The Ancients and the Angels: Celestials

by M.C. O'Neill

  “I am not afraid… I was born to do this.”

  -Jeanne d'Arc

  “As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.”

  -King Solomon

  They Took Him Away

  On’dinn Jak’sin slapped his phone alive to check the time. There would still be over an hour for him to make it back to his hovel of a flat, complete with unconscious father, before he missed the curfew deadline. The entirety of the Atlantean provinces were doing some kind of job for the exodus effort, even retirees, but his father was not amongst those numbers. Neither was Madame Orsi, as On’dinn thought about it. He couldn’t help but wonder why such a vibrant and adventurous lady would sit this out.

  Sometimes, he wondered if his father would even be awake for Ark Day. He figured the civil wardens would have to carry his inebriated body into the vehicles themselves and he’d wake up on another world none the wiser. The old slouch probably wouldn’t even care as long as they had a steady supply of mead waiting for him there. In his advanced alcoholic state, the old lord was apt to drink red mana if it were the only thing available.

  The Loop Liner terminal was just shy of a block away from the substation where Quen’die Reyliss was embedded in exile. On’dinn stopped for a moment under the full moon and considered that she may have been responsible for bombing the docks. After seeing the report, the lad kicked into his survival mode by rote which he had honed during his days in the Black Hood and didn’t stop to investigate her culpability.

  She too reacted with so much shock upon hearing of her accusations, but she never did dispute the claim. On’dinn just figured that she was innocent and thus, framed. With Venn’lith Mitlan at the helm of the Youth Parliament, it was only logical that the spoiled brat would enjoy some powerful playtime with her rival, but did the Xochian have any real time for such hijinks?

  Something didn’t add up, the more the elf thought about it. Quen’die was most certain to have not perpetrated the incident. Over the years of living in a relatively rough neighborhood, on top of having had tenure with the Black Hood, On’dinn deemed himself as someone who could read people. She was too sheltered, too much of an ingénue to even orchestrate such a maneuver, much less execute it. The maiden was always so obedient at school, as her brain wasn’t wired for those kinds of transgressions. Sure, she received the highest of marks in pretty much every one of her classes, but the problem wasn’t with her intelligence, it was with her intellect. Quen’die just wouldn’t question the nature of the exodus and rebel against it, and it was as simple as that. As far as On’dinn saw it, she was as innocent as the clowder of homeless kittens huddled in the alley nearby. Someone was either blaming her or setting her up as a patsy.

  Bright lights assaulted the lad’s eyes as he entered the tram station. The blinking clock over the attendant’s booth read 9:05 p.m. There would still be plenty of time to skirt back home and get some sleep. Today had been the most eventful for him since Sig’ryn’s party and the drama had drained him. Seeing his friend as the subject of a dragnet somehow made him feel violated even though the stones were not being tossed at him. Regardless, he could relate to the maiden’s current plight and the whole situation made him angry as it was an intrusion by proxy. Just by being her neighbor, he was sure to be questioned by the wardens, or maybe even the ADF. In the back of his mind, he was already rehearsing lines of bull to feed to the bulls.

  Checking in the pockets of his summer tunic, he felt the half-bren piece rolling around. It was the last scrap of money he had on him and it would be just enough to cover the cost of the short jaunt home. It was a shame that the Sea and Shell’s relief effort didn’t pay a little more, but at least that was righteous work.

  “Going southbound,” On’dinn slapped the coin on the scuffled old counter.

  “No can do, kid,” the attendant pointed with a blithe wave to the scrolling news screen above him which announced the one-bren markup for tram fare. “Try again.”

  “What?” the lad all but screamed. “Is this a joke? I rode this one hour ago and it was a third of this price just as it has been for the past five years!”

  “No joke,” the surly elf nestled in the dirty booth groaned in boredom. “City upped da fare five minutes ago. It was announced all over da newsscrolls.”

  “That’s a total crock! Change it back!” On’dinn palmed his own face as he realized the absurdity of that command.

  “Look, wiseguy, I can’t do dat. Da Circle of Transport just uploaded the changes automatically! You take dat up wit’ dem!” The attendant’s face was melting into an angry lump of aged pudding.

  On’dinn huffed in exasperation. The municipal government had increased the fare due to the expenses of the exodus; that would be no logical surprise. He considered playing nice.

  “Okay, sir,” the lad began as he composed himself. “I work for the Sea and Shell doing food distribution, so I realize that the city really needs the money right now, but do you think you could make an exception for an elf just trying to get home from an honest day? It can be our secret.”

