On a dirt road off the highway, more than a kilometer and a half into the middle of the universe's largest field of bioluminescent flowers, was their destination.
Far from the city.
Far from the stars.
Far, perhaps, from the end of time
and the beginning of it.
A spot brighter than the brightest city, and bluer than the most saturated seas.
No sound out here but the wind brushing against the Transforming Halos spread farther than even the widest oceans.
This was, as Retta was going to put it, the Gateway to the Universe.
Eight minutes to midnight.
Mireh parked her car at the foot of an oblong hill surrounded by hills oblong and round and asymmetrical in their shape, and she and Temera climbed to the top, trying their best, but frequently failing, to not step on the glowing flowers.
They checked for a flowerless spot where they could sit without crushing any, but that spot was probably kilometers away, so Mireh did the next best thing and made them a spot.
“Is it all right to be doing that?” Temera asked as Mireh collected the plucked flowers in one hand and pulled them with the other.
“Why wouldn't it be? They should still bloom.” Her hand got full, so she passed the bouquet off to Temera. “For you.”
“Thank you?” Temera accepted the flowers while still holding Nathan. She marveled at the flowers as they refused to lose their luster. “This is the first time anybody's ever given me flowers,” she said with a slight smile.
“Hopefully, it won't be the last.”
By the time Mireh cleared them both a place to sit, she had a bouquet for herself. It was a bit odd, though, seeing this one barren spot in this entire field blanketed with flowers. “That work for you?” Mireh asked.
“Yes, thank you. Though I still feel a little bad,” Temera said, looking at the flowers in her and Mireh's hand.
“They'll live long enough for the Flight,” she assured her. “B—” She decided it was best not to say what she was going to say next.
How they were going to die after tonight, anyway.
Mireh and Temera sat down, and they took in the sights, and they held their flowers, and they took pictures.
Of the flowers around them.
Of the rings above them.
Of the stars above those.
Of the borders of the universe they could look at but not see.
Six minutes to midnight.
Temera caught Mireh staring up at the rings. “Are you thinking of Retta?”
“No, actually. I was thinking of my grandma.”
“...Is she—”
“She's dead. Yeah. But she died when I was eight, so I don't remember her all that well,” Mireh said. “But I do remember this one thing she told me. Actually, it was one of the last things she ever told me. I don't know why, but I remember the scene so well and what she told me. I was at her house, and she had me in her lap while she was in her rocker. She was blabbering to me as she apparently always did, and then she said—and I'll never forget this—she said, 'Listen up, Miriam Summers, and you better listen up good. The next time you look up at your moon, you'd better remember where it is, because one of these days, you'll look up and it'll be twice as close, and before you know it, it'll be on top of you like my moon's on top of me.'”
“She's absolutely right...”
“Her death was the first real impactful death on me, now that I think about it. Every time I look up at my moon, I'm checking how close it is compared to the last time. It doesn't seem to be any closer—it never does—but like my grandma said, one day I'm going to look up and there'll it be, right on top of me.”
“My grandmom always told me that the tragedy of dying young was missing out on all the best things in life,” Temera said. “The best meal you've ever eaten. The best song you've ever listened to. The best movie you've ever seen. The best book you've ever read. The best day you've ever had. The best you name it. If you die young, you probably won't experience it.”
“.....You're...just like Retta......aren't you.....?”
Temera nodded. “But it's okay. I've still got maybe four years,” she said. “And like I told you, I've got a plan: I'm going to publish a bunch of poems, and people will read them, and they'll love them, and they'll remember me as the girl who died before she could...before she could write the best poem she's ever written........It's not fair.....It's not fair!” She wringed Nathan. “I don't want to die! I want to live! I want to live as long as my grandpa did, but—but...Why?! Why does it have to be like this, Mireh?! WHY?!”
Two streams of tears.
“I want to live my life. I want to get married. I want to have kids. I want...I want......”
Let it out, Temera.
Let it all out.
That's what Nathan's here for.
Mireh wrapped her arms around Temera and drew her in close. Since the other day, Temera had been appearing from out of nowhere and scaring her, but what scared her more was that there'd come a day when Temera wouldn't appear at all.
