The Phenomena of Fireflies and Star... - Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Kahapon kept her brother close, secured in her grip as she followed the neighbors into the darkness of the woods. She held the torch up with her other hand, keeping her steps careful as she tiptoed over the irregular protrusions of roots on the ground under the guidance of flickering fire. Being barefoot was hard enough. Being barefoot in the dark of the night in the thick woods, while also bringing her younger brother along, was definitely a more demanding task.
The neighbors were much more equipped. Torch in one hand, blade in the other. The able-bodied men and women of the community had already made it further into the woods, with their torches and weapons at the ready.
As for Kahapon and her brother, only respectively at sixteen and eleven years of age, the better option for them in the instance of conflict was escape. However, Kahapon was as brave as she was logical, and fleeing was only the better option. Not the only option.
If it turned out to be a threat, whatever it was, she would do anything to bring her brother to safety, but she would fight back if it came down to it.
They had never seen anything quite like it before, and they were all walking toward it with the ironic uncertainty of the exact location of its crash.
"Do you know what it is?" Ugma asked, his tone more curious than afraid.
"No," Kahapon replied, staying close behind one of the armed adults.
The torches looked eerie in the darkness, and their shadows were worse.
Up above were soft flutters from unseen birds, accompanied by the occasional caws of crows.
"Did you see it?" Ugma added.
"Yes," Kahapon answered, narrowly missing a chunk of root on the ground as she quickened her walk. "But I cannot describe it to you. Watch your step."
"You should go back home, Kahapon," a familiar voice called out to her from behind. It was feminine but uniquely textured. It had to be the Asog, Bahagsubay. When she looked behind her to check, she confirmed her hunch. The Asog looked almost as if she was gliding in her walk because of the length of her uniquely tailored garb. It concealed her feet, much like it did most of her body, but it emphasized the femininity that she exuded. On her head was an intricately woven hood, and on her forehead a golden headband of fine detailing. In her hand, she held a staff that was taller than her. It was mostly wood, but the animal skulls that decorated its head carried some of her herbs for her. "You too, Ugma. You are too young for matters like this."
"I can handle it, Bahagsubay," Kahapon said to her reassuringly, looking ahead again and dodging a tree trunk just in time. It was almost an instant embarrassment. "But thank you for your worries."
"Do you know what it is, Bahagsubay?" Ugma inquired.
"I can feel it from here," the Asog replied, her tone slightly ominous. "It is strong. Familiar. And yet, it is not."
"I do not understand," Kahapon commented, noticing that the others had stopped walking. They had probably already found it. Their murmurs were curious. Alarmed. Hesitant, too.
"Neither do I," Bahagsubay replied. "That is why I have a bad feeling about this."
Kahapon heard the Asog changing direction, and a quick glance behind her confirmed this. She watched as Bahagsubay quickened her pace. When the others noticed the approaching Asog, they stepped aside and allowed her passage. Kahapon hurried to a space between some armed adults, keeping her younger brother behind her.
There it was.
Whatever it was.
And whatever it was, it had to be simultaneously the most intimidating and most enchanting thing Kahapon had ever seen. The gasp of awe from Ugma behind her was understandable.
"Do you know what it is?" one of the onlookers asked.
"I do not know," another replied. "It is no fire. No volcanic rock."
"Kahapon...," Ugma softly called out from behind her. "I want to touch it."
"Do not dare," Kahapon warned him.
She did not know what it was. It was an orb of light, only larger than a person's head, with a sapphire aura around it. From its heart outward, it glowed in the most breathtaking colors. It was very much like a dancing rainbow but of many other colors that she had never seen before. It lay on the ground, a small crater around it. Its illumination was quite strong, but the flames of the torches interrupted its glow.
"Bahagsubay," a thick male voice called out from the left. Kahapon checked who it was. No other than the Asog's husband, Ulan. "Do you know what this is?"
"I will," Bahagsubay replied, nodding at him before approaching the orb.
Kahapon had always admired their dynamic. From what she vaguely remembered, Ulan had already developed feelings for Bahagsubay even before she had begun expressing herself in the fullness of her feminine spirit. Soon enough, her male body had become like that of the women in its appearance—except that there were some physical curves she did not have and that she could neither bear nor deliver a child—and she had learned to unlock her potential to succeed the Babaylan before her. To herself, she was a woman. To others, she was a woman, too. A powerful one. Her power as an Asog was quite astounding. There was no mystery of nature that she would not eventually unravel.
She should be able to tell everybody what this strange construct of energy was.
Kahapon observed attentively as Bahagsubay stopped before the orb, lifting her staff and stabbing the earth with its bottom end. At once, the birds above that Kahapon could not see took off from wherever they had been perching. The suddenness of their takeoff startled the crowd, but the attention of the onlookers drifted back to the Asog in no time.
It was as if the Asog was slowly being entangled in an unseen snare, her body narrowing protectively. Her head tilted slowly at the strangest of angles, but her unblinking eyes remained latched onto the orb before her feet. The hand that gripped her staff shivered slightly, but the blooming redness in her hand suggested that she was gripping too strongly.