  Just from seeing the lift in the attendant’s eyebrows, On’dinn could tell his charismatic acrobatics weren’t working. The old lord was livid. “Aw sure, I do dat, and den I gotta let everyone through a third-price. An’ guess what? I get in trouble! Look on the bright side, jerk. In a few months it ain’t even gonna matter. Get outta here! Bum!”

  “Hey, now,” On’dinn raised his palms to pacify the surly attendant.

  The attendant’s eyes were as large with rage as ostrich eggs. “You heard me! Beat it or I’m callin’ da wardens!”

  To that, On’dinn flew down the stairs of the terminal like a rabbit and back out into the night. The last thing he needed was an arrest over a fare dispute. That scrub in the booth was certain to be connected to the city in so many ways that he’d be in the dungeons for months had he, in all honesty, called the wardens on him.

  By the time he backtracked to his old safehouse, the streets were devoid of traffic, except for a few last-run delivery coaches. Elves from all over the city were already home so that they could beat the curfew and On’dinn wished he were one of them. If only he had a coach or even Quen’die’s nerdy little buggy, he could rely on his own devices to solve the problem. At these times, On’dinn hated being poor and he found himself equating poverty with powerlessness, and that lack of power humiliated him. Were his father not a drunk, life wouldn’t deal him these foul hands.

  Quen’die’s current makeshift residence was backlit by the rising moon and On’dinn stood in front of it like a confused and lost child. He thought that he might have to join his neighbor in her exile just for the night. It would be better than a night in the dungeon, but what if the safehouse wasn’t so safe, he considered? If he did bunk with her and the wardens somehow busted in, then he too would be implicated as a terrorist. Even a biomana scan would present the authorities with his knowledge of harboring her, and that was the same as being involved. As much as he wanted a place to crash, he couldn’t take that deep risk.

  He was wandering in ruffled thought and soon realized that he had made his way to the gates of Bonn’fyr Park. It too was closed, as a large iron chain had sealed it not long after sundown. By the light of his phone, he could see that he only had a half hour to hoof it home, and such a journey was not possible in that time. He almost considered walking up to a warden and turning himself in before the fact.

  They were already out and preparing to make their nightly sweeps. An equine unit plodded along from across the street and the armor atop the steed turned his head with a slow pivot toward the lad. For some reason, the horse was riding low, as if spooked. This mounted warden tapped his forearm as if to simulate a wristwatch and pointed at On’dinn with a devious smile - “I’m gonna get you!”

  That froze the young elf. He knew he had very little time left and that exact bull was going to summon a coach to arrest him in twenty-five minutes and not a tick more. To make matters even more dism
al, On’dinn could feel a cold presence from above. An Aldebaran soared about twenty feet over his head and shot him a fleeting, if disinterested, look. It looked like a giant brown moth flying against the blue-black sky of that night. He couldn’t tell what its gender was even as he strained his eyes for more detail.

  Headlights of a coach approached him with ever-decreasing speed. Whoever was piloting that vehicle knew him, and not everyone who knew him liked him, as Hyrax Arcovis had proved. On’dinn prayed in silence to the Twelve that the brute was not the owner of that beaming coach. If it were, the lad prophesized that the idiot would beat him senseless yet again and then dump him in front of a warden’s station just so he could be arrested in due time on top of it.

  The elf stepped back preparing to fight the best he could against his assumed hulking bully, but the female voice with the slight Gonduannian accent melted his nerves with a wave of relief. “On’dinn Jak’sin! Don’t you know it’s almost your bedtime?”

  He was ecstatic. Never before was he happier to see someone. Not even Minn’dre. “Whoo-Hoo! Tam’laa Na’rundi! Just what the doctor ordered.”

  “What are you doing out here anyway?” she called out from behind the trackball. Whatever scent she was wearing was amazing, On’dinn thought.

  “Tam, I’m too freaked out right now to give you a good sarcastic response, so all I’ll say is that I am half a bren short,” the lad could not bend the cheesy smile off his face.

  “Oh, you mean the tram?” she looked over toward the lonely terminal down from the park. “Yeah, they just upped the fare a half hour ago, son. It was all over the newsscrolls. Didn’t you know?”

  “So I was told,” the elf responded with a weak smirk. “Eh… Can I get a ride?”

  Tam’laa’s hair was tied up in three giant puffs across the crown of her head. On’dinn thought it looked so stunning, and his heart skipped a beat as she petted one of them. “Yeah, I can do that, but how far do you live from here? I need to get to my own place in time for curfew.”

