Planet
Kaltamor
The mountain-trees: a forest whose trunks climb for kilometres, arranged in storeys, where the fauna of the canopy has never seen the ground.
The trees of Kaltamor are as tall as mountains. Their trunks measure several kilometres and their bark is broad enough to hold valleys. From orbit one does not make out a forest: one makes out a landscape.
The four storeys
The forest of Kaltamor reads like a building. At the bottom, the dark storey: no light reaches it, only pale fungi and black water. Above it, the storey of trunks, where the great herbivores climb. Higher still, the storey of branches, as vast as a country. And at the very top, the crown, in full sun, swept by the wind.
Those above and those below
The animals of the crown have never seen the ground and do not suspect it exists. The talvor, a great four-armed primate, spends its whole life on one branch, ten kilometres long. Below, in the dark storey, live blind slow beasts that no one has ever properly described — and that those above simply call “the others”.