The Hot Air Balloon

The Hot Air Balloon

            Shielded from the Sun by a straw hat and a tree, a man on the easternmost point of the equator, woke up from his slumber and entered a hot air balloon. The skies, in patches bright and blue, were half-covered too with gently white, fluffy clouds, feathery and floating, each softer than down. As he stoked the flames to carry him upwards, a jovial smile beamed across his face, all the way to his intelligent eyes, squinty from the Sun. Rising higher and higher, far beyond the limits of a safe altitude, he blasted the inferno and shouted, “Higher! Higher!” As the clouds disappeared below him, the serenity of the surroundings whispered sweet nothings in his ear, like the babbling coos of a baby, born of a loving union. Louder and louder, the silence grew before becoming so deafening, as to snuff out the fire. Yet onwards, he floated above the interminable horizon until the ballooncraft began to tilt and upturn, from sideways to upside-down, as the concave curve of the skyline flipped on itself, like a crystal-clear rubber bowl turned inside out.

            Guided only by momentum, he closed his eyes and gently descended back to the earth, below the clouds, ‘til reaching the ground, still feeling upside down, even when right side up. Above another earth inverted, as if in a dream, he calmly exited, head over heels in his mind, before slowly returning right side up again without meaning to, in acceptance of the surrounds. To a nearby tree, he sauntered, the landscape mirrored vertically exactly from where he just came, this the westernmost point of the equator, under which he takes off his straw hat to put over his face, before falling back asleep.