She was ready to let it all out, too, when
Her phone rang.
This was it.
The moment Mireh had hoped would never happen.
Her heart was in her mouth.
She reached into her pocket.
Pulled out her phone.
It was Retta.
Click.
“H-H-Hello?”
“Hey there. How are you and Temera doing?”
“...”
“Stupid question, huh? I take it you made it to our super secret spot?”
“Y-Yeah. We're both here.”
“You mean three?”
“Huh? Oh. You mean Nathan...”
“Yeah. I'm glad at least he could make it.”
“You should've come.”
“I already told you, I don't want you to see me die.”
“I don't care about seeing you die. I just want to see you. Even if you get run over by an eighteen wheeler right in front of me, I want to know that I got to be there for your final hours. This...This isn't right, and you know it.”
“Mireh, stop being so difficult to work with, will you?”
“I—!”
“You?”
“.....I miss you already.”
“Already? Geez, I didn't realize I was speaking to you from beyond the grave.”
“...”
“You know, it's so weird having your moon on top of you. You can touch it. You can actually touch it. It's not as cold as you'd think.”
“...Did you tell your parents?”
“...Afraid not. I didn't have the balls to do it. If I tried, it was going to be a repeat of last night between you and me.”
“They still deserve to know. They're your parents.”
“I know, I know, but...it's just...I don't know. I'm afraid of letting them see me die of cancer or whatever's going to kill me.”
“You never got tested? You never told your parents and had them take you to get tested?”
“Mireh, you and me both know that's pointless. The moons don't care if you're cured of cancer or you transplant your brain into the world's healthiest monkey. They're going to kill you one way or the other. It would've been a waste of time and money on everybody's part.”
“...”
“Oh! A meteor! See any meteors tonight?”
“...I saw one...”
“I wonder if one'll come for me. It must look like I'm trying to hide from death, what with the way I'm holed up in my bedroom like this.”
“You're not going to watch the Flight with your parents, either?”
“Nah, I can't see it without Moongazers, and if I wore those, it'd be a dead giveaway to my mom and dad.”
“...”
“...C'mon, say something. It takes two to have a conversation, you know.”
“I don't know what to say...”
“How 'bout, 'Retta, you're such an amazing friend. The best. If I could nominate you for the annual Best Best Friend in the Universe Contest, I'd vote for you an infinite +1 times.'”
“I didn't realize that was a thing.”
“It's not, but you can make it one starting this year. The First Annual Best Best Friend in the Universe Contest, dedicated in memory to Retta Aram.”
“Heh. I'll get right on that.”
“Please do.”
“Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“I'm sorry about last night.”
“No, I'm sorry about last night.”
“But you weren't the one being a bitch.”
“I was, but in a different definition from how you were being a bitch.”
“You weren't a bitch even in a different definition from how I was being a bitch.”
“Yes, I was. Now would you stop bringing last night up? You have no idea how embarrassed I am about how I acted.”
“But I was the bigger bitch.”
“All right, all right, I get it. You were the bigger bitch. Yeesh. You're like a boy bragging about how his penis is bigger than the other boys' penises.”
“Ha! Ha...What can I say? I'm just a bitch.”
“Yeah, but you're my bitch. And that had better be your epitaph: Retta's Bitch.”
“Only if I get to be buried next to you and your epitaph has an arrow pointing to my grave and says My Bitch.”
“Oh, Mireh, you're a genius. I'm so glad I got to have a genius for my best friend. Even if you didn't do any genius things like discover a parallel universe or invent time travel.”
“Those are on my bucket list.”
“Move them up to your to-do list, will you? It's going to be real embarrassing in Heaven or wherever I'm going if I brag about having a genius for a friend and then the most genius thing you do is figuring out how to clean your kitchen using nothing but soapy water, peppermints, and seventeen humidifiers.”
“How would that even work?”
“I dunno. Why don't you tell me, Ms. Genius?”
“Heheheheh.”
“Hahahaha.”
“Heheheh.”
“Hahaha.”
“Heheh.”
“Haha.”
“Heh.”
“Ha.”
“Heh.”
“Ha.”
“Heh...”
“Ha...”
