Fireflies

“Quit that!” came his mother’s voice.

Timoteo had just scraped the prongs of his fork across his porcelain dinner plate for what was probably the fifth time that night, releasing the intended and generally unnerving screeching sound his parents so detested. He did it often at the dinner table, whenever his mother and father compared him to his older brother Miguel, and today was no different. 

“Are you done eating?” his mother asked, coldly. Timoteo nodded. “Then you are excused.” One of the attendants standing silently along the walls promptly came, took Timoteo’s plate and carried it noiselessly to the kitchens.

His expression impassive, Timoteo scraped his chair noisily backwards and withdrew from the family dining room without a word.

“Elena, you could have been more kind…” began the king.

Timoteo didn’t want to hear it. His father could come to his defense after the fact all he wanted. Point was, he never actually defended him in the present. And Timoteo knew that, deep down inside, his father favored Miguel anyway. The king’s reproaches toward the queen were half-hearted at best.

As for Miguel, Timoteo would have preferred to have some reason to hate him. But Miguel was a saint. He was, by all means, perfect. At the dinner table, Miguel hadn’t even flinched at Timoteo’s fork-screeching. He had turned a deaf ear, no doubt hoping that if he didn’t react, his parents wouldn’t either. He probably wished Timoteo would finish his dinner without reprimand. Not from a desire to avoid conflict, but because he genuinely wished the best for his little brother. Miguel enjoyed the constant comparisons between himself and his little brother about as much as Timoteo did. Timoteo knew this. And that’s what bothered him.

He walked past the gardens, a labyrinth of hedges, rose bushes, flowers and fountains, and beyond the ivory palace walls, seeking isolation. The sky glowed a brilliant pink-orange twilight as Timoteo approached the palace gates, and the night smelled of roses and pine. The guards gave the prince their customary salute and let him through. They didn’t question his nightly exits. These had become a ritual. Nor was there fear of any harm coming upon the young prince outside the palace walls. The Republic of Smeralda was a safe place, its people were happy, politics were stable, and the royal family was well-loved.

Timoteo reached the woods that skirted the National Palace and trudged through, seeking his secret spot. It wasn’t that he hated his brother. He loved him very much. He looked up to him. Problem was, Miguel was too perfect. His every intention seemed noble. You could tell he was a good soul from a mile away. He was unimpeachable, and perfect as future king. 

Timoteo felt anything but perfect. He was moody. He wasn’t as bright, according to his parents and tutor. He succumbed to his “baser emotions,” as his mother put it, referring to his occasional tantrums. And he had no interest in politics or global affairs. So while he did admire his older brother, he didn’t feel he could relate to him. Miguel had his mind in all the right places, conducted himself exactly as he ought, and to make things worse—he didn’t seem to mind. His manner came built-in. He made no effort to please—he was simply pleasing. He made no effort to be interested in matters relevant to the kingdom—he simply found them fascinating.

Timoteo, on the other hand, found everything that was asked of him laborious. Miguel was loved for being himself. Timoteo wasn’t. Miguel’s nature was loveable. Timoteo’s… not quite.

A thick twig cracked loudly under Timoteo’s foot as he marched along through the forest. These were the woods of Nova Fulgonia, better known as the Black Woods. Ancient, dark, and profoundly respected by all Smeraldians. It was a forest of incredibly thick, incredibly tall trees with broad, copious canopies, which meant very little sunlight found its way to the forest floor. The result was a forest with no shrubs, a few small trees, perpetual darkness, and a ground covered in enormous dry leaves. Rumor had it the woods were enchanted. But Timoteo knew better. He had been here hundreds of times, and not once had he encountered anything particularly enchanting. Still, though for Timoteo the place had lost its mystery, it nonetheless retained its charm. It was his private world of solace.

Timoteo crossed a gently-sloping ravine and minutes later found himself at the base of what he simply called “the Tree House Tree”—a tree as thick and high as all the others, except with a scarcely visible carved-in ladder on the trunk and a large tree house hidden up in the foliage. Timoteo had no idea who built it, but for all he knew, it was abandoned decades ago. At any rate, he had never found anyone near it.

“You’re going up there?” came a girl’s voice.

Timoteo jumped, startled, and turned in the direction of the voice. “Where did you come from?” he said, his voice a little higher than he would’ve liked.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just exploring.”

“You came out of nowhere.”

“I’m quiet,” she said shyly, glancing to the ground. Timoteo observed her, suspiciously. She looked different from most Smeraldians. Her hair was jet black and straight, with bangs that covered her eyebrows. She had olive skin of a natural, rather pale shade; she clearly hadn’t been exposed to sunlight though, though she surely could work a marvelous tan. Her features were sharply defined; a pointy nose, prominent cheek bones, cat eyes with thin, sharply arched brows, spindly limbs. It gave her the appearance of being agile, though slightly underfed. She wore a loose, short-sleeved blood red blouse, tight black pants of stretch canvas, what looked like red slippers, and a red band around her wrist. Timoteo assumed she was 15 or so—right around his age.

