The Phenomena of Fireflies and Star... - Chapter 40: Chapter 40

After what had felt like lifetimes of darkness, the sigil reappeared.
Kahapon could not help but notice that it was now incomplete. The golden lines that had once comprised the heart of the sigil were now gone, leaving only the rest. Eventually, the rest of the sigil was gone, too.
Familiar illumination broke through the darkness, coming in like rays of sunlight through the clouds in hopeful mornings. Through the illuminations came discernible colors, sharpening and clarifying by the second.
She could see again, she gladly found out.
Morning had already come.
Rather, the sun had already risen. She did not know if it was still morning or if the afternoon had since arrived.
Soon enough, Kahapon could detect the scent of earth and that of its elements that she now found in disarray around her. There was a throbbing inside of her, in her veins, that provided her with an inner warmth and consistent pulses of energy. She had never felt them before, and yet, they did not feel foreign to her body.
They felt natural. Ironically.
"Ugma," she remembered, giving her enough strength to push her torso off of the ground. For a moment, she forgot how strongly she had crashed onto something. She looked behind her, discovering that she had hit a strong tree.
She eventually found the bodies around her. Bodies of friends and neighbors.
Unmoving.
Still.
Sprawled in the most irregular of positions, some of which were too harsh and too distorted for her liking.
She knew, much to the deep disturbance in her gut, that some of them were now shattered and dislocated on the inside. Unmoving.
She looked away, struggling to find a space wherein she could redirect her attention.
The sudden need to vomit was very strong, and she clasped her hand over her mouth in the desperate attempt to push down the taste that was rising up inside of her. The disgust inside of her transitioned into a deep tug of terror, morphing further into sadness.
These people were her neighbors. Some of them were family friends.
All of them, gone.
She noticed the torches next, the flames of which had been fortunately extinguished in a circumstance that she could no longer recall. Perhaps their flames had been taken out by the force of the earlier explosion. Perhaps. She had no clue, but she was thankful that they had not burned down during their unconsciousness.
"Kahapon...," Ugma's voice wafted in like an intrusive gust of wind from behind her, and she turned toward it immediately. "Are you hurt?"
"Ugma--," Kahapon responded, her speech coming to an abrupt halt at the sight of her brother. He looked well. Unscathed, even. His eyes, however, had an unnatural glow to them like the pigment of a rose petal but lighter. Brighter. "Ugma, what happened to your eyes?"
She forced herself up to her feet, and by the grace of the gods, the action did not ignite any pain. In fact, she had never felt stronger. Back on the stability of her footing, she hurried toward her brother and engulfed him in a relieved embrace.
"Everybody is--," Ugma could not finish.
"Do not look," Kahapon interrupted him, cupping his face with her hands to look into his eyes. They had truly changed in color, and they gazed up at her with an unnerving steadiness. "What happened to your eyes, Ugma?"
"What happened to yours?" her brother's surprising response.
Kahapon was not sure how to respond to Ugma's words, more preoccupied with whatever it was that had happened to her brother's eyes.
"How do mine look?" Kahapon asked, observing the awe in her brother's face as he continued to gaze upon her.
"Like suns, Kahapon," Ugma answered.
"You have awakened," Bahagsubay's voice, now hoarse and morose to the ear, called out to them from the direction of the forest's entrance. Kahapon turned toward the source of the sound, finding the Asog approaching from the shadows of the trees. With every ray of light that she walked under, the dishevelment of Bahagsubay's appearance was revealed spot by spot. Kahapon had never seen Bahagsubay this affected by the forces she had connected with before. The Asog's hair had become an unruly entanglement, and her clothes had been torn in some places. The regality of her walk was now tainted with exhaustion. Perhaps even injury. "I have been waiting. Now it is here."
"Are you hurt, Asog?" Kahapon asked, bringing her brother with her as she approached Bahagsubay.
"We have to leave now," Bahagsubay said to them, her face twisting in pain the moment she tried to reach out to them. Her legs buckled, sending her down to her hands and knees on the ground.
Kahapon gestured for Ugma to stay put and rushed to Bahagsubay to help her up. The weakened Asog gratefully took Kahapon's hands. Ugma, as stubborn as he had always been, came over to Bahagsubay's side to support her.
"What happened to us?" Kahapon asked, prompting Bahagsubay to look up at her and into her eyes. "Why do we feel different? Why do we not feel the same?"
Bahagsubay's gaze upon her and upon her brother was deep and contemplative. It had a shimmer of alarm obscured by the perseverance of maternal protectiveness.
"Tomorrow has already begun yesterday," Bahagsubay spoke. "And tomorrow will become yesterday, as it has and as it does. As it is."
