The Land That Refused to Fall

 No one knew what had once held it to the world. It floated above the earth, silent and impossibly still, carrying upon its surface structures that belonged to no known civilization. They were neither houses nor temples, neither machines nor ruins. Their shapes seemed to have grown rather than been built, twisting upward from the floating land as if obeying laws no longer remembered below. People came to see it from afar, but no one could reach it. The closer they tried to get, the farther it seemed to drift into the sky. Some believed it was a fragment of another world. Others thought it was the last surviving piece of a forgotten age. But there were those who believed something far stranger: that the land had not risen at all. The world beneath it had simply fallen away. And the island remained exactly where it had always been, refusing to follow.