“So you found my ladder?” Timoteo asked.

“Your ladder?”

Timoteo frowned. He had just kind of assumed the tree house was his. This girl didn’t know any better anyway. “Yes, my ladder.”

“Did you make it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying,” she said, cocking her head to the side with a mischievous smile.'

“How would you know?”

 “What’s your name?”

Timoteo paused. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked him his name. Most of the Republic already knew who he was—from the press, or the internet, or whatever. “My name’s Tim. Where’re you from?”

“I’m Lila.”

“You speak funny.”

“I’m not from here.”

“Where’re you from?” Timoteo repeated.

Lila looked up at the tree, the canopy up above swaying gently in the twilight breeze. “You wanna climb?”

Timoteo’s stomach clenched. He could already feel the sanctity of his tree house violated by the presence of someone other than himself; the discomfort of knowing that from now on, no matter how alone he thought he was, there would always exist the possibility of another creeping in upon his solitude, invading his reverie. It was like someone had just snatched his diary.

Still, the inherent politeness and common decency of Timoteo’s upbringing meant he couldn’t refuse Lila’s request, phrased as a question, yet surely a request. “Sure, I guess,” he replied. “Have you been up there before?”

“Once,” she said, following the ladder’s trajectory with her eyes.

“Do you live near the woods?”

Lila shrugged, nodding towards the ladder. “You go first, or should I?”

“Go ahead,” said Timoteo.

In a single swift movement Lila pulled her hair back and tied it into a neat ponytail using the red band from her wrist. She hopped onto the ladder and rose, quickly.

So she was agile.

Timoteo followed after her, a bit more slowly and clumsily despite his repeated ascents. He considered himself rather clumsy, on the opposite side of athletic. Being lanky and tall, he could climb more steps at a time than Lila, but he was nowhere near as graceful and definitely not as fast.

“I thought you’d never make it,” Lila said, just as Timoteo’s head popped through the opening in the tree house’s floor. Timoteo simply grunted in response, clambering onto the landing and heading by default to his usual lookout point at the corner of the tree house, along the veranda. “It’s a pretty sweet spot,” said Lila, acknowledging the whole space.

Timoteo turned his head in her direction to acknowledge her comment and give the tree house a cursory glance. Yes, it was a sweet spot. And she was invading it. The tree house itself wasn’t much; a slightly rectangular landing lined with an ivy-laden veranda, and a second, slightly smaller landing a few meters up the tree, which doubled as the first landing’s roof. What gave the place its charm wasn’t so much the quality of its build so much as the abundance of greenery it was surrounded by, along with its privileged position atop one of the taller trees in the forest. This meant anyone could look out above most other trees in the forest and gaze upon the thick canopy-tops below the sky; Timoteo always felt it was like poking one’s head up through a sea of green, leafy clouds.

At this moment, the treetops were tinged in twilight gold. The sky was cloudless, the breeze warm and gentle, and in the distance a flock of parrots could be seen, squawking noisily as they returned to their homes for the oncoming night.

“You must live nearby, if you’re here so soon before nightfall,” Timoteo said.

“Oh look!” Lila gasped in delight. Slowly, lighting up one by one, the rare and incredibly beautiful blue fireflies began to rise and glow above the treetops. At first they were only a few, yet soon enough, Lila and Timoteo were surrounded by a mist of sparkling blue light. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

“They only exist in these woods. You can’t find them anywhere else on the planet,” Timoteo said, assuming that Lila’s “not being from around here” meant she wasn’t from Smeralda at all.

“They’re incredible,” Lila said, her coal black eyes reflecting the sparkling blue light.

 Timoteo had never found the fireflies all that beautiful, probably because he was so used to them. They were rare all right, but not in these woods. Still, the swarm of bugs did seem thicker tonight. And they seemed to be flowing more or less in a concrete direction, northbound, rather than just floating and dancing to and fro in the wind as they usually did. Timoteo turned to look at Lila, who was now beside him, and caught the blue glimmer in her eyes.

The sun had set, and a rich purple haze stretched across the sky.

“I’ll see you again, Tim,” said Lila, making a curious yet courteous little bow. An instant later, she’d hopped down the ladder and disappeared. Timoteo continued to look at the opening to the tree house long after she’d departed, perplexed. That had definitely been one of the oddest girls he’d ever met.

Shrugging, he turned back to the incandescent scenery. The sky was darkening quickly. And as he thought over the curious girl he’d only just met, Timoteo couldn’t help but wonder where the stream of fireflies around him would finally end up. 

