The First and Last Kiss

by Julius St. Clair

  “How long do you think it will be until the world is restored completely?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Mr. Young admitted. “Significant damage was done to our way of life. Many wishes were used in the beginning of the 2nd Era to restore the atmosphere, the wildlife and what not.”

  “Yet no one has wished for the half of the world that was destroyed to go back to its previous state, or to bring back the countless lives that –”

  “We’ve had this discussion before in class,” the middle-aged teacher sighed. “As I’ve explained, we don’t know what happened on that day.”

  “So it’s best to leave a hole in our planet?”

  “A contained, harmless hole. It’s been handled.”

  “There’s no way you could know that.”

  “That is the point of our scouting missions, or have you forgotten?”

  “Someone from Lowsunn has been there? At the edge of the planet?”

  “That will be enough questions from you,” Mr. Young snapped, his eyes darting amongst the other faces for their reactions. Though they appeared squeamish, they kept their focus on him. Isaac raised his hand again.

  “I said no more questions.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Isaac smiled through his mesmerizing blue eyes and ice-breaking smile. “Aidan has one.”

  “Can’t Aidan speak for himself?”

  “He said you wouldn’t call on him if he raised his hand.”

  The audience chuckled and a few of the Elders in the far back began shushing. From the crippling glares they unleashed on Mr. Young afterwards, it was obvious that they were going to intervene if he didn’t take control soon. Why he had called on the child in the first place was beyond their comprehension.

  “Okay,” Mr. Young said with a scowl, pointing to the young man with the spiky black hair. “Fire away.” It was a risky move, allowing Aidan to speak – but if he was able to maintain order during their exchange, he would have gained respect in the eyes of the Elders. A privilege that few possessed.

  “Well, I was thinking,” Aidan began with a sly smile. Many in the audience turned around to watch him complete his sentence. “If we’re supposed to hold off on our Yen –”

  “– here in Lowsunn we call them wishes, Mr. Serafino.”

  “I don’t understand why. The rest of the world calls them Yen, but that’s not what my question is about. What I want to know is why we don’t get to use these ‘beautiful curses’ the way we want to, while the Elders and even you - gets to go wild.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Take this schoolhouse for example. You used a Yen three years ago to turn it into this major interactive experience, and yet you’re the only one who knows how to control it. It’s impressive, but isn’t it a waste? All it does is help you.”

  “It enhances the learning experience and improves the quality of my lessons.”

  “Which are still boring, which is why your attendance is low. The only time anyone comes to your sessions is to hear about Advent, otherwise, no one bothers. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  “I don’t need to justify myself to you,” Mr. Young huffed, feeling the angry, raised eyebrows of his superiors. “Who are you here with anyways? Does your mentor know where you’re at?”

  “Does it matter?” Aidan said. “What you fail to remember is that we are free to choose which courses to attend. This isn’t a school. It’s a simple, scared little town that keeps people in line by dangling small comforts over their head. It does little to prepare us for the outside world. A world that each of us will be forced to encounter whether we like it or not. If it wasn’t for the strike system, no one would even bother getting out of bed.”

  “Once you choose a class to attend, however, you are stuck there,” Mr. Young’s face started to redden. “If you’re skipping an evening class to attend this presentation, then you know that I must hand you over for disciplinary action. Given that you already have two strikes against you, you know what that would mean, don’t you?”

  “I don’t need to think about it,” Aidan said, his lips in a flat line. “Especially since I’ll be leaving.” He began to worm his way to the door when a shout nearly stopped him cold.

  “You stay right there!” Mr. Young barked as the few Elders standing in the doorway made sure to form a trembling humin barrier. They looked down at him in disgust but Aidan challenged them silently, one at a time, with no expression on his face. Then he shifted his gaze back to the forefront and gave the science/history teacher a declaration.

  “Let me out right now or I’ll burn the entire schoolhouse to the ground.”

  He said it with such conviction that Mr. Young nearly fell over in shock. The Elders in the doorway stepped out of his path urgently as the villagers pressed up against each other, sacrificing their comfortable positions to let him step out of the room freely. They dared not even touch his hooded robe. Aidan stopped in the doorway just for a moment, to address the room one last time.

  “Keep the Discipline Squad out of my hair for this, and I’ll ensure you all keep yours.”

  He didn’t wait for a reply, leaving as fast as he could, and the room burst into scared whispers and murmurs of concern. Isaac sucked his teeth and chased after him, nearly tripping three times before he hit the door and the dense warm air outside. He caught up to Aidan quickly and joined his stride under the canopy of low hanging tree branches and a thick silver haze. The village of Lowsunn was tranquil and actually pleasant now that most of its inhabitants were being held hostage at the presentation. He didn’t care to see the rest – about how chaotic the world had become, how it had been relatively organized before Advent, blah, blah, blah.

  “Geez, Aidan, what was that all about?” Isaac chuckled nervously. “You weren’t really going to set that place ablaze if they kept you there, were you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Yeah, okay. Stupid question.”