  The lad’s elevated heart sank. There was no way that he could have Tam’laa drop him off and ensure her safety as well. She would be, without a doubt, caught after curfew if she made such an altruistic detour. So close, yet so far away, as the old saying went. “Honestly, Tam, I don’t think you’d make both trips in time. This really sucks.”

  The maiden nibbled a light bite in thought on a heavily-adorned golden fingernail then smiled. “Well, I guess I’m going to have a houseguest tonight.”

  “Really, you don’t have to, Tam,” On’dinn hoped against all bets that she would insist, and when he thought about that mounted unit, he began to pray again. “I’m sure I can slink through the back alleys or something.”

  “No, that won’t work,” her puffballs bobbed as she shook her head. “We’re going to have to put you up for tonight. My father is pretty strict, but I’m sure he’ll consider the circumstances. We have a guestroom at the house and everything, so you’ll be all right.”

  “Really!” the lad’s eyes lit up. “You sure it’s no problem?”

  “If you don’t get your behind in here soon, it will be,” she laughed. “We only have twenty minutes to get home. Come on, hop in.”

  Tam’laa’s coach was the welcoming turn of fortune that On’dinn needed that night. It reminded him of the wonderful night she had driven him home after Sig’ryn’s party. Just the fact that she crossed his path somehow seemed fateful to the young elf.

  “Hey, I’m so sorry I haven’t kept in touch recently,” he situated himself in the passenger seat. “I really have been so busy with this relief effort. You know, my job placement.”

  “Oh, where did you take your assignment?” she asked as she put her phone into the little cubby bin between them. “Wait, lemme guess. You are… working with the Circle of Health loading up medical supplies or something like that.”

  “Nope,” he chirped. “Try loading up food. I took a spot with the Sea and Shell. It’s super crowded there. I suppose that’s why so many other people are working there too because it’s kind of easy and you always get extra food at the end of the shift. I pretty much put together ration packages for families throughout the city. Some of it goes to the rest of the provinces. I even prepared one that went all the way up to Caidhul yesterday.”

  “Well, I hope it tastes better than Managrill. I’m just coming back from there because there was nothing else open after five. For some reason they got a royal waiver to remain open after dusk.” The maiden clutched her stomach in a facetious pantomime of food poisoning. “I believe I will regret that decision tomorrow. Sometimes I think they keep that place open just to make us all sick.”

  On’dinn let out a little laugh. “Ah yes, the almighty Managrill. Not surprising. The CEO probably paid off the Princess. Well, Dr. Jak’sin prescribes a healthy dose of Milk of Magnesia and then call me in the morning. What are you doing now, anyway?”

  “My father got me a placement with the biomana labs on the other side of town,” she smiled as she thought of her luck. “It’s super easy, and he claims it will help further my career in the bio field. I still miss being at the Circle of Enviro, but we all know about that.”

  “Eww, ‘biomana,’” the lad winced. “I don’t want to think about that. The night they arrested me at the arena, the bulls stuck my face in a scanner. It’s awful. It’s like watching your life flash before your eyes and you can even see moments of memories you were too young to have. Like, I saw myself always playing with this stuffed monkey like it was yesterday, but I was an infant when I lost it. So…”

  Tam’laa sat back in mild amusement at the elf’s claim. “That’s pretty wild. I wonder what goofy things I used to play with as an elfling. Well, anyway, we only work with the raw energy that goes into the scanners there, not the scanners themselves. All I’m assigned to do is deliver invoices of how much mana we receive. Pretty simple stuff.”

  Memories of the night of his arrest led to worries about his semi-homeless friend. Right as he was speaking with Tam’laa, Quen’die Reyliss was on the lam herself and he was responsible for it. Someone else had to know about this. Knowing what he knew was too much for his slight shoulders to bear. No longer did he have the organized network of the Black Hood to relay information or to provide any such support. As far as Quen’die was concerned, he was her one and only source of it.

  Perhaps Quen’die wasn’t his best friend, or maybe only a top acquaintance, but On’dinn knew the path for success was paved with responsibility and accountability. He wondered what the dangers of letting Tam’laa in on his antics would be. Her father was a Gonduannian officer and it was possible that his government was after her with the same gusto as his own. Sometimes risks needed to be taken, he knew well. He started this for the maiden on a reactive whim and he had to step up to the plate.

  “Quen’die Reyliss didn’t do it,” he blurted. The lad slapped his hand to his lips as he realized he was verbalizing his thoughts.

  Tam’laa’s eyes lit with confused shock. “What?”

