the beginner’s guide to the Puden (pt.1)

In the spirit of both Valentine’s Day and the Black Panther premier this week, I’m writing about a completely unrelated topic for anyone who is intensely interested in the details of the Puden. Which is everyone, I’m sure.

Observe.

The Earth. Obviously.

Go too far out and you find yourself in space. Go too far in and you find yourself in the Puden. And go way too far in and you’ll burn up. Don’t do that.

The Puden encompasses the entire globe. Under all land. Under all water. No matter how deep.

If you’ve ever been in a very large, dark cave, then it’s absolutely nothing like that. You don’t get the sensation that millions of tons of rocks are waiting to fall on your head. It’s not cold and clammy. And you don’t hear your voice echo.

However, the air does have a feeling of less-ness that can be unsettling for people who like to breathe. If you imagine the air quantity on the surface of the earth being symbolized by a fully blown-up balloon, then the Puden would be a half-full balloon that only looks full on the outside. Like a bag of potato chips.

The texture of the air is hot, humid, and musty; smelling faintly like fresh dew and Cheez Whiz that’s gone bad. The tunnels are illuminated by thousands of glow sticks scattered across the ground, in amongst the moss. They’ve been there for longer than anyone can remember.

If you were to compare the rural Puden to some of its major cities, though, the similarities would be hard to find.

One city, Pudiing, is completely air-conditioned with slightly blue-tinted mist. Indoors and outdoors. Every single day for the whole year.

In Dumchow, every form of lighting is outlawed except for string lights as a safeguard against fires. This results in bulb-less street lamps wrapped in strings of lights, a boatload of extension cords to connect strings to the nearest plugin, and the general feeling of Christmas all year round.

Zip, perhaps the most environmentally-conscious city in the Puden, is the only city that actually feels like a cave. Every road, business, home, and park is carved out of the existing stone around it, which provides a very enclosed and claustrophobic atmosphere.

And Niar-Quat has a weather simulator that started off as a sprinkler system attached to the ceiling of the city’s cave. What it became was a flavored rain machine, spouting orange juice, soft drinks, hot sauce (once)(never again), and chili cheese sauce on Tuesdays.

As whimsical and fantastical as all of these cities seem, none of them compare to the capital of the Puden, P.

Every day the city is a new color. The fountains are filled with cheese. The air can be both scented and flavored— which results in more than a handful of people inhaling perfume.

Via GIPHY

The ceiling has an artificial sun providing heat and light during the day and a moon and constellations at night. The outsides of buildings are coated with glow-in-the-dark paint. The sidewalk varies from being covered with moss, sand, and plush carpet. Some rumors even claim that the private forest outside Puder’s mansion is carved exclusively from gold. That, of course, is completely ridiculous, though.