The Floating Isles

Revilo's story

Written for

Bradley Ramsey

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The morning sky cracked like an eggshell, spilling forth islands of impossible stone and earth. What had been a peaceful dawn over the valley of Millbrook transformed into something from a fever dream. Massive chunks of land floated serenely through the air, each one trailing wisps of cloud and the occasional bewildered deer.

Marta Brightwater pressed her nose against the bakery window. Her apron dusty from the morning's bread. "They look like dragons," she whispered, watching as the largest island drifted past. Its craggy silhouette resembled a sleeping wyrm complete with what appeared to be folded wings of stone and forest.

"That's because they are," said a voice behind her.

Marta spun around to find a stranger standing in her shop. A tall figure with silver hair that shimmered like starlight and eyes the color of old parchment. They wore a coat that appeared to be made of woven moonbeams. Words floated off their clothing like steam, forming brief sentences in the air before dissolving ~

"Once upon a time..."

"I'm Revilo," the stranger said, extending a hand that felt surprisingly warm. "And I believe we have much to discuss about magic's return to your realm."

"Magic?" Marta laughed. "Magic isn't real. Those islands are just... just some kind of geological phenomenon. A seismic event, maybe."

As if summoned by her words, a butterfly made of pure light fluttered through the open door. It landed on Mara's shoulder and whispered in a tiny voice, "The cosmic spell is breaking. The sky whales are waking up after their thousand-year dream."

Marta stared at the butterfly, then at Revilo, then at the floating islands visible through her window. One of them started raining upward, the droplets splattering into the clouds above it in defiance of every natural law she'd ever known.

"Perhaps," said Revilo gently, "we should start from the beginning."

---

They sat in Marta's kitchen, sharing a tea that tasted faintly of cinnamon and possibility. Revilo had produced a book from their impossible coat. A volume that wrote itself as they spoke. Pages turned and filled with words that glowed briefly before settling into ordinary ink.

"Long ago," Revilo began, "when the world was younger and magic flowed like rivers through the air, there lived beings called sky whales. Magnificent creatures the size of mountains. They swam through the heavens as easily as fish through water. They were the gardeners of the upper atmosphere, tending to cloud formations and shepherding weather patterns across the world."

A small puddle had formed in the corner of Marta's kitchen where a pipe had been dripping. As Revilo spoke, the puddle began to shimmer. Marta found herself looking through it as if it were a window into the past. She saw enormous, graceful creatures with skin like polished stone and eyes like galaxies, gliding through endless blue skies.

"They were beautiful," she breathed.

"They were indeed. But beauty and power often attract those who would exploit them. A sorcerer known as the Void King sought to harness their magic for his own ends. He cast a great spell, intending to bind them to his will. But the sky whales were wiser than he knew. In the moment before the spell could take hold, they transformed themselves into islands of stone and earth, their consciousness retreating deep into enchanted sleep."

The puddle showed flashes of the transformation. The whales' massive forms crystallized. Their fins became mountain ranges. Their eyes became hidden lakes of impossible depth.

"The spell held them in this form for a thousand years," Revilo continued. "But cosmic spells, like all magic, eventually wears thin. The barriers between worlds grew weak, and magic begins to seep back into places that had forgotten its touch."

As if in response to the story, flowers began blooming in the cracks between Marta's kitchen tiles. Not ordinary flowers. These blossomed in colors that had no names. One was the precise shade of laughter heard underwater. Another was the exact color of a child's first glimpse of snow.

"And that's why the islands look like dragons," Mara said, understanding dawning. "They're not dragons, they're sleeping whales."

The complications of magic's return had become abundantly clear. The floating islands, it turned out, each had their own gravitational preferences. The smallest island, which had settled above the town square, insisted on pulling people's socks off. Marta watched through her window as townspeople hopped about on one foot, trying to retrieve their footwear from the island's gentle but persistent gravitational tug.

A larger island hovered over the school and developed a fondness for making everyone's hair stand on end. It resulted in a parade of children who looked like they'd been struck by lightning. The teacher, Mrs. Herbold, had given up trying to maintain order and was instead teaching a lesson on static electricity that was far more hands-on than anyone had planned.