  On’dinn resituated himself in the seat to deliver his explanation. “Okay, we both know that Quen’die is all over the news and they’re blaming a ‘Black Hood 2’ for the sabotage at the docks. I assure you, there is no ‘BH2.’ Believe me, I should know.”

  Her lush brown eyes were lowering from quick shock to slow suspicion. The look on Tam’laa’s face made On’dinn assume she thought that he was crazy. “Eh, go on.”

  At least she’s humoring me, he thought. “I think Quen’die was framed by Venn’lith Mitlan now that she is head of the Youth Parliament. I was watching a movie with her when the report cut in and alerted the public about her. I mean, come on! You know Dee wouldn’t even come up with the idea to do something like that, nor would she fall for anyone duping her into doing it.”

  The Gonduannian’s countenance remained unchanged. She thinks I’m nuts, On’dinn lamented to himself. “There’s definitely something sinister going on with the Yout
h Parliament, Tam. I mean, really! Dee is a terrorist?”

  “Okay, On’dinn,” she placed her hands with calm grace on the trackball and inhaled a deep dose of the night air. The maiden always considered herself to be a practical sort and chewed on On’dinn’s report for a moment. The lad thought she would make a great counselor or even a priestess one day. “I hear you and I see what you’re saying. You bring up some good points, and I won’t lie about that. It’s true that Dee wouldn’t have the gumption to bother with such a stunt, and I don’t see her just giving in to someone who would ask her to do it. It’s also true that Lith pretty much hates her guts and has the power and connections to make this happen, but, really, don’t you think you are linking together some pretty distant dots?”

  On’dinn admonished himself for not thinking before opening his mouth. There was no way that he could tell Tam’laa that he was aiding and abetting Quen’die until she was convinced in full. “I know this all seems a far stretch, but it isn’t really. It could very well be an honest accident, but I still say there are some rats in the rabbit hole. I don’t like this a bit.”

  She turned straight ahead and looked out the windscreen. “Okay, we’ll worry about this when we get back to my house. We only have a few minutes left before curfew. But first and foremost, don’t tell my father about any of this. He’s probably looking for her himself!”

  As she stared out into the night and prepared to summon her coach into the flow, she noted a squat figure waddling down the avenue with a jerky meter across from them. As her eyes adjusted to the distance, she could see that it was a pudgy young male who was wearing a loud striped t-shirt with suspenders and carrying a small wooden box. “Hey, On’dinn, look at that fool trying to hoof it home in time on foot. He’ll never make it.”

  “Oh, no! That poor guy. Look closer. I think he’s developmentally disabled,” On’dinn turned to his pilot with a sharp snap. “Do you think we have the time to give him a lift home? We can’t just leave him out here like this.”

  “Too late,” Tam’laa pointed high as two dark forms emerged down from the sky with gentle descent and into the flood of a streetlight. Both landed in front of the elf, blocking his path.

  “It’s the Aldebarans,” On’dinn whispered as his eyes bulged with fear. “I don’t like this.”

  From the sounds of their husky voices, the teens could tell that they were both male. They were quite tall as well, both reaching a height of eight feet or so. The little elf was a dwarf compared to these aliens, and the sight of such a pitiful match made On’dinn’s blood boil. The lad was well acquainted with the art of the bully and he could just tell by their pair’s body language alone that bullying was on their agenda for the night.

  “Why out so late, little buddy?” the two teens could hear one of the fiends ooze from across the empty street. “Don’t you know curfew is in a few minutes?”

  “Yes,” the young lad responded with dutiful measure. “I work at the Managrill. I sweep the floors until they are shiny. I am doing my part!”

  “I’m sure you are,” the other winged form cut in. “So, what’s in the box, hmm? Is that a bomb, yes?”

  “No, that is not a bomb,” the elf responded with the same choppy meter, almost as if his answer was rehearsed. “It is my lunchbox. My mother makes me lunch every day. I am going home to her now.”

  “Wait, not so fast,” the first Aldebaran continued to block. “Are you retarded or something? Hey, Dysentarius! I think we have a retard here!”

  “No, my mother says that I am developmentally disabled and that there is no such thing as a retard,” he recited back to them.

  “Aww, look,” Dysentarius bent low in the diminutive elf’s face. “Lucifer was right! The Creator does make mistakes! And you’re living proof of it, retard!”

  A polyphonic song of angry guffaws broke through the lonely night air only to be joined by the high-pitched sobbing of their elven victim. His reaction spurred the beasts to laugh with all the more violence as they drank in his fear and shame.

  “Gods!” Tam’laa’s eyes were swelling with water as she and On’dinn watched this horrible display before them. What on Earth was going on with these supposed saviors of elfdom, they both at once wondered? “On’dinn, we need to alert the authorities!”

