The Youngest Blue Cellodian: Chapter 2 - A Sidewalk Slam Story
Chapter 2: Yero and the Immortal Flame
In the gardens of the Skyhold Citadel, time dripped like dew from the petals of silence.
Yero sat alone beneath a floating tree whose roots curled through open space like smoke, humming an old rhythm he wasn’t supposed to know. He traced invisible notes in the air with one finger, shaping verses that pulsed in faint flashes of blue light.
Across from him, a figure stirred: Alriya, draped in a shimmering gown of sapphire threads, her eyes closed as if listening to something deeper than sound. She was one of the Elderstars, rumored to have witnessed the first time the universe laughed. Her age was a quiet ocean—forty-seven billion “Earth Sun” years, give or take—and her presence was magnetic, though no one dared claim it.
Except Yero.
He tried not to stare too long, but it was hard. Her voice was a melody that bent gravity, her thoughts older than matter, and yet—somehow—she saw him. Not as a mistake. Not as an echo of the past. But as something forming. Becoming.
“You hum in wild meters,” she said softly, without opening her eyes. “You know the elders forbid it.”
Yero shrugged, still sketching with invisible ink. “It’s the only time the words feel like mine.”
Alriya opened her eyes slowly, galaxies caught in each iris. “That’s because they are. You are not a copy of our age. You are the answer to it.”
Yero blinked. “Did you just compliment me or exile me?”
Before she could answer, the garden trembled.
A ribbon of raw time unfurled in the air like a sideways lightning strike, and in its center stood someone utterly wrong for this place: tall, human, skin like storm-slick mahogany, holding a cracked skateboard and blinking like he’d just walked into the wrong elevator.
Yero stood so fast he nearly tripped over the poem he’d woven.
Alriya rose beside him, her eyes narrowing as she regarded the newcomer.
Jerry Ayo looked around, clearly unbothered by the way the ground refused to stay still or the way the clouds whispered in equations. He spotted Yero immediately—and froze.
“Is that the only way to travel here?" Jerry said.
Telos had taken him to a pod, pressed a button and he’d snapped somewhere new. Suddenly Jerry noticed the two new people in front of him.
It was like looking in a mirror that was younger and made of starlight.
“You’re me,” Jerry said.
“No,” Yero replied, his voice steady. “You’re me. But a version that made it further.”
Alriya stepped between them, elegant but wary. “He’s not Cellodian.”
“No,” Jerry agreed, raising his hands. “I’m from… somewhere else. Atlanta. 1997. Earth.”
Yero tilted his head. “I’ve read Earth. It’s in the quiet zone. Buried between noise and mistake.”
Jerry chuckled. “That sounds about right.”
Alriya turned to Yero, her tone cautious. “You summoned him, didn’t you? With your verse.”
“I didn’t mean to.” Yero’s voice dropped. “I just… wrote what I felt. A rhythm that didn’t belong here. It pulled him.”
Jerry looked at them both. “So what now? You’re gonna send me back?”
“No,” Alriya said, eyes narrowing as a small constellation orbited her wrist. “We are not. Not yet.”
“The universe was not struck into being, Jerry — it was sung,” Alriya said, her voice quiet beneath the pulsing sky. “One note, older than time, unfolded itself into vibration, and from that sound… we became. We were not born; we were tuned — each of us a chord in the great resonance. Our clans differ by how we interpret that first tone: some sustain, others echo, a few rewrite, and the most dangerous try to silence it. You hear it too, don’t you? That hum in your chest? That’s why you’re here.”
Yero took a step forward. “Telos said you’ve traveled around your star 19 times. You must be old. Like really old.”
Jerry grinned. “Where I’m from, I’m young.”
Yero glanced at Alriya, then back. “I’m sixteen.”
Alriya’s voice was soft, but firm. “Yero, for us, time has no speed, only scale. “Earth Sun” nineteen is not an age — it is the spark before the flame. He is younger than you can yet imagine.”
A silence formed—a deep, resonant pause between timebeats.
Alriya watched the two of them, her expression unreadable. “The Rhythm Bridge has opened.”
“Bridge?” Jerry asked.
Yero nodded slowly. “Between dimensions. Between generations. Between… selves.”
Alriya turned her gaze to the distant towers of the other clans. “And if the Bridge is open, others will want to cross. Some to learn. Some to conquer.”
A bell rang out across the sky, each note dropping like a stone into infinity.
“They’re coming,” she whispered.
Jerry stepped beside Yero, adjusting his grip on the skateboard. “You got back up?”
Yero looked up at him, eyes bright with possibility. “I do now.”
"The Youngest Blue Cellodian. Chapter 3" a Sidewalk Slam Book is Coming Soon to Time's Library.
%20(1).png)
Comments
Post a Comment