The "Where would you stop reading?" thread

She moved her feet closer to the edge. Dust danced past her, suspended in the beams of light. Smoke from the street fires drifted up, carrying the scent of burnt meat. The sky was a pink blur, clouds strung out like torn cotton wool. It was almost dusk. Behind her eyes danced colours. Oranges and yellows she knew she would never see again. Balanced on the edge, she held her breath. At this height, the fall would last all of two seconds, straight down. Whilst the thought of jumping had often crossed her mind, it wasn't what she was here for. She just wanted to see the sunset one last time. So, every day, without fail, Wren Williams could be found high above the city, stretching to see the sun drift below the horizon. As she stood there, poised and precarious on the edge, she longed to look out over her city. Since birth, it had been her home, and she had no doubt it would be here that she died. It was a city that woke with the dawn, and worked long into the night. It was a city that, like so many others, had secrets. On the outside Sev'ner looked like the bustling industrial centre of the world, but on the inside it had succumbed to a gradual, unseen rot. Wren stood on the roof tops, head turned to the sky, but her view was never of the sunset, nor was it of Sev'ner. As much as she tried, day after day, her view was always of the Wall. An engineering marvel, The Wall consisted of six hundred feet of reinforced concrete, covering a two mile radius in an almost perfect circle. It was the crown on Sev'ner's broken head. Built only 3 years prior, its purpose was to protect the people of Sev'ner from the horrors and monsters of the "Garden", a place so terrible, that no-one had ever seen its depravity. It was there to keep what was inside from getting out. It was there, if you believed the Council, for the good of everyone

/r/writing Thread