Author: Majoki

You’re in your pod and Qwee hides your stylus as a joke. You smack Qwee because there is no other response. Qwee loves it and moves on to hide another podmate’s stylus while you flag the incident with the podmaster. Just another day in the pod.

While swooshing home in the late diurnal warmth, Calpra convinces you to take a detour to the muffitti that’s just opened and you enjoy a very chill taeypop. So sweet, so lovely. You and Calpra sit under the towering susumos, their fragrance so tantalizing you want to climb one and take a bite. You tell Calpra that and you zozz together so hard that half your taeypop falls on the ground and a baby kekaltok darts out from the ori and tries to scoop it up with six wobbly limbs.

You and Calpra zozz harder and you want this time to never end. But the redness is deepening and you have podwork to complete. You nuzzle a goodbye to Calpra and swoosh home.

At mealtime, you want to tell your tssiss about your day, but their talk is all about the Yyesghi. You are tired of all their hushed and serious and anxious talk about the Yyesghi. You think Qwee is more troublesome than the Yyesghi will ever be to you, so you go off to finish your podwork.

Much later, as you are just entering fugue, your tssiss check on you. They haven’t checked on you in a long time. You think it is strange, yet endearing.

Deep in fugue, you experience secondsight. It is unsettling. Qwee is smoldering. Calpra is screaming. Your tssiss are fleeing from an inferno raging in the susumos. It is mayhem. Until you realize, it is the Yyesghi. They are burning everything with their flashers.

Kekaltoks flushed from the ori are being flattened by the invading Yyesghi, though a baby kelkatok just like the one that grabbed your fallen taeypop is not crushed. A Ysesghi picks up the trembling kelkatok and seems to offer it to you. This frightens you more than anything. Still, you take the little creature.

The Yyesghi soldier looks to you and then the kekaltok. You know what the Yesghi wants you to do. You know what is coming. Secondsight is not the future, it is not written. But this is. You clutch the kekaltok harder and harder and harder until the grim understanding of what war expects of you.

Secondsight leaves you. There is a terrible stillness. The moment before this day begins and peace ends.