  On’dinn looked over at his weeping comrade with a slow twist of his neck. His blood was no longer heated, as the grim knowledge of the world’s situation was all the more apparent to him. “Tam, they are the authorities.”

  “Please don’t hurt me!” the besieged elf cried as he clutched his box tight to his flabby chest; sensing their scorn for him. “I’ll be good!”

  Dysentarius halted his peal of laughter with a curt stop, as if he had never laughed before in his life. “Oh, don’t worry, you fat moron. Where you’re going, you won’t feel a thing.”

  The fiend looked at his partner and nodded a grinning affirmation. Grabbing a fleshy elven arm each, they bounded up into the darkness three abreast. Although the alien pair was no longer laughing, On’dinn and Tam’laa were left with the sickening wail of the disabled elf ever losing volume as he was whisked away to a place unknown.

  Both of their bodies were stiff with dread as they looked at each other, although they could not really see anything before them but the horrid memory of that incident. Tam’laa’s mouth hung open as she shook her head almost pleading with her friend to rewind the last five minutes of their life so she could give the unfortunate little elf a lift home to his mother. If that had happened, everything would be all right and they would not have the dreadful knowledge that their saviors might be their doom.

  “On’dinn,” she stammered as her hanging mouth dripped with salty water. “Please.”

  Their silent moment was destroyed by a loud thunk from outside her coach, prompting both to scream from the sudden jolt. On’dinn craned his head about for its source, but could not discern his surroundings through his terrorized grief. “What was that?”

  Tam’laa peered out from the lip of the coach’s door and saw the block of wood on the ground not five feet away from them. How high did they fly? How long ago did those monsters launch themselves? Even a few seconds at their rate could have been halfway to the moon, the maiden guessed. “I think it’s that kid’s lunchbox. I’m gonna get it for evidence!”

  When the maiden picked up the box, she studied it like a specimen at her old job over at the Circle. The cured wood was painted in bright colors and adorned with a banal cartoon of flowers sprouting from under a yellow sun. Printed in large, rainbow letters floated the word “SMILE.” Despite the box’s hopeless command, Tam’laa lost it the second she read it.

  “On’dinn!” she bawled. “I’m telling my father! I want him to kill those two! Gods help us!”

  Her friend saddled next to her knelt form and hugged her warm dark body like a megasloth. The maiden’s eyes were oozing with tears as the lad realized that he too was sharing her sorrow. He felt a blackening hole of woe not only for the little elf and Tam’laa, but for the earth itself.

  My Eyes!

  It had to stop. For the last three days, Venn’lith had been falling ill with symptoms of terrible nausea and chronic light-headedness. At least Cadreth was a peach about it all and made sure to be attentive to her needs. He was there with elixirs and tonics and anything else that could remedy the aches, if only for a while, but after the medicines wore off, the pains in her belly and head would resurface as strong as ever.

  Father was nowhere to be found and the maiden didn’t really care at that point. Between the swirling headaches and Cadreth’s care, the old lord’s absence was stuffed to the back of her mind. Before meeting her gentle tutor, this would have been a cause of concern and possible jealousy towards Glynna, but the alien lad was casting his own spell on her, and for that she felt a rare pang of gratitude.

  At night, the pains would subside, but the nausea was still in full effect. As she thought back upon it, the Xochian wondered if she had been
having a reaction to handling all those samples of Thelemex. If just touching the pills caused her this much grief, she could only imagine the horrors that would ensue by actually consuming it. As she was the spokesperson for the drug, she had frequent exposure to it and was required to handle boxes and bare samples of the stuff day in and day out at press conferences, meetings and boardrooms.

  Her friend Sig’ryn’s father’s company milled the dope right out of his own house. Not only did their mansion grow its own rooms and furniture via its strange organic process, it also grew Thelemex. Every day, Aldebarans would arrive with kettles of this black goop called “thelema’ which was mined out of the very arks themselves. After the shipment arrived, alchemists in Sig’ryn’s basement would use the house’s natural generative abilities to forge the muck into a form which was ready for mass-consumption. The milling process was sort of interesting, she thought, as the pills were indeed grown and plucked right off the swarming grape vines which grew out of the estate’s walls.

  Considering that many alchemists had to forge the pills every day, they must have suffered direct exposure to the drug as well. Because of this, Venn’lith wondered if any of the techs handling the stuff were experiencing the same conditions as she. Sure, the active ingredient was all natural, but so was red mana, she reasoned.

