“Is it me or is that bird watching us?”

“It’s you.”

The day was hot and Luna was outside in the blow-up pool filled shallow and safe. Ant watched her from the kitchen window. She was often in the kitchen and ever since that almost-suffocation incident she’d been keeping a close eye on her, which bothered both herself and Donner because it made visiting Snowman difficult. As it happened, it’d been a whole week and they hadn’t made it back. Well, Donner didn’t care about that so much; Luna was the one who wanted to go visiting. Donner was upset because with Ant’s extra care he couldn’t get her hands on anything he thought he might need to get out of her head and back into his body, which, she’d told him, if it was dead then it’d been dead for a while. It wouldn’t be usable and hadn’t they better find him a different one?

And all of that was dependent on his ability to get out in the first place.

“Stop talking out loud and if you can’t bring yourself to keep quiet, then at least pick up a couple of sticks and pretend to play with them like a normal child would.”

He liked to complain that she wasn’t normal enough and he might be right. If Georgia was normal then Luna was nothing like a normal child and he insisted that Georgie Porgie was normal. The nickname wasn’t allowed to be spoken because it was so-called mean, but Georgia’s size was half the reason the Golds were now vegetarian. The other half was Ungle.

Ungle was a whole concrete wall. A nice thing, it kept you safe from the elements and was fireproof, but big. Super big. He was tall like Ant, but wider. Much wider. Luna wondered how much bigger he was before the whole diet change was implemented. She’d looked through Ant’s old handwritten cookbook, found in a lower cupboard in the middle of the night, and within were all kinds of recipes featuring hamburger, chicken, and pork. Often fried or cheese heavy and Donner said it was no wonder Georgie was such a fattie. Five-years-old and she had to huff her way up the three steps from the garage to the kitchen door after getting picked up from school because riding the bus was too traumatic.

Georgia had given up whining about wanting different food now that Luna was around because she wanted to seem superior and not at all like a baby, but the differences between them were unmistakable. While Georgia still spoke rather slowly and mixed up her words, Luna was a confident speaker when called upon. She didn’t often volunteer information or comments, but when she did there was no mistaking what she was saying. She was so clear and direct that her thoughts came without any filter whatsoever which was how she got in trouble for calling Georgia, Georgie Porgie.

It helped that Donner was a man of many words, her vocabulary was ever expanding these days, but no one was to know that he existed. He insisted on being kept a secret and it made enough sense to Luna that she promised to never speak a word about him. She thought it would be alright to call him an imaginary friend, a lot of children had those. She thought it would make her seem more normal, but he was having none of it. Said it would be degrading.

“No, I think that bird is watching,” she said in her head as she sat still in the pool. As still as the bird.

“It died where it sat.”

“I don’t think so, look,” there it went. “It wasn’t dead, it was watching.”

“Forget about the bird, how are we going to get out of here?”

She didn’t even know where he intended to go. It wasn’t like four-year-olds were allowed to walk around wherever they wanted. Someone would call the police and they’d be watched even more closely after that.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I don’t think leaving will help right now,” she told him. “We don’t need to go anywhere when you can’t even get out in the first place.”

She wasn’t paying much attention to Donner lately; her focus was on Georgia. Not because she didn’t care about Donner and his plight, but because Georgie was right there in front of her being alive and annoying. Her existence was grating. She was a snob if there ever was one, showing off every chance she got and her parents thought it was cute but it wasn’t. She had incomprehensible drawings stuck all over the refrigerator and Luna tried to get the girl to explain even one of them and she couldn’t. Not even Georgie knew what she was doing.

The real problem was that since Georgia didn’t know, Ant and Ungle assumed Luna wouldn’t know either. Georgia was in school since she was two and Luna had never been.

“It’s better they underestimate you.” Something he was trying desperately hard not to do while simultaneously keeping the child herself unaware of his exploration.

Her mind was still a place of mystery. Often dark and muted, low-lights and the flicker of a screen. There was more though. There were places he couldn’t go and doors he wouldn’t touch even if he was able. Dark wood barriers with chains and bolts and locks and warning signs and along the floor swirled a familiar mist, collecting steadily until it would fill and spill out.

The mist in her mind was rising faster than it should have been and he wondered if that was due to his presence. Whether it was or not didn’t matter much, the end would be the same. There was meaning within the mist and most minds didn’t have it, but those that did would begin showing signs of its presence.

He made a job of it when he was young because it was an excuse to practice the mind arts, a particularly well-regulated branch as it was arcane and required the sort of ritualistic preparation they liked to ignore nowadays; their version of progress was trading blood for sticks. The truth was they feared the power because not all could handle it and if they couldn’t themselves, then no one must be allowed to try. When it became clear that their way of life could not continue without the old ways, they sought to control it as best they could. That meant government, regulation, and heavy-handed punishment. In addition, curriculum and a centralized system of education for the children so they would learn early on that such practices were forbidden.

At first, he was a child who knew no better. Ignored by this secret society because unless one was exceptionally wealthy, exceptionally powerful, or from a family with a known or government-connected name they were not offered a place at Nyx and Aether.

The name was little more than a remnant of ideals long forgotten and it's meaning was no longer taught to the children who attended. He’d carved his way in when he discovered his power and set to growing it, something believed to be impossible. They made excuses to themselves when his name appeared on the registry and he was already fourteen, even went so far as to speculate that he was somehow ‘missed’ by the spells that had been in place since the founding of the institution.

Not fucking likely.

He didn’t register because he didn’t meet the threshold until he took matters into his own hands, unknowingly accessing the stores of power kept by the earth and air. Things like that, however, were precisely what they didn’t want to hear and he was a quick learner. School books portrayed things he’d already done, in as little detail as possible so as not to arouse curiosity, as the beginnings of darkness. Yet, wasn’t half the school named for the night?

It didn’t make sense to him, but it wasn’t long before he realized the truth.

Whatever the origins of Nyx and Aether, the original intent was watered down until it was less than grape juice. The digging he did on the institution revealed its initial concept to deal with adults who’d already proven themselves worthy by surviving to maturity with the power. It meant they’d learned control and concealment, that they were determined and intelligent.

The purpose of the school was now to temper those with ability and give false assurance that you were indeed reaching the highest of heights. It was a status symbol and nothing more. The education provided was sufficient for work in the approved and maintained society and most had no idea there could be more, and if they did they believed it to be dark.

Anyone who fell outside societal norms was shunned.