"I do not understand," Kahapon humbly admitted.
"Ours and theirs," Bahagsubay continued, slowly standing up once more, albeit unsteadily. "We are us, and we are them. Tomorrow, today, and yesterday."
Kahapon could only shake her head. She remained uneducated by the vagueness of Bahagsubay's words. What she had certainty of, however, was that there was nothing left here to do.
"All of them, now in you," Bahagsubay said, retreating her hands to herself.
"The first daybreak of yesterday's birth," she added, looking toward Kahapon.
"The final sparkle of the death of a million suns," she continued, turning her gaze toward Ugma.
Kahapon squinted at Bahagsubay in intrigue, the pulses of energy inside her body reacting to the words she was receiving. She could not ascertain how she would process the enigma of the Asog's words.
"We need to leave now," Bahagsubay declared, sighing as she turned on her heel. The Asog offered her hands for Kahapon and Ugma to take. "Come."
"Where do we go from here?" Kahapon asked, taking Bahagsubay's hand and urging Ugma to do the same. Her brother obediently complied, grabbing onto the Asog's other arm with both hands.
"For now, somewhere safe," the Asog replied, looking back at her. "Time will not be kind to this land in the tomorrows to come."
A thought surfaced in Kahapon's mind.
"What about your husband, Asog?" she inquired politely. Her question inspired a sharp intake of breath from Bahagsubay, followed by a sigh of palpable weight. A reflection of light in Bahagsubay's eyes before she looked at the path ahead of her once more revealed a deep sorrow forcibly restrained by the commands of purpose. Even in her silence, her inner anguish was undeniable. Kahapon could feel it.
"There is nothing left here for us," Bahagsubay said, a slight crack in her voice. She proceeded forward, and Kahapon allowed the Asog to take the lead for the path ahead.
Kahapon looked back as she followed Bahagsubay out of the woods. Much to her awe and disbelief, she watched as the bodies of their neighbors and friends began to break away, fragment by fragment. She had never seen such a phenomenon before. Death was not unknown to her, but what she was gazing upon was unlike any death she had witnessed before. The bodies seemed to have discolored, appearing much like the rocks on the ground. They had turned gray, and from a glance, Kahapon could correctly assume that they had been turned into stone.
And one hard piece after another, the bodies slowly crumbled.
It was only then that gloom finally engulfed Kahapon, and the moisture that was beginning to cover her eyes had never made more sense.
'I have to be strong,' she decided, looking away and finding her brother looking back toward the bodies on the ground that they were leaving behind. He seemed to be staring at the crumbling petrified cadavers. There was something about the intent and the force of his gaze that bothered her. He normally was a meek spirit with a tendency for the childlike alternation between willfulness and apprehension. At this moment, his gaze was intent. Strong.
But not in the way Kahapon was accustomed to.
With an intended slowness, Ugma turned his eyes on her.
Kahapon concealed her gasp behind sealed lips. There was something in Ugma's eyes. A darkness. A darkness behind the otherworldly rose-colored glow. For a moment, it was all she could see.
They had since made it down the mountain, and for some reason, Bahagsubay had preferred to stay in the stealth provided by the coconut trees. The shoreline was to their left, however, and in the distance, far across the sea, Kahapon saw a strange object of what she could guess to be of humongous proportions floating toward their shores.
It seemed to be a boat, but larger. Much larger.
The sails were likewise wider and taller. She could make out the white cloths from where she stood. She had never seen such a large boat before.
"What is that, Bahagsubay?" she asked the Asog as they continued on their way through the trees.
Bahagsubay merely gave the scene a glance.
"Tomorrow," the Asog's suspicious response. Kahapon recalled Bahagsubay's words from earlier, unable to prevent the tightening grip of foreboding on her being. The memory of the cold darkness deep inside Ugma's eyes was an aggravation to the ensnarement Kahapon was already dealing with. There was something in the stark juxtaposition of the brilliance of their glow and the darkness they cradled that warned her of the tomorrows to come.
Of how much darker they would get as time passed.
An omen.
"Tomorrow. One of many."
The Day After "The Phenomena of Fireflies and Starlight"
Greenhouse
Masuda Manor
Uptown Falco
5:25 PM
Anita's heels clicked with every step she took on the cemented walkway of the greenhouse. To her sides were large sections of flowering plants, boasting of flowers of different kinds and different colors, all throbbing with vitality.
The greenhouse's transparent glass roofing and walling cast a faint afternoon glow over the interior, beautified by the colorful patterns of light stretching out from strategically positioned stained glass designs. She walked through their light.