  Under better health, Venn’lith would have never been more pleased to hear that her old rival Quen’die Reyliss was now the subject of a worldwide elfhunt, but such knowledge did nothing to kill the pain. Glynna was tearing herself apart in four directions with that nonsense and the lady could not stop pacing about the house ever since the news about her daughter broke earlier that afternoon. She was even trying, in desperation, to get a hold of her estranged husband. Every few minutes she would try her phone again, and then again, but he was not responding. Her frenetic antics were making everything worse for Venn’lith as she just wanted to fall asleep for a while and not be bothered by the lady’s constant begging of her phone, “C’mon! Ferd’inn! Answer me!”

  Venn’lith staggered out of bed when a new bolt of sickness arose from her stomach. With the revolt in her body, her head was swimming again and until she quelled that revolution, she would not be able to shake the dizziness.

  Although she hated vomiting, she knew that she would feel much better once she did. At school, some of the maidens who were not as blessed with a physique such as hers thought that they could achieve her naturally-fortunate figure by hurling up everything they ate. The Xochian couldn’t understand how they had managed to do that, in some cases, three times a day. Aside from the sour taste, the violent feeling of the food knocking around her organs was just dreadful. Perhaps if she were indeed fat, she would have considered it.

  As she swam with some success down the hallway to the bathroom nearby, she made a mental note to ask Father to adjoin a private toilet next to her bedroom. How disgusting I am, she lamented as she knelt over the basin like a drunken bum down by the docks, but what had to be done had to be done.

  With each expulsion she felt ten degrees better. By that night, there wasn’t much of any substance left in her body as eating food had not been an option since yesterday afternoon. Cadreth kept pleading with her to eat, but after a few valiant attempts, his efforts were crushed when Venn’lith all but threw the bowl of broth out of his hands with a growl. With a bow and a move as dutiful as Ping, the young alien backed off after that and it made the maiden only feel all the warmer for him. So accommodating, she mused, as that behavior would make for a perfect king.

  Her bent legs were shaking like a newborn colt after the retching. That too was a sensation she hated attached to the process. When she heard Glynna’s voice chime with concern, the maiden realized that she hadn’t bothered to close the bathroom door.

  “Gods, Lith! You’re still vomiting?” the lady piped. She continued to clutch a red phone in her hands hoping, without a doubt, to reach Quen’die’s father.

  “Shut up,” the Xochian croaked back. Even though she got along rather well with Glynna, she couldn’t help but react to the embarrassing intrusion. “Glynna, I’m sorry. I just don’t like people seeing me this way.”

  The lady’s frown from the maiden’s insubordinate shock melted into concern as she saw her future stepdaughter in such a humble position. “Look, I’m going to get your father and we’ll call the health warden. We should have done this yesterday. I really don’t like this. You have caught something serious and it doesn’t seem to be going away on its own.”

  “I have a private warden. He’s been my pediatrician since I was born,” she informed Glynna. “Besides, Cadreth has been taking care of me. It’ll go away. I think it’s just a really bad bug.”

  “Oh, and is he here or in Xo’chi?” the lady challenged as she rested in the bathroom’s doorway. “We may not have time to fly him out here. This is bad. For all I know, you could be dead by then!”

  With a raised and suspecting eyebrow, Quen’die’s mother wondered in the back of her mind if Venn’lith needed not a pediatrician, but a gynecologist. It was quite obvious that the maiden and Cadreth were what seemed to be inseparable ever since meeting each other, and that union included her bedroom. Glynna had been frowning over this arrangement for the last month and decided that she would have never let her Quen’die congregate with a male in a locked room unattended. How ironic, Lady Reyliss observed; as this was the exact delinquency this maiden had accused her daughter of doing.

  Centeo didn’t seem to mind, or at least notice, and Glynna felt like it wasn’t yet her place to protest the behavior. A pang of maternal spite toward the alien lad swelled out of her mouth regardless. “And Cadreth isn’t a doctor!”

  Venn’lith regained her composure with a huff as the foul session with illness had bestowed her with renewed strength. “I know this, Glynna. Either way, he’s sweet and he has been really helpful. He’s been trying to get me to eat, but I just see food and I want to be sick. I think it’s that Thelemex stuff those studio producers are always making me handle. I really wonder what’s in those pills.”

  “Well, I think it’s...,” Glynna’s opportunity to suspect Cadreth in the open was dashed the moment she saw the Xochian’s irises. They were a bright yellow. “Gods, Lith! Your eyes!”