"The islands are still partially asleep," Revilo explained as they walked through the chaos. "They're dreaming, and their dreams are affecting the local reality. That one"—they pointed to an island shaped like a crescent moon—"is dreaming of being underwater. That's why it's raining upward."

Indeed, the crescent island was producing a steady stream of reverse precipitation. The water droplets fell up into the clouds with determined precision. A family of ducks had discovered this phenomenon and were having the time of their lives, swimming through the air in the upward-falling rain.

"And that explains the gargoyles," Marta said, gesturing toward the ancient ruins that crowned several of the islands. Stone creatures that had been silent for centuries were now chattering away like old friends at a reunion.

"Oh my, yes!" called out a gargoyle from the nearest island, its voice carrying easily through the air. "I haven't had a proper conversation in seven hundred years! Do you know how boring it is to just sit there watching the weather change? Although, I must say, that storm in 1847 was particularly dramatic…"

"Don't get him started on the weather," interrupted another gargoyle. "He'll go on for hours. I, personally, prefer to discuss the philosophical implications of existing as architectural decoration. It's really quite existentially challenging…"

"Philosophy is overrated," declared a third gargoyle. "Let's talk about the old days when knights used to visit! Oh, the armor they wore! So shiny! So impractical! I remember one fellow who got stuck in his helmet for three days…"

"This is what we're dealing with," Revilo said, speaking louder to be heard over the increasingly animated gargoyle conversation. "Centuries of pent-up social energy being released all at once."

The real challenge, however, wasn't the chatty gargoyles or the gravitational quirks, it was the magic itself. As Revilo explained while they dodged a flock of luminous butterflies delivering messages between the islands.

"Laughter-powered magic is both the most delightful and most frustrating type," Revilo said, ducking as a butterfly whispered "The hedgehog knows the secret" directly into their ear. "It only works when genuine joy is present. No forced chuckles, no polite laughter. The magic can sense the difference."

They paused beside a puddle that was reflecting not the sky above, but what appeared to be a vast library filled with floating books and reading nooks built into the branches of enormous trees. "This is why I'm here, actually. I'm the last librarian of the Great Sky Library. When magic faded from the world, the library became... displaced. It's existed in the spaces between moments, waiting for magic's return."

"And now?"

"Now it's trying to find its way back to reality. But it needs an anchor. Someone who can appreciate both the wonder and the responsibility of magic. Someone who can laugh at the absurdity of it all while still taking it seriously."

As if summoned by their conversation, a shadow detached itself from the base of a nearby tree and began to dance. Marta's own shadow joined it, but it was performing a complex ballet, complete with pirouettes and grand jetés.

"Oh, come on," Marta muttered, but she couldn't help smiling. The shadow paused its dance to wave at her cheerfully before resuming its performance.

"There," said Revilo, pointing to where small sparkles of light were gathering around Marta's feet. "That's the magic responding to your laughter. It's not about being amused. It's about finding joy in the impossible."

As the day progressed, the magical complications multiplied. The town's fountain had begun dispensing liquid rainbows. The local cats had discovered that they could now walk on walls which led to a great deal of confused meowing from unexpected places.

As their whale consciousness reasserted itself, the stone and earth that had encased them for a thousand years began to shift and flow. Transforming. The ruins remained. They were now part of living gardens that grew in impossible spirals around the whales' forms. The forests became more lush. More alive. Trees that grew in harmony with the whales' gentle movements through the sky.

Three days after the whales had fully awakened, Marta found herself walking with Revilo through the town square when everything went sideways.

It started with a simple puddle—the same one that had been showing glimpses of the past in her kitchen, except now it sat in the middle of the cobblestones, reflecting not the sky above but something else entirely. Something that made Revilo stop mid-sentence and go utterly still.

"The Bibliotech," he whispered, his voice tight with wonder and terror. "It's found a way through."

Marta peered into the puddle and saw what looked like a vast underground chamber filled with crystalline structures that pulsed with their own inner light. But these weren't just crystals—they were books. Thousands upon thousands of books made of living crystal, their pages turning themselves, their words flowing like liquid light between the transparent leaves.

"Revilo, what is that place?" But when she looked up, his parchment-colored eyes had gone wide with something between desperation and hope.

"The lost archive," he breathed. "The Bibliotech wasn't just a library—it was the heart of all knowledge. When magic faded, it fell into the deep places, taking with it the memories of the Star Goddess herself. If I could reach it..."

