Alder gave no sign. He envied her ability to shrug off the cold. Perhaps if he moved around as much while watching the game, he would not feel so miserable.

He had hoped to arrive at the game far earlier so he could talk with her, perhaps even to stop for gelato after the game. Much to his disappointment, work lasted far longer than anticipated. His speculation on a new offensive interested the editors enough to have Cedar and the crew pay more attention to any traffic flowing from the Imperium, especially of the official variety not intended for civilian ears.

Cedar gazed up at the depressing spectacle overhead. It was all too familiar. Naturally. The same thing happened before the fall of Tavor. This time Cedar could not easily tune out his thoughts—assuming they truly were his own. Whoever thought it was far from wrong. He recalled how the invading air force moved against the backdrop of an oncoming storm, their gray airships easily blending into the background of what turned out to be a rainstorm created by a small army of elementalists.

Of course, that was in Tavor, a land not exactly renown for rainstorms. In the lush land of Verdesylvania, rain struck every other week. Sometimes it even rained on multiple occasions in a given week as moisture drawn in from the sea fell long before reaching the cooler, darker steppes of his birthland. Strange that these clouds approached from the wrong direction. Any lands starward of here were far more arid and quite unable to spare moisture. It left Cedar quite unsettled.

Omen of not, rain was coming. That much was certain. The faint scent of rain on soil hung in the air, letting all know under the obscured sky what