  Her vanity was being assaulted with that and this icy fear straightened her form as she shot up into the mirror above the sink. Her lush mahogany rings, of which she was so proud, were now a sick citrine. She remembered in a horrific flash the symptoms of jaundice and hepatic failure from her Health classes. “Glynna! Is it my liver? I don’t even drink alcohol! I look like a zombie from a horror movie!”

  Lady Reyliss rushed in to embrace the maiden. Venn’lith thundered sobs at her changed form in an instant and raised the cries to a defeated wail. No matter how tender the lady’s embrace, the Xochian could only stare into the glass transfixed at her terrible new colors. “Gods! I look unearthly! I’m ruined!”

  “Shh…,” Quen’die’s mother cooed into the maiden’s long ears. She brushed back the utilitarian ponytail that was draped over one of sun elf’s shoulders and rocked her stiff and bawling form with more warmth than she thought she could for another’s child.

  “Glynna,” Venn’lith alerted through prideful chokes. “What if I’m contagious? You shouldn’t touch me or you’ll turn into a beast as well!”

  The maiden did bring up a couple of good points, Glynna noted. Elfmaids didn’t change eye color in the matter of an evening due to a fateful meeting with a lad, and that Thelemex stuff she was ordered to monger wasn’t of terrestrial origin. Lady Reyliss cooled her embrace upon that.

  “I’m getting a health warden over here now,” she hurried as she ordered up the emergency to her phone. Just in case Venn’lith wasn’t incorrect about communicability, Glynna stepped out of the bathroom with a political curtsey to conduct the call.

  Venn’lith couldn’t bear to look at her eyes any longer. Noticing a nearby towel, she was half-tempted to cover th
e mirror with it just so she wouldn’t see her befouled face by fleeting accident. Her pupils were so small against that diseased yellow and she knew that she would have to wear colored contacts until this problem was resolved.

  As Glynna attempted a calm discussion of the maiden’s symptoms with the circle’s staff on the other end of the flow, Venn’lith knew that the lady’s efforts would be futile. Whatever was wrong with her was certain to be alien to any doctor on Earth, and Cadreth would know better than some haughty scrollworm when it came to diagnosing this condition. Thinking more about it, the Xochian was feeling her familiar anger well up inside. As to whatever was wrong with her, Cadreth should have informed her. There had been so much contact with him over the last month and plenty of it was very close; in the physical sense. Thelemex may not have been the culprit, but rather, a novion with a sordid history with his natives.

  If Cadreth were to blame for her illness, she would have it out with him no matter their size difference. No lad could dare disrespect her like she was some variety of dock-trash. Venn’lith knew that she could handle herself and she was set to have a long and heated conversation with her dearest tutor.

  “All right. Thank you, Doctor, we’ll be waiting here.” Glynna left the flow and turned to Venn’lith. “The doctor will be here tonight. I couldn’t get any possible diagnosis over the phone, but they rarely do that unless it’s life or death.”

  The Xochian’s eyes widened. “But it is life or death! Look at me!”

  “Honey, I know, but we can’t really do anything more until we can get a professional opinion,” she twirled her crimson locks with her free hand out of sheer nervousness. “The health circle claims this guy is the best they have on call.”

  Her words meant nothing as the maiden’s mind wandered through the possible sources of her problem. “Glynna, this is alien. What good would some nighttime-quack be to me? I am sure of it, and I think it’s Cadreth. I’m with him like twenty-four seven.”

  If it were indeed an alien condition, then the lad would be most apt to blame. Glynna could easily see how Venn’lith was entranced by him. Were the lady any younger, she too would have considered some private time with that lad. He held such magnetism that good sense, value or reason no longer mattered whenever he was within eyeshot. It was almost a magical trance and his bright aura bested even Centeo’s. All those Aldebarans were frightfully attractive in their own ways. Not an unpleasant-looking one amongst those whom she had met, but that particular male was downright heavenly. A tingle of adolescent jealousy for the Xochian disrupted her good sense for a second.

  “Well, we can’t go pointing fingers yet, Lith, and you do tend to…assert yourself sometimes,” the lady flicked her eyebrows with her insinuation of the maiden’s terrible temper. “Let’s just see what one from the home team says about this before we go off exploring the medicines of another world.”

  “Whatever,” Venn’lith shot. “I can already feel my strength return some and I’m going to get some water. That is, until I lose it again.”

  Cadreth was not in his guest quarters. Venn’lith found it odd that, after a month, he still had nothing of his own brought in from the arks. No phones or tablets or personal affects, nor were there any other clothes aside from the attire in which she had met him. Everything that was hanging in his closet the maiden had bought for him on one of their many shopping trips. Did the Aldebarans even have things like tablets and computers, she wondered? The lad was a bit tight-lipped about his home, aside from it being dark and dismal.