Up ahead of her was a wide circular space for walking, and in it stood Lumen, dressed in a beautiful long cardigan with the colors of lavender, purple, and sunset rose. Lumen wore a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head, keeping her long gray hair in place.
"Lumen," Anita called out to the woman, stopping just inside the circular space. The woman was busy tending to the flowers with a hose and not looking at Anita's direction. The soft spraying sound halted a few seconds later.
"Anita, you're early," Lumen replied, proceeding to roll up the hose in her hand and suspend it on a hook attached to a short pole within her reach. "Are you not feeling well, child?"
"I have flowers for you," Anita replied, putting the bouquet of Omega's strange flowers she'd been carrying down on a nearby table. "Figured you wanted to add to your collection."
Lumen's sudden silence was telling.
"Beautiful flowers," she commented, restraint in her voice. "But they are foreign to me..."
Anita allowed Lumen to continue her analysis.
"So much power in every petal. Foreign in its intricacies but familiar in its essence. Familiar notes in a new composition."
"A living construct of the Omega Phenomenon's design," Anita simplified for Lumen. "Intended to absorb the Alpha Phenomenon's electromagnetic radiation."
A short gasp escaped Lumen, followed by a more controlled intake of breath.
"After all these years, Lumen...," Anita continued speaking, plucking a flower from the bouquet as she walked along the circumference of the space. Her eyes latched onto the flower on the palm of her hand. "After all these centuries and all the sacrifices I have made, it is still here. And somehow, it always finds its way into the people I value. Like a perpetual insult."
At her command, her eyes began to glow in sunlight gold, and she watched as colorful streaks of radiation burst through the pores of the flower and pulverized the entire thing in a blink. Its warm dust remains stayed put on the palm of her hand.
"It never leaves," Anita concluded just as she stopped by Lumen's side. "No matter how many times I destroy it."
Lumen finally looked toward her with eyes white in their blindness and yet perceptive in their wisdom and their power.
Anita lifted her hand for Lumen to "see".
"It always comes back," she added, willing the reconstitution of the dust particles and the revitalization of the Omega's flower on the palm of her hand. In less than three seconds, what had just been dust was now a flower again, throbbing with vitality and absorbed radiation. "My mind tells me that I know what I have to do, Lumen, but something feels different this time."
"I may no longer see with my eyes," Lumen replied in an ominous tone. "But I see enough with experience and the gift I have been given. This wasn't supposed to happen."
"The Omega Phenomenon has contained itself," Anita said, dimming the glow of her eyes and willing it to fade. "But its mere revelation has woven threads into patterns I have never seen before. A future unknown to me. I will know everything I need to know."
"Unknown to me, too, my child."
"I have this under control, Lumen."
The blind Asog merely looked toward her flowers again and sighed.
"I will have the cooks prepare dinner, Lumen," Anita said, giving Lumen's back a careful rub before walking off, headed toward the exit with the clicks of her heels sounding like a countdown. "You need not worry."
"When the time comes, Kahapon...," Lumen spoke, prompting Anita to stop in her tracks before she could walk through the narrow path leading out of the greenhouse. She hadn't been called that name in centuries. Even by Lumen, who had also since abandoned her old name that now reminded her of painful memories. "If it comes, and it happens in the way that you fear it might, what do you plan to do?"
"I will destroy the Omega Phenomenon," Anita declared, turning to face Lumen, who was now facing her fully with a familiar stance. The stance of an empowered Asog. "If time comes that I will need to do it, I assure you that I will."
"What if you've never destroyed it?" Lumen questioned, her voice slightly more stern this time. "What if it cannot be destroyed? And thus, never reborn? Only dormant? What if it is necessary? As necessary as you?"
"I have no idea," Anita replied in a declarative tone. "For once in my life since I've become who I am now, I have no idea. That upsets me, and now I must know everything. And from there, I will make the choice that I will have to make. No matter how hard. No matter what it is."
She placed the revitalized flower onto the table beside her and was about to turn and leave when Lumen spoke again.
"We're both blind now but in different ways," Lumen said. "Should you proceed, you're going to need me."
"That isn't necessary," Anita replied.
"Oh, it is," Lumen insisted. "For if we are both unable to see in the ways we need to, then everybody else isn't doing any better than us. Yesterday, a tomorrow unknown to us was born. If we're not careful, this might be what we fear it might be. And just like them, we might fail, too."
"As much as we are like them, Bahagsubay," Anita said after a few seconds of contemplation. At the faintest thought of her command, her eyes glowed like the sun again. She had a point to prove, and she couldn't afford to be in the dark any longer. There lay uncertain tomorrows ahead. Unforeseen. Unknown. For now. "We are not."