The Bookkeeper's Son

Assmachestan annexed nilbmah without even a speed bump. jacob's press-driven national brainwashing, more than set the stage, it stole the show. The first two and a half days after the surge, the citadel was on complete lock down, universal house arrest. In spite of their immense size, few actually witnessed the Assmachestani assassins like the one that haunted elizabeth; by the end of the week, they were hardly more than stuff of wive's tales.

The morning, early morning, after the lock-down, neighborhoods were rustled outside into their respective plazas by strange men and women in strange uniforms. With the gentry gathered in bathrobes and slippers, the soldiers (because of course that’s what the must be dressed in uniforms like that) told the people of nilbmah they had been saved. In every single neighborhood the story was the same, down to the prepositions. Foggistan, nilbmah was told, was on the cusp of a global siege. The recently arrived fleet had waited only to ease them into the illusion of security and they very nearly reproduced the atrocity of LusciousLocks in nilbmah. It was very lucky that they, the soldiers in strange uniforms, had managed to intervene on nilbmah’s behave. They, the soldiers, were from a distance galaxy where they were arch-rivals of Foggistan, who had usurped and destroyed their original planet. In order to prevent other peoples from living this same fate, they amassed a great military force and had been monitoring Forggistan to a science. It was only through such diligence that they had been able to thwart the Foggistanni siege of nilbmah. Two days ago, Foggistanni forces had infiltrated nilbmah’s politburo and assassinated all the political figures. That’s when they, the soldiers, took action. They surprised the Foggistanni forces and managed to rescue a few politicians. However since they were unsure of the extent of Foggistan’s infiltration, they put the nation on lock down while they purged nilbmah of its enemy presence. Unfortunately, they, the people of nilbmah, still weren’t safe. Foggistani’s space fleet could still carry out the siege. So in order to keep nilbmah safe, they, the soldiers, were going to keep nilbmah in military mode. The politicians they managed to save voted to give them, the foreigners, emergency power to secure the nation. When the citizens returned to their homes, they would find a copy of the post explaining everything that had happened as well as a pamphlet detailing all the new regulations that would keep them safe while Foggistan was routed from Coralende.

elizabeth after three minutes of clinical death came to in the arms of a bookkeeper’s son with a letter in her hand and a teaspoon in the other. sempere, the bookkeeper’s son, managed to pull elizabeth into bookstore and into the apartment above it before the shock of rescuing a woman from a bat-wolf chimera came waterfalling down ice cold.

“Oh my. Oh my. Oh my my my!” sempere’s father had watched the whole episode from the window and greeted them at the door. “What in heavens, semp. What in heavens indeed. Oh semp. Oh my. Oh my. Lay her here on the couch. That’s it. That’s it. With the pillow. Oh my. Oh my. But semp! Oh my. We must get her some tea. Go put on the kettle.”

But sempere, collapsed in the chair across from the sofa, was still being thrashed by the shock of it all and didn’t budge. So the old man, after a moment while the scene saturated, turned and shuffled to the kitchen to put on the kettle, humming the same as always.

Meanwhile, elizabeth was awake on the couch but hardly responsive. Her eyes rolled over the room but failed to lock in on sempere’s face as they should. sempere should have called emergency services and should have been monitoring elizabeth for signs of shock. These were second nature to a blooming paramedic, but that day nature was doing summersaults.

Only the whine of the teapot jerked both sempere and elizabeth to attention.  The ritual of making tea had a tranquilizing effect on mr. livral, sempere’s father, who came bumbling in still humming with the tea. In spite of his tabby appearance, the tea display was queen’s-palace elegant. The arrangement of saucers and afternoon cookies was measured to the millimeter. The dainty blue seemed as if it might blow off the china, but its humble design was vaguely stabilizing. mr. livral served the tea with a steadiness that thumbed its nose at the chaos of the situation. They drank their tea, elizabeth too, and dunked their afternoon cookies in silence. elizabeth unconsciously put the spoon and the letter in her pocket.

“So, um, what’s your name?” sempere broke the silence. elizabeth completely failed to register the silence. Or the extended stares of the livrals.

“Excuse me, madam. What’s your name?”

Finally, elizabeth landed. She looked around a bit startled and asked, “Oh, so sorry. What was the question?”

“I’m sempere livral and this is my father, walter livral. Who are you?”

 “I’m elizabeth garner, ceo of mobile 9…”

Even though both sempere and mr. livral recognized the name, they said nothing and neither did elizabeth, not for a while.

“…but I guess that won’t much matter given the current state of affairs…”

“…whatever that even is,” finished mr. livral after elizabeth faded.

After another long pause and internal retreat by all parties, mr. livral final announced, “Well, I’ll go make another cup o’. If there was ever a day for two teas, call me sassafras if it’s not today.” And just as before he hummed off to the kitchen, leaving elizabeth and sempere to stir their brewing thoughts.