“...”
“...”
“...”
“...Well. It's about that time, don't you think?”
“.....”
“I don't really have any last words. 'I lived a good life?' 'Be good?' 'Don't waste too much time on MeTube?' I couldn't come up with good last words even if you held a gun to my head.”
“.....”
“This call turned out to be a little longer than I had expected. I wanted to talk to Temera, too, but can you tell her I said hi and that I'm reeeeeaaallly sorry that I didn't get to speak to her before—you know...”
“Yeah...Of course...”
“Thanks.”
“...No problem...”
“...Mireh...?”
“.....Yeah.....?”
“..........Take care.”
Click.
Somewhere in that field, a flower lost its pedals.
For the Flight of the Aims, it was up to you, beautiful reader, to find a fitting song for that scene. But this time around, there's a recommendation.
Timeless Place, by Fran Soto.
So do like Mireh likes to do beneath a tree on a mild day and put on some headphones, set this song to repeat, and lose yourself in the music.
And even though this is just a bunch of text on a page,
Sit back,
Relax,
And enjoy the show.
Pedals fell.
4 pedals. Then 8.
24, then 60.
120. 388.
936
2256
10,124
573,164
2,346,872
10,825,194
731,968,620
467,973,424,532
And they kept coming.
But not just here.
Everywhere you looked, anywhere you went in the world, where you saw a Transforming Halo, you saw its pedals fall off.
Here.
In Mireh and Temera's hands.
Or there.
On the other side of the world.
They fell.
They flitted off.
And then
They transformed.
With a flick, the pedals became wings, and the wings became free, and the free were the butterflies.
They glimmered as they existed and fluttered as they lived, and there were so many of them—so, so many of them—that they blotted out the plains and the rings and the stars, and watching them was like watching the snow fall in reverse.
Up and up they flew.
Higher and higher.
So many butterflies
so many Ones
flying up and flying high toward the sisters that had no friends but had each other.
The rewinding blizzard, splitting into three columns, dissolved into the rings, as if returning home.
One column for the demure Cheria.
One column for the hesitant Eleanor.
One column for the brazen Rose.
These columns from the fields below.
And from the fields from across the globe, from across all of Shishiru, not columns, but waves.
But not waves.
Tsunamis.
But not tsunamis, either.
If there were a word for a wave bigger than a tsunami, it would go here.
And then a new word would have to be coined to describe a wave bigger than that wave.
And so on.
And so forth.
The butterflies, when they flew so high and so close and as so many, they lost themselves but became a single turquoise-colored mist, an aurora that swept over all of Shishiru.
All of its rivers and its lakes and its seas and its oceans.
All of its plains and its fields and its grasslands and its prairies.
All of its towns and its villages and its hamlets and its cities.
All of it. Not a single centimeter of Shishiru didn't fall beneath this mist, this aurora, this tidal wave for which no word existed, that turned the white world a bluish green and gave pause to every set of eyes that could claim itself a witness.
It moved, and it kindled, and it stunned, and it stirred.
It swept, and it washed, and it engulfed, and it touched.
It colored, and it dashed, and it flickered, and it exhaled.
It did all sorts of things, this event, this quinquennial happening that was the one thing in all the cosmos that could stop a world from spinning.
If only for a lifetime.
When all the flowers had lost their pedals and the pedals found new life and new meaning, the land turned dim, and the skies, as the nameless wave headed for the equator, turned dim as well.
But at the equator, everything brightened. It was the middle of the night, yet it was bright as a green-tinted dawn.
The Triplets, they had been glowing before, but now, as the butterflies rejoined their rings, they radiated.
Brighter than the moon—the real moon—when it was full, and brighter, in a way, than even the star that Shishiru had orbited for the last four billion or so years.
Then it came, the edges of the impossible tsunami, they gathered around the sisters, and the Triplets, different as they were, shared the banquet evenly.
Cheria took a third.
Eleanor took a third.
And Rose took the last third.
It receded, the highest tide, and its last remnants were tiny sparkles flashing in and out of existence.
And then the Triplets were reborn.
And then the sparkles were gone.
And then that was it.
The Flight
was over.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlfTRXqsGJG
