Read The Altonevers for Free Online Page B

argument
against what she doesn’t fully understand, she settles for the
explanation, thinking it was likely why they tried to snatch
her.
    She's told by him sternly with wagging
finger that she is to stay indoors and out of sight or she might be
captured. And to order as much room service as she wants, for her
own safety of course. Being new to experience of traveling and
having no context for where she is other than how sure she is that
she's actually experiencing it. She plays it safe, placing the do
not disturb on the door knob at all times. He's usually on his way
out, and when she asked about the weapon on his waist he just said
“Watching the weather can be dangerous” on his way out.
    The light of the sun isn't constant
here, it glows dim and bright at a rate of ten times per minute.
Constantly throbbing through the clouds and coating the trees and
streets in its ebbing and flowing light of day. It's both cold here
and damp, each a bit to her disliking. Rolling across the ground
like tremors are the jollies. Un-gravity waves that rush through
the Alto for miles at time, miming the movement of a droplet into a
puddle, though spreading seismic waves through solid earth and
structures. Whatever thing they pass under, for the moment the
jolly passes under it, is free of gravity and thrown several feet
into the air, and brought back down to the ground just out place of
the place it came up. Because of this weather almost everything
here is fastened to the floor. She can’t help but think what their
kitchens must be like when one of the jollies strolls by,
conceiving it to be a lot like hot wack-a-mole with pots and pans,
to be a soup chef one must be able to catch falling boiling hot
fluid before their shoes touch the ground.
    She gets up, checking the
door, making sure it's bolt locked so she’d know when he comes. A
jolly strolls past as she sits in the tub, in air seeing her own
face in the mirror of another existence, spurring her mind to
ponder of purpose and perspective, of who she is when out of the
context of everything she's ever known. And not forgetting being
alone in a room, locked away by the words of a man on a wanted
poster in a place she's never been before. Unsure of whether or not
to put trust on a man who says he's a weather chaser, with an ankle
piece. She plops at the chair next to the
window, rocking with the rhythm of daylight. Seeing a mix of
steeples and flat roofs stretching as far as her eye can see. On
the street below is a butcher shop with a pig winking in the
window. A bakery with a sticky sweet smell that seeps from its
midday ovens, and a diner on the corner with a neon sign wrapping
across its top, reading restaurant. Afflicted by the introspection
of boredom and corrupted by anxious thinking, she takes to taking
the feathers from his pillow and throwing them with the tide of
passing jollies to pass the hours. Her only other company is a
bellhop when delivering lunches of watery looking food that’s
barely palatable to even regulars. Not caring for the bland always
buttery texture of the hotels room service, she instead goes on
seeing the sights through the window as a way to taste the rest of
the local scene, for as far as her eye can see anyway.
    The bellhop explained that
they’re close to a lake of gravity, something tourists prefer to
see, to which Anna thought about for about a minute, then just
nodded her head. For the past few days
crowds of out to lunch middle school kids have been catching her
thoughts. Pondering from her perch of who in group most resembles
who she was at that age. There’s a brown haired boy who stands with
the group, though is less conversational and less forceful than the
rest. Always last to follow, almost unwillingly, and often staring
into space, amazed simply by what’s around him. The others tease
him for it, though she smiles for him.
    The doorknob jiggles and she jumps to
the peephole. Hiding the room key to catch him to speak to her, as
he's