Fallen Island is a reef of rough, hostile, inclement land, and we, its unfortunate inhabitants, loathe, despise, curse it with all our might. We all have only one dream: to leave. Pitilessly, we are stuck here in its sand and mud. They say, though, that one ancestor, Ilinuk, born with a remarkable deformity, managed to tear himself away from here and reach the sky. Now one of his former
companions, old as storm and ash, lulls our sufferings to sleep and soothes our complaints with his stories of Ilinuk’s miraculous life. Ilinuk promised to come back and get us. Ever since then we have lived with that single hope. And we watch out for his return, pausing in our scrutiny of the sky only to loathe, despise and curse the soil of Fallen.
The sole ambition of Fallen’s inhabitants, our only project, is to get away from Fallen. This is stated here in coldly measured terms for the record. Normally we shout it out at the top of our voices. Get out of fallen! Oh, me! leave Fallen, leave this vile filth of my decrepitude, my incontinence! Get out of fallen—take the leap, Exeamus! tear myself away from its guano, its mud, enlarge the eight orifices of my body so the sand of Fallen can stream out of them all! and fall back down behind me! leave the tumulus and prisons of Fallen behind! oh! to gush out of the molehills of Fallen! goose gosling fledgling chick fly me away! all my feathers for the arrow! go on—out! Drive me out of the territory, condemn me to exile far from Fallen, take radical expulsion measures against me, use bodily restraint, arms twisted behind my back, without escort or delay march me to the border! See, I bite myself and flagellate myself, slap myself, scratch myself, beat myself, bang my head against the walls as much as I like, deprive myself of water, food, and still cannot extradite or banish or get myself out? and be forbidden from staying in Fallen?
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