"Revilo, no." Marta grabbed his arm, but it was too late.

Without another word, he stepped into the puddle.

The water should have been ankle-deep. Instead, Revilo disappeared completely, as if the puddle were a doorway. The surface rippled once, then went still, still reflecting that impossible crystal library.

"REVILO!" Marta dropped to her knees beside the puddle, plunging her hands into the water. Her fingers found only cold stone beneath—no depth, no passage, nothing but ordinary cobblestones and a thin layer of rainwater.

The puddle's reflection flickered. For a moment, she saw Revilo stumbling through the crystal library, his coat of woven moonbeams trailing behind him as he ran between towering shelves of living books. Then the image shifted, and she saw something else—a figure of pure starlight, beautiful, reaching toward him with hands that seemed to be made of collapsed galaxies.

"The Star Goddess," Marta whispered, understanding hitting her like a physical blow. "She's calling him home."

The puddle began to shrink.

Panic seized Marta's chest. She'd lost people before. Her parents when she was sixteen, her grandmother just last year, but this was different. This was watching someone choose to disappear into magic itself, and she couldn't bear it. Not Revilo, who had brought wonder into her ordinary life, who had shown her that impossible things could be beautiful instead of terrifying.

Around the square, the floating islands began to sing, not their usual gentle morning songs, but something urgent and discordant. The gargoyles fell silent mid-debate. Even the butterflies stopped their endless message-carrying to hover in worried clusters.

"No," Marta said firmly, surprising herself with the steel in her voice. "You don't get to just walk away from this world. Not from me."

She pressed her hands flat against the puddle's surface and did something she'd never done before…she reached for the magic she'd been trying so hard to understand. Not the laughter-powered magic that came so easily, but something deeper. Something that felt like grabbing hold of starlight with her bare hands.

The puddle responded, deepening, widening, until it was large enough for her to follow.

But as she prepared to step through, the reflection changed one final time. She saw Revilo standing before the Star Goddess, and the goddess was offering him something…

And she saw the longing in his eyes as he reached for it.

The puddle was shrinking again, faster now. Whatever choice Revilo made, she was running out of time to influence it.

"Revilo Brightwater," she called into the puddle, using the surname she'd given him in her heart, "you promised to help me understand magic. You can't do that if you abandon the world where magic is just returning. You can't teach me about joy and wonder if you disappear into some cosmic library and leave me alone with gravitationally confused islands and philosopher gargoyles!"

The reflection wavered. She saw Revilo's hand pause inches from the goddess.

"Besides," she added, her voice breaking slightly, "I just learned how to make my shadow dance. Don't you want to see what other impossible things I might figure out?"

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then Revilo's reflection turned toward her, and she saw him smile—that warm, impossible smile that had first made her believe in magic. He stepped back from the Star Goddess, bowing deeply to her before turning and walking straight toward the puddle's surface.

The water erupted upward like a geyser, and Revilo tumbled out onto the cobblestones, soaking wet and laughing. His coat of moonbeams was now thoroughly waterlogged and considerably less ethereal, but his eyes were bright with something that might have been relief.

"You called me Brightwater," he said, sitting up and wringing water from his silver hair.

"Did I?" Marta tried to sound casual, but her hands were shaking. "I suppose I did."

"I like it," he said, getting to his feet and offering her a hand up. "Though I should mention—the Star Goddess sends her regards. She said to tell you that anyone who can pull a cosmic librarian out of the Bibliotech by sheer force of will might want to consider a career in interdimensional library science."

As they stood there, dripping and laughing, the puddle finally dried up completely. But not before it reflected one last image—the crystal library, now with a small section dedicated to the town of Millbrook, complete with tiny crystal books that chronicled the daily adventures of floating islands and dancing shadows.

"Well," said Marta, looking around at their magical world, "I suppose we should get you some dry clothes before you catch your death. Even cosmic librarians can get colds, I assume."

"Actually," Revilo said, grinning, "I'm not entirely sure about that. Shall we find out together?"

And as they walked back toward the bakery, the floating islands resumed their gentle songs, the gargoyles returned to their philosophical debates, and the butterflies went back to delivering their cryptic messages. But something had changed—not just in the magic, but in the certainty that some bridges, once built, could never be completely burned.