As Above, So Below

For the first six months, Olympia’s back felt like it was on fire every time they shifted around, trying for a more comfortable position. Around a year, though, things really began falling into place. Olympia’s ward had been on his own for a few years, living in a small ground-level apartment with warped hardwood floors in the middle of a small city. Not that Olympia knew much about the city— their focus was always on the floor, and the wooden planks holding their ward’s mattress up. It was a modest bed, they thought, and their ward changed the covers once a month. He was hygienic. Olympia admired him for that. Every morning they would watch as his feet hit the floor, avoiding the slight bump where the wood had risen, pad over to his bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth. It was a therapeutic routine for the both of them.

When their ward left for work, Olympia would sink beneath the floorboards, through the gentle layers of mud and sludge below, and further down still until they were back in their pod. It was small and dark, but Olympia knew they were much luckier than so many of their kind. Those who were assigned a ward were afforded a place to rest, away from the sun, while others were sent to much higher places so that their bodies would become scarred and fragile. But there was always work to do, and there was always many of their kind to do it. Olympia didn’t sleep so much as they left themselves drift. There was a certain drunkenness that came from staying in the Aboveworld for extended periods of time. It made time flow in strange ways and sent a tingle to all their appendages. Olympia had never seen themselves in a mirror, always too surrounded by darkness, but they could feel how their body was changing with the days and hours. Bones rearranging, skin stretching, teeth falling out onto their ward’s warped floorboards. He had found their tooth once. Stepped on it with the boots he wore in the winter months and crushed it completely so that only the yellowish shards remained. Olympia had watched with trepidation, hoping he would finally bend down onto his hands and knees to peek beneath his bedframe. He never did.

Rising back to the Aboveworld felt different. Olympia braced their dark palms to the underside of their ward’s bed, feeling the silk of his mattress’s underside beneath their fingers. If they weren’t careful, their fingernails would break into the plushness and spill thick filling around their head. Above, their ward snuffled in his sleep. His breathing was off, bordering on panting, then slight choking. Olympia cocked their head as they listened. It was like their ward couldn’t catch his breath before it escaped his lungs. The thrashing came next alongside the choking. Olympia could feel the mattress dipping and moving under their palms, shaking with the force of their ward’s struggling. Slick like oil, Olympia moved from their spot beneath the bed. They’d never gone this far out before, but the new expanse of floorboards felt good on the warm skin of their back.

They turned onto their side and pushed themselves up by the knobby bones of their arms. The angle was odd. Their nose brushed the floor and their eyes finally took in the total expanse of their ward’s bedroom rightside-up. It was neat, tidy, and quaint. Several bookshelves full of tiny trinkets from past adventures and books in their ward’s native tongue. Cream-colored curtains blocking out the glare of the moon. A watch on the bedside table beside a glass of water which had been knocked over in the thrashing from before, liquid now pooled on the floor at the side of the bed. Olympia was smiling as they stood upright, back straight from months of laying so perfectly flat beneath their ward. Their thighs felt weak as they took their first staggered steps to see their ward in the cocoon of his bedsheets. He was pale but still breathing, dark hair fanned out against his pillows. Olympia could see how his chest struggled to rise and fall. They put a hand to their own sternum, feeling how the skin moved and contracted with the swell of their organs. They tried to match it with the shallow breaths of their ward.

His face was so familiar. Olympia ran their hands down their own face, felt the soft bone protrusions that matched his. The fullness of their lips. The soft brush of hair against their fingertips. They reached for their ward, feeling the same bones, the same heated freshness of their skin, the same spit coating their teeth. The only difference was found in the pounding of their ward’s heart. Olympia frowned; their hand stilled over the large hole where the steady thump should be pulsing between their ribs. Their ward’s chest was warm and moving, but their own was empty and still as the Belowworld itself. Anger buried itself inside Olympia, boiling their stomach and filling their limbs with red-hot strength they hadn’t known themselves to have. They pressed at their ward’s chest, over the dull thumping between his ribs. It was tough, but the skin gave way much easier than the bones. They all cracked and broke, and their ward lurched against his mattress with every new fissure. Olympia couldn’t rest until their hand was around the organ. They tugged at it. It was slippery, still connected with vessels and tubes, but sweet warmth radiated from it. Olympia could feel that drunk buzz within their body. It thrummed through every muscle and vein. On the bed, their ward had stopped breathing, had stopped moving altogether, his body cold and lifeless between the bedsheets.

Olympia fit the heart into their chest and closed their eyes as Aboveworld filled them to the brim.