Kai had lungs trained by depth, muscles tuned to the cadence of tides. He could descend to wrecks that fishermen whispered about and resurface with teeth unchattered and mind clear. What he could not stomach was the smell of airports. So when a corporate salvage company offered a contract to retrieve cargo from “an upper-altitude vessel,” he laughed. “I dive, I don’t fly.” They replied with coordinates above cloud level and a payment that would buy his mother a new roof.
Curiosity trumped skepticism. Kai was flown to a remote plateau where scaffolding reached into mist. There, a vessel rested—not a plane, not a balloon, but a hull of aged wood and brass, sails shredded, hull embedded in air as if caught mid-ocean. Engineers called it an aerosea wreck. The air up there felt thick, viscous. His dive computer blinked in confusion. They fitted Kai with a harness weighted not with lead but with negative-lift generators. “You’ll sink through sky,” the engineer said. “Same as water. Just… different.”
Kai stepped off the scaffold. He sank. The sky felt cold, with pressure that squeezed ears differently than sea. He equalized instinctively, a diver’s ritual. Beneath the cloud’s surface, light refracted. Schools of birds flitted like fish. He reached the wreck and ran gloved hands along wood that hummed faintly. Inside, crates waited, sealed with wax. He cut one open. Instead of cargo, there were jars of colored light, swirling. His radio cracked. “Retrieve samples only,” the company barked.
He secured jars to his belt. One cracked. Light seeped, wrapping around his wrist. In his ear, a sound like distant singing. The light was not inert; it was memory, suspended. Images flickered: a city floating, laughter on decks, a voice saying, “We traded depths for heights. We did not expect storms that walk.” Kai realized the wreck was not an anomaly; it was a grave from a civilization that sailed the sky.
As he ascended, turbulence hit. His harness groaned. The jars rattled. The cracked jar pulsed, tightening around his skin. He heard another diver in his head—a woman with a scar above her brow—warning of downdrafts. He looked around; no one was there. The light was feeding him memories, a guide book in motion. He adjusted course, riding a thermal like a current. He surfaced on the scaffold, heart pounding.
The company took the jars, thanked him coldly, and ushered him away. At home, he noticed faint luminescence in his wrist veins where the cracked jar had touched. At night, he dreamed of the sky ocean, of creatures like manta rays made of vapor. He also dreamed of storm gods with legs, striding between cloud and mountain, indifferent to wooden hulls. He woke with knowledge of air currents that no meteorologist could explain. He started predicting weather with eerie accuracy.
The company called again: more contracts, deeper wrecks. Kai declined. Instead, he visited his fishing village and told kids stories of sky divers. He taught them to equalize for both sea and cloud. He sent anonymous tips to pilots about invisible currents. The jars the company held became commodities; nations bid. Kai worried. The light was memory; memory wanted to be shared, not sold.
One dawn, a storm walked toward the plateau. Kai climbed the scaffold alone. The sky thickened. He leapt. The cracked luminescence in his wrist guided him to the wreck, where empty shelves awaited. He opened his mouth underwater—airswimming—and sang the hum he’d heard. Light burst from the jars in the company vault miles away, drawn back by the song. He surfaced with empty hands and a sky that felt lighter.
Later, farmers reported rains that smelled like brass. The company sued for breach of contract. Kai shrugged. He had returned stories to the sky. On clear nights, villagers looked up and swore they saw hulls on the horizon, sailing between stars. Kids grew up learning to dive and to climb, to respect both pressure and height. Kai’s mother got her roof anyway—neighbors built it, paid in stories of clouds that could drown you and in fish grilled for those who listened.