The low clouds fell on him; the world shrank to a fluffy cocoon. Flecks of snow pattered into his face, and he drew the hood of his leather jacket tight around his head.

Then he burst into crimson sunlight.

He gasped at the sudden clarity of the air. Frost sparkled over his cheeks.

The rope bridge rose from the carpet of cloud below him and arced gracefully across the Gap, a spider's web between the twin worlds. Finally, on the other side of the Gap, it disappeared into a second layer of broken cloud... a layer belonging to another world, upside down and far above him.

The landscape of the world above -- called Home -- served Teal's world -- called the Shell -- as a sky; it was an unbroken ceiling coated with upside-down seas, rivers, forests, ice caps. Teal searched for familiar features. There were threads of smoke: fires warding off the chill, even at noon.

There was a sound behind him like the breath of a huge animal.

He twisted around and stabilized -- and found his eyes filled with orange light.

The Gap between Shell and Home was unbroken. The two worlds' darkling daylight was begrudged them by a Sun, a mottled sphere a mile across -- a sphere that now twisted and rolled through the sky towards Teal...

...But it was going to pass miles above him.

Cursing, Teal labored at his burners. The balloon yanked him upwards, but soon the harness's pressure began to ease. He was approaching the middle of the Gap: the place halfway between the worlds where weight disappeared. He knew that if he continued his ascent, "up" would become "down"; Home would turn from a roof to a floor, and the place where Teal had been born would once more become the Shell over Home, the world that his grandmother's mother had known.

The Sun's breath became a roar.

He used a soaked cloth to dampen the burners, trying to hover just below the zone of complete weightlessness. The guide rope creaked; the balloon bobbed in a gust hot enough to scour the frost from his face, and he turned to the Sun once more.

It came at him like a fist. Boiling air fled its surface. His craft tossed like a toy. His eyes dried like meat in a fire and he felt his face shrivel and crack.

The guide rope snapped with a smell of charred leather. His balloon flipped backwards once, twice, seams popping. He roared out his frustration at the impossible thing--

Then the balloon was falling. He caught one last glimpse of the Sun as it passed above him, splinters of ruddy light stabbing through slits in the battered envelope.

He fell back through the clouds. Snow battered his scorched face as he labored at the burners, striving to replace the hot air leaking out of the envelope.