Mirrors in the sky

Arhenius raises towers. After lengthy preparation with geomantic tomes and the intricate use of spider-fine pencil-lines and crystals, he attends a prepared site and begins his incantation. The genii of the city arrive along his predetermined leys. They crystallise into a drab cocoon of steel and board that often get brightly decorated by the punk advertisers.

Arhenius stands in all weathers, patiently incanting, for several months as the tower grows slowly skywards. Within the cooon heavier orange genii lift great beams out of the earth and bind them. Smaller, faster green ones finish floors, fittings and wiring before sealing the structure's surface with mirrored glass. Finally the genii carefully remove the new tower's cocoon and dry its sleek new skin with drafts from their beating wings.

Where once was horizon and sky there is now a tower of shadow and reflection: from one side the sky is made infinite; from the other the sun is exiled. At night the tower lights up its guts in fluorescent glory in the hope of attracting a mate.

Arhenius often has to be lifted out of his incantatory coma (and well-worn hollow in the ground) by the genii as they leave the new tower. He stretches massively, cracking joints, and regards the tower with paternal satisfaction but hopes never to see it again. He loves his towers but he detests their tenants. They put his towers to uses he did not incant into them. They deform them, rearrange their organs, maintain them shoddily, leave them to moulder. Sometimes they ask Arhenius to return to fix their ailing buildings' woes and Arhenius always marvels at the gap between the perfection of creation and the vicissitudes of existence.

But there is another reason why Arhenius dislikes visiting his children: as he prepares each incantation, and as he recites it and causes the tower over a course of months of glorious creation, he is striving to touch the Divine. The moment of completion is a moment of blindness made of pride and exhaustion. Only a few more months' perspective and recovery allow Arhenius to see where his children are flawed, perhaps even beyond the tenants' abilities to tell. But Arhenius can tell. And he hates it.

Arhenius could not live in a tower he had caused. When his friends ask him why he still rents, he shrugs and changes the subject.