"Why did things change?" I ask not liking the bit about Jade falling.
"Well, I feel silly talking about gods, and demons, but that's what they say happened, and if any of this is more than a fever dream then magic is the only way I'm alive. So, to hear the priestesses tell it, the Sun was more than just the source of light and heat and the center of the Solar System. Somehow when it fell, 'The walls between existence and non being fell with Her, drowning both in illusion, uncertainty, and impression, the seas of primordial chaos boiling over like oatmeal left on the stove as they drowned Her eternal flame.' How exactly that leads to me drowning in salt water on a /spaceship/ and ending up here...I don't understand." she sighs.
"So what was out there, past the top of the bottle?" I say gesturing up.
"Lost Earth is what they call it, but back then it wasn't lost I think. So just Earth, Late Industrial Era if I have my history right. Though they can get electronics in Arcadia, somehow."
"And now? Can you still get out through the top?"
"Now days it isn't a bottle anymore. It's like the top was broken off, or maybe town was inside the bottle and now it's been pried out. Either way, it's easy to get out or in, but what's out there is the Outside, a sort of half real place? The near part is not so bad, but as it gets deeper it gets less real and more hostile. The ship that picked me up brushed a Outside storm, and things seemed to dissolve into impressions, into raw sense, or isolated ideas, and the sun turns strange."