  “This whole place is laughable,” Aidan sighed as he picked up the pace, not yet sure of his intended destination. “It’s a prison, not a quaint little village in the middle of the forest. It’s the only explanation for why the general populace lives in cabins the size of birdhouses while the Elders are in miniature mansions. It’s all one big joke.”

  “There’s room for improvement, but it’s still our home. A place that we will be at for a very long time, if we’re lucky. Might as well get used to it.”

  “Hard to when you already have two strikes. It’s plain history. No one with a strike gets an exemption. Not a single one.”

  “Well, I don’t have any, so it kind of sucks to be you,” Isaac laughed, throwing his hands behind his head. “Did you hear me? It kind of – oh never mind.”

  “We can leave whenever we like,” Aidan said, ignoring him. With barely a thought, he stopped to pick up a stray twig from off the dirt road and threw it into the nearby brush. Isaac thought over the comment as he let out a big yawn. The annual presentation of Advent was one of the few times the village would be up well past curfew, talking excitedly about how they could each contribute to a world that still needed so much bandaging. How their involvement in Lowsunn would eventually give them a purpose they had yet to figure out themselves. The excitement would all end tomorrow though. Aidan had already seen it happen four times. The inevitable news of a scouting mission gone wrong, a new threat discovered lurking at their borders, another wish rumored to be used for the further decimation of Obsidian...it was only a matter of days before their ambitions were crushed like the berries they hovered laboriously over to make their morning coffee.

  “Yeah, we could leave this place,” Isaac said finally. “But if we do it now, we won’t have much to look forward to. What are you going to do out there? Use a wish to secure yourself a shelter? Fight over a body of fresh water? You’re better off here. No worries. All the water you can drink. The food you can eat. Shelter. Protection. Warmth.”
r />   “So you would rather live comfortably in a cell than see the world and be free?”

  “It feels like an easy choice to me. Let’s see…stay here until my wishes are used for the greater good, in which case I’m then kicked out and I’ll be seeing the world anyways…or, leave now and die. Hmmm.”

  “I survived out there once. We can do it.”

  “Ha,” Isaac retorted. “From what I’ve heard about you, your definition of ‘survived’ is very different from mine.”

  “Well, there’s definitely no way we’ll make it if we don’t have our Yen as backup. It doesn’t make sense to travel once the Elders have already used you and you have no way to defend yourself.”

  “From what I hear, they equip you quite well before they kick you out the door. And there’s rumors of sister villages being created nearby. Why does it always have to be mud with you? Can’t it be rich soil sometimes?”

  “Why do I even bother talking to you?” Aidan groaned, casting his eyes up to the moon. “Nothing is ever solved. I might as well be talking to myself in the mirror.”

  “Oh, no. This is much better,” Isaac chuckled, patting him on the shoulder. “After all, your reflection doesn’t talk back. Right? I mean, it doesn’t, right?”

  “Get off of me,” Aidan growled, throwing his shoulder back violently. “Your hands are so soft, I find them offensive.”

  “As I find your hair,” Isaac muttered, throwing his hands into his pockets. “But you don’t hear me trying to shank your feelings.” He sucked his teeth and thrust his hands back out into the air. The village clothes were notorious for their roomy, dark blue pants that were strangely designed with pockets barely able to contain a pebble. All were expected to wear a bright yellow, long sleeve shirt and then the worst of all – the child-sized backpacks. Little fanny packs that you kept on your back, held together by a belt across the chest. It was hilariously cruel, but that was the local weaver for you. Until someone else decided to either learn the craft or wish to become a master textile worker, they were all at the mercy of Luca Lorde.

  Of course, Aidan never wore the standard issued clothing, opting to don the thick, hooded robe and cloak his father had given to him on the day he graduated secondary school. It was drenched in black and littered with sharp strokes of hot red across its surface, as if they were cuts into his skin. No other symbols or patterns were emblazoned upon it otherwise, and Aidan saw no reason to decorate it further. He already had enough markings.

  “So where are we going now?” Isaac asked, rubbing his hands through his messy blonde hair. From the steadily rising tide of voices far behind them, they could tell that the presentation was now over, and soon they would both be overtaken with an assortment of disgusted, shocked and respectful glares.

  “Bed,” Aidan declared. Isaac rolled his eyes. Aidan’s hibernation schedule was directly correlated with the amount of villagers who were awake. The more there were, the less he tended to be around. If it hadn’t been for Isaac’s insistence, Aidan wouldn’t have even gone to the schoolhouse. In hindsight, Isaac thought to himself that perhaps that would have been the better move. Still, he knew where Aidan truly went in the deep of night…

  They continued walking casually, past the miniature cabins that were all designed exactly the same. Whomever had wished them into existence had little imagination. The vegetation surrounding the cabins, however, made up for their lack of décor. Reaching across the sides and over the humble rooftops, thick white tree branches stretched over with a decadent array of flowers in full bloom. An explosion of blues and pinks and yellows pushed against the tree leaves and kissed up against the wooden posts of the village homes. There were even a few Yen born arbors that produced flowers within flowers. However, these Yen-manifested flowers were unique: in full bloom, their eerie luminescence rivaled even that of the moonlight in radiance.

