Rigalios #2

Amongst the blooming bed of orange poppies and citrus-scented laundry, Claroza and her son nestled on their knees between four metal poles planted in the yard while Jun firmly knotting the clothesline tightly above them. The baskets held damp articles of bed sheets, bath towels, wash rags, dishcloths, and other miscellaneous garments.

The mother inspected them, for a moment, then absentmindedly handed a few to Kin before her attention drifted away. The afternoon sun hung a simmering magenta above the thickly jungled horizon so that when two sauropods peeked from the green hill they looked like two periscopes emerging from the verdant sea. In squinting distance, those gently undulating hills evolved into jagged grey teeth clouded in hazy azure. The Mandíbula; northern perimeter of a mountainous region covering half the southernmost province of the island continent renown throughout the galaxy for rich resources.

Claroza closed her eyes, hoping to hear the majestic song the dinosaurs, like that of whales echoing the sweeping ocean. She and her husband seldom heard such songs of nature when they lived in Villa Del Sol, and, upon moving into her mother’s home, they admittedly were more haunted by the howl before the years grew them accustomed to it.

In her busy routine, the mother sought whatever opportunity she could find to relish in the ambiance which discharged like a glacial stream, flowing down into the farmlands. The end of a cacophonous cleaning season would always find the windows of the home swung open to allow rejuvenating tranquility pour and pool inside. The children having biked out into town and the husband managing his mining site, she would sink deeply into her mother’s old rocking chair and continue the next chapter in her favorite romantic-thriller. The creaking and groaning of the old seat complimented the bellows of the edmontosaurus grazing the neighboring farms and the whimsical whistles, wacky warbles, and mocking 'holas' emitted from sparrows, cockatoos, and planet-famous holakeet.

It was a disappointment when the herd submerged hidden under the trees instead, leaving the silence simmer on, marinating the family during the chore. They were thankful for a chore to be done, however, especially this day when they yearned to avoid thinking about their father’s video call. Use of either video phones, required a dialing-up over the satellite dish, reserving the cable connections and preventing Kin from being able to watch his programs. For him, laundry day was regularly a blessing.

Still too short to simply hang the laundry articles onto the line, the boy took inspiration from an episode of Might Matolez, in which spacefaring hero fashioned an impromptu zipline out of the inn bedsheets in order to escape the patrolling space pirates.

Jun, straighten out and pinched everything her brother threw onto the wire. That is, whatever actually landed on the wire. His performance today was notably subpar. The elder sister eventually had to dart out to catch her father underwear inches from the ground and it was then she rose, wiping at the grass-stains of her faded jeans.

“Everything OK, kiddo?” A question she presumed simple and noninvasive enough to initiate her little investigation. The sister’s inquiry pulled the mother from her inattentive nature-immersed stupor.

Kin turned away slightly from them both, gripping and wringing at the bottom of his pajama shirt.

“You thinking about, Papa?” Jun persisted further.

The preteen still would not reply, but his head lowered slightly, which was all his elder sister needed.

Jun wrapped her arms around the smaller brother’s shoulders and guided down to set together legs-folded the flowers. Kin crossed his arms and leaned in under his sister’s arm. The flat corners of his lips melted a frown on his face.

“All our minds are on Papa.” Jun rested her chin on his black curls.

Kin’s chest puffed up, raising to face his sister as if fearful to ask anything that may sound ignorant or obvious, “Will he have to find a new job?”

“Uh...poss-i-bly?” Jun glanced at her mother with an uncertainty which shocked the brother. “Wouldn’t it be easy, Mama?”

“It could be, but not around here. Your father mentioned stepping down to a relief foreman until another position opened up,” The mother removed the laundry basket from her lap, setting it among the floral field. “With the job market as it has been for the past decades and alien labor being either so much more cheaper or much better equipped for certain tasks than humans, jobs are becoming so much harder to come by anymore; at least without traveling to other planets like Astherterra.” She frantically scratched the back of her head. “I don’t know; that’s what your father tells me!”

Of course, being an average boy only a year into adolescence, Kin knew very little the basics of on the complex adult things like politics, business, and economics. When encountering them he often disregarded them or remained totally oblivious of them. His more studious sister, however, was the most attentive in these subjects. To the point where she sometimes flouted these interests as a staple of her maturity. As far as business and economics as it concerned, she was second to their father, as manager of three mining sites for Tanzal Supply. She did, however, have a leg up when it came to current events, politics, history, and religion compared to her parents, as Mr. and Mrs. Urlarez regularly withheld themselves from politics, history, and religion and don’t concern themselves with news like their young aspiring journalist-to-be did.

“After becoming engaged to me and being fired from his first job, your father manned up and entered the field as a furnace operator set on climbing the ladders to a middle management position.”

“What was his first?” Kin asked.

Warmth bloomed brightly on Claroza’s cheeks like the poppies surrounding her. “He tried running the booth of a drive-in theater. Your father was just as horrible at operating film and projectors at sixteen as he is now!”

“You guys talking about me?” Herdanon peeked from behind a hanging bedsheet.

“Papa!” Jun announced with a shocked gasp. Kin launched from his seat as though he could have launched for Astherterra in Star Cluster Aztharhevin!

‘That smile?’ Claroza, had paused while hoisting herself up from the ground, one hand on the ground with the flowers peeking through her fingers and the other brushing her knee-length skirt, ‘The last time I saw a smile like that was when I said ‘Yes.’” It was also the smile he had on their honeymoon on Playa Dorado’s Papaya Boardwalk when he was gobbling down those garlic crab-fries, but that was beyond her point. ‘What exactly was that call about?’

With a gesture from the father, everyone sat back down, although Herdanon could hardly able to keep still. He began with a scoff and a scratch of his left sideburn, “Your mother and I had our concerns were validated. CEO of Tanzal Supply had just called me about their hopes to outsource all labor from Mother Zebus Glubnorb, but it’ll be more likely they’ll be shutting down my site indefinitely until they Tanzel can recover from the financial rut.”

Kin leaned in towards his father. “They fired you!”

“Oh,” Jun clasped her hand together. “You were laid-off, weren’t you papa?

“Sweetheart!” The mother grabbed her children by their arms and towed them into a group hug to comfort a very off-guarded Mr. