In the dim light of an afternoon where the first star had already risen, there was a strange hush that came over Gladius’s office.

  “Hebel is coming in today.”

  “What? Why on earth should he come in? He never personally-checks in on the work-place branches of Hevel-Wing laboratories. He didn’t even do that when they were under his duress. Alright, he may be retired from research science and no longer Hevel industries CEO, but he still sits on their board and he’s still Head of State. I mean really, surely, he has better things to do?”

  “He wants to speak to Gladius.”

  “Why? He is just a lowly groundling.”

  “I know.”

  “This is not well known,” Hebel murmured as Gladius shifted nervously in his chair in the staff meeting room.

  “But I am actually quite fanatical about the man who pioneered the gene technology in Olden Vale. He was a gifted scientist and perhaps a more gifted orator.”

  Let our providers prove we have fingers with the enchanter’s flick: We shall undo the tangles in fluttering genetic strands and rewrite the broken, genetic notes: replace a bloodied weep with metallic singings. Our mathematical formulas will weave steely, silk-web Nanos and the flights of cellular music.

  Taking Evolution by the Horns.

  “Taken from his third passage on controlled evolution,” Hebel explained.

  “This description of the beauty and nobility that is controlled evolution, inspired me to create the machine, Monovalent, that builds perfect and renewable genes. A machine that controls and oversees every dear little cell’s divide so not a thing can go wrong. Tell me, my lad, could anyone but me or Twiloe ever conceive of or build such a thing? Only, my many musings all lead to achievement and not all, but certainly a myriad of his endeavours, failed.” An odd smile the solemn and elegantly-stood Hebel’s, demeanour, brightened. Winded about his superior’s sombre eyes and mouth. Glowed more prettily-golden than the little viticella buttercup as it is first bloomed sunnily upon a dull Arbor vine.

  “That child, that girl that came here Forlornidae, the one whose feet lie flowers, she is actually one of the only true successes of his technology and I want to see and study her more than I have ever desired anything. She was granted residency here so that we could find out what went right and maybe use that knowledge to devise treatments for our brothers outside Vandalier. So, you shall bring her here and introduce me. It would not behove me to meet her under laboratory circumstances.” Hebel’s polished shoes glinted black and smooth and dimmed Gladius’s own to gray.

  “That is a very unpleasant kind of first meeting and besides I only need a skin swab and a single lock, for our analysis. She may not even come in directly and may simply have the material sent over. I know you can tell her of my wishes: after all you summer in the same gardens after work, since this office lies right near the Northerly Apartments. Where Forlornidae dwells.”

  “Why was my mother terminated? We were told it was a plot against the state, but most facts were withheld from the public and even from us, her family. We have a right to know.”

  Gladius was startled and horrified upon realising the words had left his tongue.

  To the boy’s surprise, Hebel answered immediately. His long, slender lips dripped downward, and his eyes turned the warming light around him cold.

  “She committed high treason,” he said.

  “What?”

  “She was found to be plotting with some of the Olden Valers who were graciously granted refuge here, to assassinate and overthrow higher-ups.”

  “I thought that kind of violent dissent was impossible due to Monovalent’s access to all thoughts.” Gladius’s gaze had become uncertain.

  “She and the other miscreants she was conspiring with, used a technique called the Wailing Wall. People who work here have told me you’re an absorber; someone who enjoys gathering as much information as he can on everything around him. I thought therefore you might perhaps have already heard of it: the information’s classified but not that classified.”

  Hebel gazed up at the boy.

  “If you shout incessant and innocuous things in your head and somewhat bury and push away the treasonous or illegal thoughts but at the same time, write them down (something that must be done somewhat unconsciously) Monovalent and the Hebel machine readers will be temporarily distracted and thus not hear your subconscious thoughts. They are hard to decipher at the best of times. You can then hand the writings over and voila, your message is conveyed, and you’ve blinded poor Monovalent’s eye.”

  Hebel gracefully raised a suited leg and nudged a nearby askew chair into a straighter, neater position.

  “The Nanomaids would have done that…” Gladius chimed in softly.

  “I do it better.”

  “Violent, subconscious thoughts are only illegal if you can point to any attempt to put them into action,” Gladius then said.

  “Writing them down and sharing them with others counts. At that point it is no longer considered a thought, it becomes instead an action. You have not been reading up on your law. Besides, we have little tolerance for political take-over or assassination attempts. Hopelessly-futile as they might be to even attempt to execute.”

  “Who…who was she after? Nameless people in government to send a warning message or anyone in particular?” Gladius’s young, surprisingly-soft mouth, paled.

  “Me. She, they, were planning to take out me. I am often considered to blame for Vandalier’s strict policy on carefully-considered, cultural assimilation.” Hebel paused.

  “This characterisation is not unreasonable. When I created my first workable prototype for undetectable, self-sustaining, roaming nano-eyes (are they not wonderful? Nothing on my later work of course) and then sold these dear trinkets to governments, armies, civilian homes and businesses world-wide for security and surveillance, I had a very clear plan.” Hebel smiled.

  “I used the money to fund my own offshore civilisation, our dearest Vandalier. It took in a certain number of people from all across the world including the poor and downtrodden and I offered them the ultimate gift: a guaranteed home and employment. “

  Hebel’s voice faltered. He frowned bluely at the stone-black table and licked his lips just a little.

  “Order me a coffee son; extra froth.”

  Gladius sent a message over the spirit line and some of Monovalent’s little, split Nanomaids began preparing his order before bringing it through. There was an undetectable click clacking as they formed little fingers to make the drink. They drifted toward the two men and handed the beverage over and then the tiny fingers dissipated.

  The Mites having lost their humanised shape, began floating darkly and greyly and amorphously again, in their little sentient cloud.

  “With the completion of my true life’s work, Monovalent, I offered Vandaliens and only Vandaliens, immortality. “

  Hebel spoke once more, after carefully blotting and cleaning his lips of froth. He clasped his drink, and his long fingers rosed as they warmed.

  “I was very stringent, Gladius. I made uttermost sure everyone who was welcomed here would flourish and contribute to our core values of earthly and humanly preservation, education, and a perfect balance of technological innovation and caution.”

  Gladius’s entire form had become weak and stilted.

  “How…how do you know she committed treason? How did you get past the Wailing Wall?”

  Hebel sighed softly and thoughtfully.

  “It’s a pretty risky technique. The wall only lasts a short while and people don’t write things down anymore since anything can be communicated directly via the sprit line. Most people have only been taught to write in case of emergency so they cannot write quickly. Incidentally, if the spirit line fails, we will have worse problems than that. So do your job well. At any rate, if you’re too slow to pen the message, the wall starts to crack and Monovalent can see and hear your thoughts and access what you have written.”

  Hebel released the porcelain cup and dusted off his hands.

  “The jury found her and them, easily-guilty. It was not all heartless: she was allowed to return home to say her family farewells and for one last meal. In the old days when we could not terminate people instantly, they had to be locked up to keep others safe. So, you’re fortunate you got to spend that last night at home with her.”

  Hebel’s voice softened a little, but Gladius did not feel it had yet lost its harsh edge. “Listen. Your mother was given a fair and just trial. I give all, even my greatest enemies the pinnacle of justness and yet still they fall to dust. Funny that boy. Perhaps don’t bother making me your enemy. Your father’s a good man I hear, and he’s raised you well, my young Gladius Riesling.”

  He placed a strong and surprisingly-reassuring hand, on Gladius’s broadening, adolescent shoulder.

  “Though of course your mother’s fate was never in my hands understand: the law tried her and Monovalent caught her, not me. I had no say in this. This was not vengeance. I did not attempt to use my power to sway influence. Not that I could. Our system’s pretty air-tight and our laws and their intent are not open to interpretation. They are laid out clear as day.”

  “Remember, Monovalent may seem godly but he is just as subjugated as you and I and everyone else. If he ever breaks a law, just one, his entire system will involuntarily fail, and he’ll perish. He is not allowed to “interpret law” or draft it that is still left to humanity. He can only enforce the law. Or make valid suggestions for its alteration that may be voted upon by us and considered.”

  Hebel moved a large foot that was rested to ever to slightly close to his chair: seamlessly.

  “I know you and your ilk will survive but also become mortal again, with the severing of the breathing gene, and so let us pray his integrity and will to live both uphold.”

  “The system will hurt you sometimes, but it will ultimately protect those who most deserve protection, including you. Don’t lose your faith.”

  The man bestowed on Gladius, a kind, fatherly smile. In the aftermath of the conversation, there was little but silence and air vents chirping. Then the startled boy rose and left; quashed and quietly.

  Gladius walked away fleetly, and through dangling creepers of shadow, which resulted in a further browning of his hair.

  I would like to marry Forlorn, Hebel thought. In a sandstone chapel, under the shivery black-and-white swallowtails, in the morning velour.

  “That’s illegal, sire,” Monovalent chimed in. Ever-listening in on his more unsavoury thoughts.

  “Don’t refer to me as sire it isn’t as humorous as you believe it to be.”

  “You know I meant not when she is a Virgin’s Bower but when she does into a grown-up fledge. I meant when she is of age, of course. Some girls and boys are bright and romantic creatures from a young age; set clearly apart from the muddy waters of their siblings and it does not take long for them to fairly-flower. Though they can be trifle bores full of childlike unawareness and a youthful flightiness until then.

  “She is the closest thing to E.M.R’s dream of a beautiful chimera with all the finer trappings of its animal siblings and none of the graver follies. She even resembles his dearly-departed bride. I must have her. E.M.R’s love died shying from his arms and before the white wedding. I must have this lost love of my mentor; reanimated and remade.”

  “I must have all that he once sought, before death is whirled upon me during some lousy and still half-sleeping, dawn.”

  “You must know, that I need any dear consolation I can grasp a hold of as I am not even a part of my own breathing gene,” he said bitterly.

  “Since of course only embryonic infants can be engineered to hold its wonder. I want to soak in as much of controlled evolution’s successes before the breath and blood are my lips forever leaving and the gold becomes the greyed.”

  Forlorn finished her steak. She fell into dreams about the day she first came to Vandalier. The moment her slender footfalls ceased to patter past Guile’s streets and slipped away from underneath its hail’s head, she found she missed the trees that sang, the stony buildings they belled and all the morning hares. They were all forsaken still; to darkling grazes and grey-brown rains and a beautiless chime rung forever throughout the valleys.

  She had leapt from the vale of tears; from its charred lowlands and polluted weeps and skipped from its bruise-limbed folly yet she its murks mourned as one misses the forgone beauty of a tree when gazing upon the decaying remnants of its memorial leaves. Its every lost colour she bereaved.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Forlorn continued to dream of her first steps into Vandalier and her meeting with the greeter.

  “We eat revitalised creatures here. First, the creatures are taken to laboratory faculties,” the greeter had told her stroking his sandstone stubble. “They are then injected with this compound that we sometimes use to un-spoil food. It reverses necrosis and tissue death without requiring access to the spirit-line. It was found in a recently discovered animal the parkey and can be used to temporarily revitalise cellular matter. It won’t bring the body of animals back to life but will enliven some of the tissues. We revert the parts we intend to consume to an earlier, healthier stage.” He’d explained.

  “We also have no foreseeable mortality and no tumours or cancerous follies.” His smile had brightened as he boasted.

  “How do you become a Greeter?” Forlorn had started to skip merrily without realising it, and his eyes had tracked the tapping movements that winded the flowers of her feet. Their pretty, pale roses in bloom. Sudden awareness of her dopey, childish skips and his clear disdain of her pretty, white blooms, made her embarrassed even in dream, and a little enraged.

  “Anyone can volunteer to show the city to people but it's not permanent work. I’m a researcher on my good days. So, as someone working in the industry, I know all about revitalisation. In fact, I’m head of a team attempting to further improve the lab-grown versions of Parkey cells. I know even the technology that once worked well in your home was lost in more recent years. Why, you’re so young you may not even remember some of it. Most of those expensive government programs that invested in the manufacturing of it collapsed alongside much of the corporate sector who worked on it. You must know what I mean.”

  Forlorn had then saw a fall leaf drifting by the man’s earlobe as his head moved to the side. She loved the curling coils of human ears and in particular those of the female or child: they were like little black or white shells.

  “I’m referring to the technological loss that happened during the mass recession and mass-suing. When people harmed by the corporation’s products all demanded reimbursements neither the corporate sector nor the government could afford to pay. The suing and exposés of various shady corporate dealings, were what finally toppled your biggest biotech conglomerate, Delver’s Dream Forms. Awful, awful company we cheered its fall even here.”

  His gazed had lifted; stony and steely.

  “That’s so infamous you must at least know that. Otherwise, what are they teaching you in that backwater?”

  Forlorn had blanched.

  Well, it’s hardly your fault. Many university research areas in your home were discontinued due to lacking funds available from governments, private benefactors or charitable donation.”

  “I knew that…” Forlorn had murmured but he did not even appear to be half-listening.

  “Look young lady, eventually people including Olden Valers have to come to realise it’s often all about trial and error and patience. That said, I understand it may seem a little tedious to you more youthful ones so full of energy and rebelliousness.”

  “I like the screener,” Forlorn had said, after a long while simply listening. Her small hands had fiddled about; brushing folds that adorned her garment. One with a skirt just knee-below. She’d stroked the mothy ends of a dusk-pink dress. Settled upon the cotton and crepe, a hand.

  The dress had soft, shifting layers like petals yet a ballooning at its lightly-coloured edges was more like some craggy cloud. One white, weeping. A black felt hat with a silk, burgundy-red ribbon had blew about, and her lashes (darkness in a thicket ringed) as were gradually falling; creeping further down the large languor of a female eye.

  The greeter had smiled graciously.

  “This screener was made by one of our old, engineer-artists and based on a design by our founder. The artist was one of the earliest residents of Vandalier that Hebel took under his wing. Ruth, I think was her name. The original ones were eerily similar in colour and material. With a slightly different pattern. A mass curling in the lightest shades of gold. A white-and-green entangle of metallic ivy.”

  He'd gazed upon Forlorn’s lofty fur and flowers. “It used to double as a medical device and could to a hand attach and scan for things like blood pressure and vitals: lasted years. The Nanomaids perform such tasks now though”

  “Is this the main part of Vandalier, how big is it?” the dream-Forlorn asked.

  “Not even near. People, especially young and ill-travelled ones are the under mistaken impression we’re centralised, we are not. We’re spread out in a lot of countries and cover large plots of gated land abandoned during the great worldwide depression: our founder funded, re-opened and flourished them. Or helped us to do so. It was our hard work he always said, that this place built.”

  Forlorn had again licked her lower, fairer lip; “long-ago they ran many scare campaigns about totalitarianism and a complete loss of freedom, if you came here to live.”

  “Don’t worry. Yes, we’re not perfect. Our detractors despite claiming to be above black and white terms, certainly thought they were. Despite many unsafe practices and relying on what we consider a slave labour force. Since a large percentage of them can’t afford and are thus denied, basic necessities: housing, food, basic medical care.”

  He’d frowned to himself.

  “Well, I suppose we’re controlling communists who assassinate anyone who plucks a pink toe out of the restrictive water and in Olden Vale you’re ruled by laws based on mass hysteria over facial discrimination and the tyrants of nepotism, whose ruling they inherited.”

  The man’s voice alongside the noonday sunlight had risen and he’d laughed.

  “In our opinion, real freedom is to have your basic bodily needs meet and achieve some ability to live a worthy, productive and comfortable existence: one not thrown away on unneeded, dangerous excess. Here, life’s not bad; I at least personally think our peace and beauty outweigh the giving up of a little chaos.”

  “You walled yourself off from us, your needful siblings in Unified Grounds.” Forlorn had protested with indignation.

  “Our rigorous health standards and walling ourselves off from other countries to keep disease at bay and our strict policy of vigorous disease testing, do have their downsides. Especially since, even if you implanted such changes outside Vandalier, your people probably won’t live to see the results. Migration offers you at least a little chance of survival and some of the addicting substance you manufacture there, give one a little mind-numbing joy when nothing else works.”

  That statement had been enough to blow Forlorn under quite the grim gale and she blinked away before they became visible, a fringe of lightly-fluttering tears.

  “Took me so long to see the outside point of view,” the man had furthered. “Yet after meeting so many from where you live and speaking with them, I slowly learnt to appreciate it.” This statement of understanding was given to her with a warming smile.

  “Despite our strictness, I at least promise, we lie fully-democratic. You can always have your say in our proceedings. Actually, if the de-maskers succeed (or those religiously-insane ones who think we should quickly blow it all up so as to achieve the ascent to paradise) our way, anti-freedom or otherwise, won’t last long.”

  Forlorn had slightly opened her mottled mouth. He had definitely noted this, for he turned and said;

  “If your other question is the one we always get from foreigners, are we nationalists it depends on your definition. If it’s are we communists, we don’t consider ourselves such, though some do and are to make that case, welcome. Though I personally never agreed with their arguments. There’s a set living wage for all here and life’s very comfortable but yes, there is still a huge variation in wealth and achievement.”

  The greeter was clearly most proud of Vandalier almost as if it was his own child, Forlorn had noted.

  “Particularly lucrative are the heights of technology, science, film and things literary and philosophical. We relish in the creation of beautiful arts. These are all things our founder considers the pinnacle of human endeavour but he also holds in high esteem the most popular bakeries and professionals; particularly in the cream of the medical establishment, and yes, values politics as well.”

  He had then pointed toward a grand apartment, “we’re here.”

  “No-one works more than seven hours as a rule in Vandalier, except for emergencies and all money you make is yours to keep except a small portion that will be used for public welfare such as powering Monovalent, road upkeep and educational uses. The same taxing and tolling you’d near anywhere find.”

  “Are people allowed to leave here if they wish and were they always?” Forlorn this inquired with a touch unwitting of nervousness. “I thought you were allowed to leave at any point from Vandalier’s very beginnings but some of the older people I overheard conversing on it back home, said otherwise. Online history books are not clear either. They claimed you controlled how people lived, ate and breathed. Even monitored their very thoughts via the Hebel-line. They said you were an inescapable prison. I know you’re not and I mean no disrespect. I simply wonder why they suggested Vandalier were a prison so strongly.”

  “People don’t depart often. You may leave temporarily as long as you submit for a small quarantine after. You can also leave permanently. Those sound-like rumours and mudslinging; the things you said people back home were saying. That’s all propaganda from the days they were desperate to keep people out of Vandalier. Now they’re all utterly adamant to be let in here.”

  He had looked into Forlorn’s eyes once more.

  “You know even though we forwent the tech used to make you what you are and well, we were proved right as it is far too endangering yet you really did turn out such a nice combination” he smiled. “A distinct shadow-beauty.” She recalled the term suddenly, that he had murmured.

  It was a term she did not know, and he did not deign to explain, and she was uncertain whether she had been at all meant to this last remark hear. A strange little descriptor she would again listen to and hear coming out of the semi-hushed lips (and under the wonderful, even and rhythmic breath) of one or two other residents here.

  Eventually she’d be driven to look up its meaning. Which turned out to be a derogatory (or not, depending on how one looked upon the matter) term for someone inhuman and who despite being a shadow of humanity and a shadow of that former self, were nonetheless beautiful. With the added implication, the source said, “that such successful and aesthetically-pleasing mergers, made being such a creature seem appealing.” For better or for worse.

  Weeks from that time Forlorn first looked into the origins of the term shadow-beauty, upon some shivery September morn, young Mollify laughed. He’d been lounging outside the Northerly Apartments visiting Forlorn on a youth’s day-pass (after that humiliating and unnecessary quarantine as if he could ever be diseased) and had recognized the newest tenant. Though he’d not seen him since he was eleven years old. He was the boy who “recruited” him for lack of a better term Mollify could think of and that might otherwise suit, to join the demaskers.

  His face was not the same, his hair had gone from black to golden and he clearly had a new holo but his cold, rain-in-a-ravine scent and his high-pitched, whinny of a breath and the way he walked with two quick taps of a right foot and the dragging stagger of a left(as if that one was slightly misshapen or shorter than the other) was unmistakable. He also seemed to have two other, quite small and hearty limbs, which grabbed at nearby landmarks and sheet-stones for balance. They were hidden by the holo but as they brushed hairy through the air, they rather lemur-like, sounded.

  Mollify had met this most fascinating and interesting fellow, a school mate in a higher year, preaching about how man need to stay the course of human-guided evolution: telling Mollify he could only imagine what unique and diverse glory lay beneath that mask made to ruin his face.

  Mollify nodded at him seriously and said;

  “I declare that likely you would become amazed.” His tongue silvered and he tried to convey a feeling of being very solemn. Later with a ricochet of uttermost warmth, he laughed.

  A laugh of some little derision and yet total sincerity in its mallow-springing. Mollify could not believe anyone was so deluded that they might wish to remain a genetic experiment. A failure and freak on the same or worse level than the humans formed by erroneous DNA. Been by nature and happenstance sickened and misshapen. At least they’d often sought medical technology to alleviate such prior ailments not commission them.

  While he lay laughing, he started to sound more and more like a bird. A sound like silver and that came out lightly in a whistle: one differentiated from the heavy, cruel, bronze chortles of his fellows that were more bitter and sadistic than humorous. Nevertheless, his amusement too, contained a wicked undertone. There was also sweet merriment in his voice. From nothingness it echoed and in a rather metallic beauty it was commandingly-strung.

  He recalled how he went to a meeting they had scheduled for the youths too young to join the official organization, and their minor political party.

  He managed to flutteringly-charm them well enough; with that most-fairly-modulated voice. He knew how to channel an intone that would complement the wants and mood of the listener and had an easy-going appeal and the grace of one whose tongue quick-fleeted: lithe but effortless.

  He could have melted the now-wasted ice-caps afore the warmed summer them quelled and was thusly-able to rise up as leader of the local school-branch, who were all sixteen and under, before tending his resignation due to entirely-fabricated health issues.

  He knew the more militant branch (those that were ignored by some other members and endorsed secretly by others) had been responsible for the protest bombings after the law were past that mandated treatment to help keep the alterations to DNA at some bay and revert the genes closer to their original human form.

  Mollify, for his part, during his time within the youth group had tried to give them some genuinely helpful tips.

  He’d suggested they “go softer and rouse up support for repeal of the mandatory masks and have the regulations upon gene splicing relaxed and relegated for now, to simulation-models. Vandalier has models that suggest we could vastly improve the outcomes of gene manipulations.”

  “If we do that,” he explained, “we can later persuade the government to allow for and invest in, improvement of the technology and keep us as the wonderful, cybernetic and animalised beings we are: only more thriving and with the abilities and perfect forms we were promised.”

  “Seriously, why did you do it Mollify?” Forlorn had asked such, when he had regaled his exploits to her over the electronic veil. “You don’t believe in any of this.”

  “I just wanted to see if I could or since I knew I could; prove it,” he’d said. “Plus, these days who truly gets to do undercover work?”

  “That’s what you were doing Mollify? Are you interested in journalism or politics?”

  “No. Music is my only mistress. Maybe I was bored. Is it true you’re going back home for a while, Forlorn?”

  “Yes. I’m going to visit my old school and then maybe travel out to Green-Rose City. I always wanted to visit its centre with the old malls.”

  “Don’t forget to put your holographic beautifier on. You don’t want anyone fainting if they accidentally touch your face and realise there’s no holo.”

  Forlorn giggled. “Did Miss Brikley really collapse when one of the demaskers unveiled himself beside her while she was standing on the street?”

  “I think so. You do realise how much of an absolute gossip Allery is though, Forlorn? You can’t trust a single tale or string of yarn that she spins. She is awful entertaining though.”

  He had then closed the connecting Spirit-Cast and smiled to himself. He thought of Forlorn and she in turn thought of him-as she packed her belongings to go visit home and her old school Haven Foley, by first train and an early cloudless light, upon the rising of the morrow.

  “Let’s go the see the lights Forlorn, it’s so good to have you back if only for a little while. Do tell me what it is like in Vandalier and how amazing is it that the people there live forever and ever.”

  This was exclaimed by a voice both young and chipper. Her locks were bouncing about. She had that kind of multi-coloured and not quite blonde, but far closer to light than dark, "shrouded-in-the-fair” hair.

  Slightly-glowing in the shade, dimly as a mire-flower but one with a startling golden crest. Beauty valleyed in its red, soft amass.

  The underside was darker; a musty cabinet of curls plucked from the deserted manor and which rested below many a lighter lock, dimming its pale-sprig. The ends were the gold-tressed grass within the countryside. Took of Titan’s Flora. Her breath was a little soft and laboured but her hair was healthy and bonny and never stilted; like it was forever caught in a wuthering. Continuously back and forth flinging.

  She and Forlorn, who, being a Little Glider was floating slightly above the ground, were both surrounded by a modest shawl of foliage. Fairy, golden skippers and lake-eyres, beautified the shadows. Chimeric leaves russeted many a walkway. The particular one they travelled past winded beneath a gothic gale; winged with smoke-black edges. As pollution greyed the light.

  The frog sheaves were out in the daylight; toad-limbed and doll-eyed, bodies mostly scarlet but lightly-eared. Death would be upon them were they to ever cease their frantic darting or halt their singing.

  Mercati was the closest Forlorn had ever got to having a friend back home, besides Mollify, and she was one of few people that Forlorn might ever feel inclined to visit. Mercati was burdened with such a moniker because she was called after a long-dead relative: one whose great grandparents of yesteryear during their experimenting with animal genetics, had thought it sounded clever and cute.

  She was not well but also not as badly-ailing as some others, and the gratitude she seemed to feel and exhibited for this fairer fortunate, were quite dear. Under her holo her face had a few malformed pockets but a sparkling to the eyes and lips. She had that charming trait that allows you see others for their greatnesses and not their follies and to love even the most modestly-good as long as they were sincere and efforted.

  She took Forlorn’s even smaller hand, and the aloof child found comfort in it; a reassurance that yet lay numbed as if the warm in its soft-springing could only ever be half-felt. Forlorn moodily complained and grumbled a little about issues she had always had, with some others of her youthful ilk.

  “Don’t you think she…”

  Yes, but you forget the time she took you to the sick-bay; she can be very kind.”

  The thing about this cheerful girl was that she could remember each and every single sweet thing another did. A trait that sounded humble but actually in most were stalled; the bad things loudly rang and the rest flitted away.