Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival Read Online Free Page A

once more.
    "Holy shit," she muttered.
    They were standing in a mammoth cavern of
glimmering stalactites, like rock candy formed over a millennia of
natural precision engineering.
    It was, without hyperbole, the single biggest
place Susanna had ever been.
    An ethereal glow filled the farthest recesses
of the space. A waterfall was audible somewhere in the distance,
though Susanna couldn't imagine where all that water could be
coming from. She looked around herself and saw they were standing
on a patch of moist earth at the bottom of the cavern, which was
easily several hundred feet tall. Around this little atoll upon
which they stood, a pool of water cast shimmering light on the
walls.
    The purple light and bouncing reflections
were caught in a misty, foggy atmosphere that made the ceiling
difficult to make out. Susanna could see that hundreds of feet
above them, a spindly bridge of rock crossed the abyss.
    Everything seemed blacklit, neon in its
psychedelic hyper-presence.
    "This is impossible,"
Susanna said. "How can a mountain be hollow ?"
    "I don't know how," Jesse said. "But feel
that in the air," Jesse said. "That electric charge?"
    Susanna looked down at her arms. Sure enough,
the little light-colored hairs on her arms stood up on their
ends.
    There was a low hum to this place, too, one
which made her recall being a little girl on the Disneyland steam
ship, and feeling the engines pulse beneath her feet.
    "This place is special," Jesse said. "I don't
know what it is. I don't know why it is. But what we're building
here—in the ruins of the old town, in the mountain's shadow…"
    "Yes?"
    "It's a calling. I know it.
I'm making something great." He swallowed, then corrected himself:
" We're making
something great." He took her hands in his, brought himself in
close to her. "You're as much a part of this experience as I
am."
    "I haven't done anything," she protested.
"I'm just tagging along."
    "Oh no," Jesse said. "That's not true at all.
You have a very special role here." He put one arm around her
waist, hugged her body as tight as he could, and began swaying from
side to side in a little mock dance.
    "Oh yeah? What's that?"
    "You're my muse."
    She laughed. "Your muse?"
    "Yes." He put his hand around her head, his
thumb gently grazing her ear, and ran his fingers through her hair.
"If I can breathe life back into this land, I want it to be with
you by my side."
    "Of course. I'll always be by your side." She
wasn't sure what had come over him.
    "That's not what I mean." Jesse took a step
back from her, breaking their embrace. He reached into his shirt
pocket, got down on one knee, and opened the box. The ring-set
jewel within glimmered in the light of the cavern.
    She felt her head start to spin, and a twinge
of anxiety. This was so unlike Jesse, so unexpected. But suddenly,
his earlier nerves made a kind of sense. He might have seemed so
mature, so wise, so larger-than-life when his flock surrounded him,
but the poor thing was still only human. He was nervous.
    "Oh, Jesse—I don't know what to say. I—I love
you so much."
    His smile was anticipatory.
    "It's just—" She searched for the words. "I
don't know if I'm ready for that."
    He held onto his smile, but the light in his
eyes dimmed. Now it was more of a rictus grin. She found it
unsettling.
    "I understand," he said with a nod. "You've
still got to establish yourself as your own person."
    "Yeah, yeah," she was quick to say.
"Exactly—"
    "You're young." He popped up back on his
feet. The ring was gone, like a sleight-of-hand trick. Had it ever
been there?
    "I can wait," he said.
    "You sure?"
    "Yeah." A long beat.
    Suddenly, the juxtaposition of their
otherworldly environment with the profoundly normal awkwardness of
this situation made Susanna want to laugh. She resisted the
urge.
    "But you're gonna stick around," Jesse began,
"Once I get this town fixed up, right?"
    "Of course," Susanna said. She took Jesse's
head in her hands this time, and planted a kiss on his