"Bahagsubay," Ulan called out, hesitating in his attempt of approaching her.
Something was wrong. Bahagsubay had connected with potent energies before, but the way she was slouching at an increasingly worse state and breathing heavily gave Kahapon, and everybody else, an unnerving sense of foreboding. The Asog was almost gasping for air, and the glare of her eyes evidenced an intense internal battle.
"Ulan...," Bahagsubay's voice creaked. It was guttural and low-pitched to the ear. It sounded painful, like something was preventing her from uttering a single word. "Ulan!"
"Let go!" Ulan finally intervened, pulling the struggling Asog from her staff. They fell to the ground on their sides.
Bahagsubay gasped desperately the moment she parted from her staff, triggering a string of spooked murmurs from the crowd.
The orb seemed to react from the disruption, for it flared up in a colorful radiation in a blink. The onlookers gasped in fright, moving swiftly to cover their faces. Kahapon blocked her eyes with her arm, shoving Ugma to her back to shield his vision.
It was rather challenging to hold such a defensive position, especially with having to keep a good grip on her torch.
"I want to go home...," Ugma murmured nervously behind her, tugging at her blouse. "I want to go home."
"We will," she replied, blindly patting her brother to calm him down. "Stay behind me."
Before she could move away, the disoriented Asog released a long and defiant grunt, pulling away from her husband and up from the ground. She grabbed her staff, causing the orb's strong radiance to tame down again.
There was a frenzied expression in Bahagsubay's eyes as she lifted her staff. She shoved it back down to the ground, gripping it now with both hands. Her frenzy continued as she began scraping on the ground with it. Her motions were fast and sharp. Almost possessed.
And just like that, she froze. Her body relaxed. Her breathing returned to normal.
"Bahagsubay...," Kahapon called out nervously after realizing that her jaw had slacked in shock.
The Asog looked back at her momentarily, and then at everybody else, before pulling her staff off the ground. The onlookers started moving toward her, keeping a cautious distance from the orb that remained in their presence. Kahapon could not fight off her curiosity. She kept her brother with her as she moved in to see what Bahagsubay had carved into the ground.
"So much power," Bahagsubay reported, a slight tremor to her voice. Ulan approached her from the side and placed a supporting arm around her waist. "Not like anything I have ever felt before. This is new."
"What is that?" Kahapon whispered as she gazed upon the pattern on the ground from a distance. She had never seen anything like it before. It had to be a symbol of something. A sigil. It was almost circular but broken, with ends bent back into straight lines pointing to opposite sides. There were layers in the broken circle, each one lined with symbols that Kahapon could not decipher. There were two lines inside of it, at its heart, that met at a point, another line connecting both at the middle. Around the curve of the circle were other circles. Layered as well. Each layer, again, dotted with unknown symbols. "What is that?"
"Asog," one onlooker called out. "What is it?"
Bahagsubay's eyes reeked of worry as her gaze passed them by.
"What is it?" Ulan echoed.
"Yesterday," Bahagsubay spoke, blinking in her own confusion. "And tomorrow."
She looked back down at the orb before her, just like most of the crowd did.
"Ours," she continued, clearing her throat mid-speech. "And theirs."
Kahapon could not understand what the Asog was talking about. Her interpretation was cryptic, and the dumbfounded reactions of the people around her were not helping with the obscurity.
What Kahapon understood, however, was a strong look of awe.
Anxiety, too.
"What does that mean?" she inquired politely.
Bahagsubay merely gazed back at Kahapon speechlessly before lowering her eyes at the orb again. They widened in alarm.
Kahapon caught it the moment it happened, and her instincts forced her to look at the orb herself. Much to her fright, the orb's otherworldly glow exploded into a blinding bath of white light.
"No!" she screamed out, throwing her hands up before her at the sudden skip of her heartbeat. She felt her torch slipping away from her hand.
The startled cries around her were cut off by a low hum, followed by a sharp whistle of sound.
"Argh!" she gasped. A force, strong like a tidal wave, struck her in the stomach. Air popped from her mouth upon impact, and before she could fight it back, she was flying off the ground.
She flailed uncontrollably in the force that continued to lift and push her, barely able to scream.
A hard blow on her back left her breathless in the sudden burst of air concealed in her gasp, her arms and legs whipping out as the shock wave flowed through her, breaking out in a violent exhaust of energy.
The white light was suddenly black.
All around her, black.
The white heat was still there. She still felt it, just like she felt her body meeting the ground.
But the sudden darkness wouldn't go away.
For a painful throb of a moment, the symbol flashed in unnamed colors in the darkness before her. It had a fiery glow, its color almost red, but not quite. It was different, reminiscent of a rose. The lines at its heart were in gold, transitioning into solar colors that she did not know. The symbol flickered in as quickly as the darkness dominated it with its increasingly cold emptiness.
A cold and comforting darkness offering escape from the crueler aftershocks of pain her body somehow knew was coming.