  The local birds, each known by name, traversed back and forth between plants, carrying the seeds to dull brown spots behind the houses and creating new jaw-dropping scenery whenever one fell and became part of the rich soil. Though there was little sunlight that could break through the sentinel forest canopy up above, the surroundings and ambience of Lowsunn was undeniably rich and cozy.

  Though he would never admit it, even Aidan was apprehensive over how easily the scenery would take his breath away and force new creations and possibilities to be born in the recesses of his imagination. An outsider looking in would think it was paradise.

  But it wasn’t.

  It couldn’t be.

  It was just a pretense. A ruse to make him comfortable. And the moment he fell into comfort’s arms, he knew he would be taken unawares, his Yen stolen from him either through torture or some other unspeakable measure. It didn’t matter if Lowsunn was the most relaxing environment he had ever laid eyes upon in his whole life.

  It was not impenetrable. And its inhabitants were trying so hard to believe that it was. Just because it provided necessities that were no longer guaranteed in the new world: a secure shelter, an abundance of fresh water and food…community…it didn’t mean it was invincible. It had survived almost a decade, but how long until its luck ran out?

  Lowsunn used to be a real village with another name, but none of the original townspeople were there anymore. No one was sure why, but then again, there had been a lot of madness when Advent came. Wishes being used left and right, and without restraint at the time. All the Elders knew for sure was that the founder (Judge bless his soul) had used one of his wishes to restore the village to its rightful, pre-event origins, and then used his second and final wish to throw a massive, invisible barrier around it, preventing from entering all those who didn’t have permission from the chosen Elders. Without having to worry about the danger that was outside of Lowsunn’s walls, the village was able to truly focus on the only real task at hand: surviving.

  “You think the Elders will ever give us a scouting mission?” Isaac asked as they reached their quarters. All single men and women bunked together in their own respective cabins as if they were at boys’ and girls’ academies. They were each at separate ends of the village (boys to the south, girls to the north) but it wasn’t necessary considering there were few midnight excursions. Everyone knew the risks. Getting caught after curfew meant banishment. Banishment meant death.

  “What are you talking about?” Aidan replied, half-listening.

  “I hear they’re going to announce their selections at the dance,” Isaac said. “You know. The Dance of Yesterday?”

  “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t you ever wonder how we get our away missions?”

  “I never paid much attention. The odds of me being picked for one are astronomical.”

  “Because the Elders hate you. Your birthday is probably what they call their Advent. But I might be picked for one. Would you be sad if I left?”

  “You wouldn’t be gone long, so no.”

  “What if I got killed while I was away? Would you be sad then?”

  “You would have gone on the mission knowing full well the possibilities.”

  “So is that a no?”

  “That’s a no.”

  “You’re the only thorn in the rose garden, aren’t you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Aidan groaned. “And what’s with the hypothetical situations? There’s only one thing we should be worried about right now. The end of our fifth year.”

  “You mean how we’re supposed to give our wishes to the Elders?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I take it you have no intention of following through on that.”

  “Do you?” Aidan asked, turning to face Isaac for the first time in their conversation. Isaac grinned and shook his head.

  “Hey, Aidan!” a student of Mr. Young shouted from behind them. They turned to see a short, stocky boy with glasses that were more like goggles. “Heard about your threat during Mr. Young’s presentation. What are you doing? Trying to gradu
ate early? You know you’re not getting expelled while those are still active.” He pointed directly at Aidan’s right arm.

  “I understand that, Jared,” Aidan said.

  “Then what’s the deal?”

  “I have a plan.”

  “Oh? Do tell.”

  “I would rather not,” he said, staring forward. “The walls have ears and the wind is an excellent messenger.”

  “Isn’t he hilarious when he gets all metaphorical like that?” Isaac laughed. “Don’t know where he gets it from.”

  “Fine, whatever,” Jared huffed. He turned to Isaac. “You watch out for this one. He’ll get you in trouble too.”

  “Oh, I’m fully aware,” Isaac chuckled. Jared waved bye and ran off to the right as the two boys remained outside their home. The crowd from the presentation must have decided to mingle in the village center, located further north and in the opposite direction the boys had gone. The voices were now at a tolerable volume.

  “Guess I don’t have to blow a hole in the shield next week,” Aidan said, looking towards Isaac for a reaction. All he did was raise an eyebrow in puzzlement.

  “Because you have a master plan all of a sudden?”

  “Tell me more about these missions.”

  “Basically the Fourth and Fifth Years are their strongest and most mature, so the best of them are sent on missions outside of the Institute.”

  “I already know that part.”

  “You want to learn something or not?”

  “Fine. Go on.”

  “I think the Elders use the somewhat established adults because they don’t want to risk their own lives to procure supplies and information.”

  “I don’t even want to know what it takes to get established around here…still, what I don’t understand is why they use Fifth Years. They have the most to lose. They could stay out there as long as they pleased, and if anyone tried to bring them back, they could just use their Yen to resist.”

  “There are chaperones of course,” Isaac replied.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “So your master plan is to go on one of the missions and then bail?”