The Sky Fell In - Friday Flash

Ninety foot high said the plans. An imperial measure for an imperial edifice. It would dwarf and dominate everything else around it. For the natives built only low-lying buildings, with open roofs save for some cursory vines and tendrils. Perhaps they liked to gaze out upon the stars. Well the large silver cross anticipated atop the spire would give them a new Polaris to orient their path through the firmament. Thus would we would colonise the heavens too. Change the trajectories of their imagination, raise their zenith beyond the earthbound limits of tree-tops where they currently resided through fruit-gathering quests.They watched us fell their trees with indifference. They cooed at our technologies for cutting and shaping wood. They chattered and pointed as the timber was hoisted into place, as if they were architectural students. But they fled the moment the frames began to soar over the roofs of their huts. We awoke the next morning to find that the sky had fallen in. Or at least it was unobstructed by any of our wooden beams erected the previous day. They lay in a heap on the sun-baked dirt. We checked the joists and tenons for faulty installation but found them all to be sound. We could only surmise that for whatever reason the natives had pulled them down in the night.We restored our work and as we left for the day, we set guards to protect our labour. In the morning we confronted the same sight, only with our guards fast asleep having been drugged with blowdarts. Some of our number wanted to punish some as an example and a deterrent, but others countered they did not want the church baptised in blood. So we carried on erecting the roof by day and seeing it toppled under darkness at night. No matter how many sentries we posted, with how many lit balefires, they were rendered helpless through attacks cloaked by the tree canopy. Their low level interdiction overpowered our holy ones. We halted the casting of the silver cross and instead arranged for the precious metal to be shipped home as a secular tribute.