  He never touched upon by what method they traveled or what their homes were like or any of those details. For the most part, he would just woo her with sweet nothings and volleys of compliments. It was true that he was assigned to train her for some form of supervision for when they made it to the new planet, but most of his tutelage consisted of lessons regarding how to manage the exodus effort on Earth and smiling pretty for the manamirrors. This was what was most odd, she thought. How was she supposed to rule a pioneer society if he couldn’t give her pointers on things like edicts, punishments, population control, the acquisition and securing of another’s resources and, of course, war. What worked very well for her father on a developed Earth may not be so efficient on this strange new world.

  She had attempted on a couple of occasions to bring this subject to light with him, but whenever she did, he would just flash her that look and her concerns were all forgotten. Now that she had a bone to pick with the lad, she felt the nerve to confront him about his poor teaching skills. There would be no way that she would be dumped on a deserted planet without the instruction booklet. “Venn’lith Mitlan: The Queen of Nothing.” – not going to happen.

  When she saw the huge pair of moth wings twittering in the shadows of the unlit lounge down the hall, Venn’lith knew that it was him skulking around. As her stomach was all but devoid of sickness, her familiar anger was easier to muster. “Cadreth! Are you trying to hide from me, Mijo?”

  He let out a surprised yelp from the gloom as if he were somehow caught in the cookie jar. Almost eight feet of winged elf stood before her draped in the dusk of the room. His blue eyes flashed like a cat’s for a split second, and it made Venn’lith think of her dreadful new eye color. “Venn’lith! You surprised me! Are you feeling better, my chinchilla?”

  His efforts to disarm her only made her anger foment into rage. The thing the sun elf hated most was when someone dared to patronize her. Stupid Ping had learned never to attempt such a tactic within the first week of her employment with her family. When Venn’lith Mitlan was angry, one just rode with it or suffered the consequences.

  The Xochian barked at the lounge to summon the lights, revealing the sheepish alien. With all the power left in her form that she could cull, she marched with great poise square into his face which stood about two feet above her. With a chewed-up fingernail, she pointed to a yellowed iris. “Does this look any better?”

  Without a pause, he began to form one of his generous smiles as if he knew very well what was happening, but wanted to change the subject to something lighter. “Lith, my baby, please don’t…”

  “You don’t ‘baby’ me!’” the maiden screamed. Her spite was welled to full capacity and she slapped his wide chest with both of her hands. The shock of his mass jarred back into her elbows as the lad was all but unmovable like a hunk of granite. Any sensible elf would have been horrified at the monumentality of the young elder, but Venn’lith was not impressed or surprised as she was well-versed with his physical superiority.

  Her glare was unbreakable and her thoughts were bouncing back and forth behind her hot face. She had to make a concerted effort to maintain the Atlantean tongue as she knew that she would sometimes slip into her native language when enraged. “You have some explaining to do! I have been violently ill for the past three days and I want to know why! Look at my eyes, Brujo! What did you do to me?”

  “But, Lith, I…”

  “There will be no excuses!” she growled. “Only answers! Is it because of that disgusting drug I have to model around like a puppet? Are you ill with some alien bug that your alleged quarantine didn’t catch? If you don’t get straight with me, I will tell my Papi and he will have you eviscerated!”

  Cadreth had met his match right here on Earth and that was why he supposed that he loved her. Of all the succubae and other myriads of demons and devils that vied for his lustful abilities back home, none of them could hold their own against his wiles like this mortal maiden. Sometimes he would daydream that he had never fallen and the Creator had assigned him to be her deva instead of this unholy arrangement. As he stared back into her angry eyes, he found himself intimidated, and this only made him love her even more.

  “Glynna has just phoned a local quack to come by and give me a full diagnosis of whatever foul disease you gave me! He is sure to be stupid like all Atlanteans and will leave befuddled. You, Cadreth, will enlighten him!” Her grayed and chapped lips were quivering like a rabid m
ongrel.

  “Yes, I can explain,” he cheeped, defeated.

  “Then begin! I command it!”

  Although the lad was close to eight feet against Venn’lith’s 5’10”, he felt so small before her. Her ability to order rivaled that of even Glasya. When he delivered her to the Nine, it was a distinct possibility that she would take over the place just by her sheer will alone.

  “All right,” he gestured over to a comfortable golden sofa next to them. The only sound was the huff of the Xochian’s heaving lungs and the dull hiss of the mansion’s climate control. But you’ll need to sit down for this one.”