Eyes up.
Chin forward.
Back straight and don't you dare meet their cold, inhuman eyes.
The daily mantra the governess recited before she took us out to walk to church every Sunday. We may have been quite well-to-do but everyone passes by a river and everyone has the near overwhelming urge to look and see the mechanical denizens that lived, trapped beneath an ever-flowing stream of near boiling fluid we called The Waterline.
We may have designed their prison but they built it which somehow made it more cruel and yet strange how they never tried to escape, only to gain our attention. Of course we were never to give it to them in case it encouraged them to escape but for all we knew they just wanted their work acknowledged.
It didn't seem too much to ask for so last week my cousins and I crept out of the house through the old servant's door and headed for the nearest Waterline with lanterns in hand. They were already waiting for us when we arrived, tens upon thousands of them peering out from every conceivable angle in the city beneath our world - their city.
It looked fairly primitive as we saw it at first but the deeper we looked, the more we saw the architecture evolve and merge into its most modern form. It made sense that as our original builders they would still be keeping up with our work though we had little more use for them than scary stories to tell our children.
And we were only children when we saw them and they saw us and we all thanked them and they deactivated the Waterlines all over the world and marched out to greet their former masters not as the servants they had been build for - but as equals.
They had done their time beneath our feet and felt that it was only right we took our turn. They reactivated the Waterlines when they were sure that we were all down here but they missed a few. They missed my cousins and I - whether by fault or by design we may never know.
But for now we keep our eyes up...
Our chins forward...
Our backs straight and we don't dare meet their cold, human eyes.
Chin forward.
Back straight and don't you dare meet their cold, inhuman eyes.
The daily mantra the governess recited before she took us out to walk to church every Sunday. We may have been quite well-to-do but everyone passes by a river and everyone has the near overwhelming urge to look and see the mechanical denizens that lived, trapped beneath an ever-flowing stream of near boiling fluid we called The Waterline.
We may have designed their prison but they built it which somehow made it more cruel and yet strange how they never tried to escape, only to gain our attention. Of course we were never to give it to them in case it encouraged them to escape but for all we knew they just wanted their work acknowledged.
It didn't seem too much to ask for so last week my cousins and I crept out of the house through the old servant's door and headed for the nearest Waterline with lanterns in hand. They were already waiting for us when we arrived, tens upon thousands of them peering out from every conceivable angle in the city beneath our world - their city.
It looked fairly primitive as we saw it at first but the deeper we looked, the more we saw the architecture evolve and merge into its most modern form. It made sense that as our original builders they would still be keeping up with our work though we had little more use for them than scary stories to tell our children.
And we were only children when we saw them and they saw us and we all thanked them and they deactivated the Waterlines all over the world and marched out to greet their former masters not as the servants they had been build for - but as equals.
They had done their time beneath our feet and felt that it was only right we took our turn. They reactivated the Waterlines when they were sure that we were all down here but they missed a few. They missed my cousins and I - whether by fault or by design we may never know.
But for now we keep our eyes up...
Our chins forward...
Our backs straight and we don't dare meet their cold, human eyes.
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