The Great Glass Canyon

They’d all dreaded this part.  Ever since their home on the rim was scorched by an errant firestorm, they’d known the crossing was inevitable.  Across the three days and nights it had taken them to cross the undulating landscape, everyone in the party had done their best to forget the crossing existed.  Now, at the moment of truth, there was no escaping the harsh reality of it.  They’d have to cross and reach the bounties of the other side, or die.

Lance Thatcher, leader of the refugee party, halted them in place and stared out at the mass before them.  Perfectly smooth and perfectly clear, the river stretched out before them for miles upon miles.  From a distance, it looked just like any other river you’d imagine, but up close, its terrible secret was revealed.  The entire body was composed of glass, and for it to move at even the incredibly slow pace it went at, it would doubtlessly be searing hot.  He had been appointed leader because the people believed he could find a way across the river.

Now it was just a matter of doing.

He started by hazarding a few steps towards the banks, and reach down to test the ground.  Indeed, he could feel the heat radiating off the river, and had to shuffle back after a few seconds to avoid the pain in his hand.  The strange thing, however, was the way the ground actually felt.  He’d had to draw back due to the heat of the air, but the wooden surface upon which their entire world was built was as cool to the touch as anywhere else.  Additionally, it lacked any sort of burning or warping you’d expect such a material to have in such close proximity to an extreme heat source.

Hypothetically, they could take a few days to rest here, and carve themselves out a fleet of boats from the ground itself.  Traveling across in such a manner would prove uncomfortable due to the temperature of the air, but would potentially save anyone from having to touch the surface of the flowing glass.  But there were too many unknowns - he couldn’t say for certain how wood would interact with the glass once stripped from the ground, and they might lose several families to faulty design.  Not to mention, they were running low on time and supplies - they had to make it across in a week or else people would start dying of starvation.  There had to be a better way?

Go around?  No, folly to even think of it.  Even if they had the time, going into the underside world for even an hour was suicide.  Besides, the river might flow down there as well.  Attempt to rush it?  He tossed a nearby chip into the glass, and noted how it took a few seconds to start sinking.  Potentially viable, but anyone who slowed down for even a second would wind up badly burned.  Build a bridge?  What the hell was he even thinking?

Behind Lance, unrest grew.  He’d never actually claimed to know how to cross the river, but a few mentions of having gone out this way before were conflated into a lifetime of expertise going back and forth across it.  The survivors of his town fully expected him to have some means of crossing on-hand already.  Even if they were still recovering from the tragedy, they were desperate enough to throw him in if anyone thought he was lying.  Desperate for ideas, he scanned the horizon…

…lo and behold, there was his answer.

Lance rushed back to the people, and instructed them towards a location around half a mile along the coastline.  Nobody could figure out what a long-stale boulder-like crumb and this long strand of titan’s hair had to do with the crossing.  Would they subsist on the crumb and rebuild upon the hair?  Had Lance gone mad?  However, as their makeshift leader explained the plan, they gradually came around.  With newfound vigor and trust in Thatcher, they began to move the pieces into place.

It took a few hours, but eventually the hair was tied tight around the crumb, and Lance clung to the side, crude wooden paddle in one hand.  Working together as one, the refugees pushed the crumb into the flowing glass, and rushed to make sure the hair unfurled properly.  Fortunately, for its immense size, titan’s hair proved remarkably light and easy to manipulate.

Out on the flowing waters, Lance performed his duty.  Whenever the crumb started to drift off-course, he would lower himself nearer to the flowing surface, dip his paddle in, and steer his “boat” back on course.  It was an incredibly terrifying ordeal - after a while the bank dropped away, revealing itself to be more of a shelf, with the river seeming to flow through thin air over an impossibly deep chasm - but for the sake of his people, he steered on.  Behind him, the spool of hair unraveled always remaining just high enough above the river to remain intact.

After five grueling hours of work, with the sun blinking off in the sky and leaving them in total darkness, Lance reached the opposite shore.  With a bit of effort, the boulder was pulled up further onto a dent in the wood, and he hopped upon it to head back and let everyone know it was safe to cross.  Getting there would prove difficult, as the “bridge” had only just gone taut, and had only enough room to allow a single-file proceeding, but he stepped out nonetheless and began the grueling journey back.

Wobbling was minimal, but it was still there, and proved a constant enemy to Lance as he balanced his way across.  The ever-present threat of the molten glass below and the abyss further down certainly didn’t help in the slightest.  Still, he kept his composure, and continued onwards.  Proving this plan worked was vital not only to him, but to the people waiting on the other side.  If he could master crossing this treacherous bridge, then so too could they.

When he arrived on the opposite shore, they hailed Lance Thatcher as a hero.  He was, after all, not full of bullshit, and had created a means of crossing to the bounties that lay on the other side of the river.  One or two men tried to point how how incredibly dangerous his method was, and how its lack of testing and instability proved he’d just made it up on the spot, but they were ignored.  The trek across the table could continue, and the mass of snack crackers on the other side would, at long last, be theirs.  Rebuilding would soon follow, and their town would prosper once again.

That, though, was a story for tomorrow.  For now, they settled down for the night, their leader afforded the softest sleeping position they could find.  He’d never slept better.