Eventually sempere realized that in his introspection he left his eyes staring at elizabeth. His face flushed and he fidgeted in the chair, which brought elizabeth back to the physical world as well. For a few moments, they awkwardly avoided each other’s gaze while trying to think of something to say.

“I’m afraid I have to use the restroom. You wouldn’t mind?”

sempere dutifully lead elizabeth to the one bathroom in the apartment, still crimson.

elizabeth didn’t actually have to use the restroom. She needed to think, alone, and maybe even sneak a call to smithins. Find out how the resistance was–dammit! She couldn’t even do that.

The memory sucked her under like a wave, flipping her in its murky waters. She had to sit down on the narrow toilet. The rank odor of the garbage where she hid from the monster reached back up her nostrils. The terror as the fiend finally caught her off guard and she thought she would die once again set her heart pounding. And her last conversation on the other side of death rang in her ears for second time. She heard herself say, “They are going to annex nilbmah. Initiate beta phase. Did you get that? Initiate--”

elizabeth prayed to anything and everything that smithins got the message. But now there was absolutely nothing she could do to find out. Any attempt to do so would completely negate the beta phase effort.

Very early on in the resistance, elizabeth and smithins made a worst-case scenario plan. If the resistance were to become completely compromised, they would carry out “beta phase.” This meant the resistance would go up in flames, like a phoenix. All documents would be destroyed save for a vast collection of forged information that narrated an alternative story of the resistance, in which everything came crashing down in a bloody struggle for power. Everyone would go into hiding within the walls of their normal lives; 90% of their ammunition supplies would be forfeited; a few deaths would be faked; there would be no contact between any members and absolute no action by any member for two months after b-day. This last bit was absolutely critical. Any hint of resurgence could jeopardize the resurrection of the movement.

So that is how it stood. elizabeth would have to sit cooped up without doing any resistance work for 2 whole months. Uggh! The thought alone was giving her the gitters. elizabeth waited for no one. But she would have to make an exception this time. Ugggggh!

At least she would have more time to finish up some projects at mobile 9 that had been pushed to the side during past few months. That would be able to distract her while she waited for the two months to pass.

Well, she had been in the bathroom long enough. Social etiquette prompted her return to the rest of the apartment where she found the livral’s both waiting with a fresh set of tea and cookies. Neither of them started their tea until she sat down and brought the cup to her lips. She hadn’t noticed this courtesy the first time. The temperature of the tea told her the gentleman had waited some time.

sempere informed them that they would have to stay in the apartment indefinitely. A colleague of his in Marketing at the university called him to say that strange soldiers, an army of sorts, had taken over the city and they were forcing everyone back into their homes. If you tried to resist them, as his friend had done, they lightning-tasered you until you saw it their way. They didn’t say when you could come out. sempere had tested it out. There were at least five soldiers patrolling the street and one guarding the back alley. He had been wise enough not to test the lightning-tasers.

“So it’s been decide,” concluded mr. livral, “elizabeth, you will be staying with us until all this blows over.”

“But I can’t. I mean, thank you so much for the most generous offer. I sincerely appreciate it, but I just can’t. I can’t. There is so much I have to do at mobile 9. I have to see my bother. Oh god. Andrew. I have to make sure he’s ok. I can’t stay. No really I can’t.”

mr. livral stared down elizabeth with a sternness quite uncharacteristic of the old fellow. The weight of this change was lost on elizabeth, but it did give her pause.

sempere watched the mini-drama like a play.

After running through her options, elizabeth got up slowly and headed towards the door. Neither livral made to get up after her. When she got the door she turned around. “Thank you both so much for everything. I can’t even begin to express my gratitude. I certainly will never forget, all you have done.”

elizabeth turned to leave.

“But I imagine you leave up on the north peak, no?” This time it was sempere who spoke.

The question caught elizabeth off guard. “Well, yes. How did you know that?”

“But that’s halfway across town. You certainly won’t be able to take the CitT or any main roads, now can you? With all the soldiers out there, you will have to plan your routes. Right? Come on, let’s look at the maps.” And with that, sempere walked off into the den. He was slier than he came off.

Still a bit off guard, elizabeth followed sempere out of the living room.

Once in the den, elizabeth found a snow of maps covering everything. Where did they all come from she wondered, but not for long because sempere quickly launched into strategizing the very best routes and alternative paths to take. All the while bring up the myriad obstacles she would face: heightened security around the seven plazas the lay in between the two neighborhoods, the possibility that the soldiers had locked up certain alleyways, the chance that a soldier saw her and, worst of all, what if there were more of those monsters in the sky. But at every single wall, sempere chattered off another implausible counter with all the positivity in the world. elizabeth, on the other hand, felt the impossibility of it all and how she would certainly destroy the whole purpose of beta phase if she tried to leave.

It was only after she decided to stay that elizabeth realized how sempere had all but conned her into staying.

Back in the living room, mr. livral was beaming.