Archipelago

As the balloon rose, the ground receded and the people became impossibly tiny. My father’s field was now a tiny patch that my thumb could hide. Soon I could see the edge of the Land and the sea beyond. As I went still higher, I could see more and more of the boundary between the Land and the sea until, eventually, the whole Land was laid out before me, together with the surrounding sea. I could see everything. But still the balloon rose and, at the edge of sight, I could see something. Several somethings that, incredibly, resolved into what could only be other Lands. Other, impossible, lands.

I imagined describing this vision to the people but, by the time my balloon had been painstakingly hauled down to the ground, I had decided to say nothing of these other Lands and, it struck me, their possible other peoples.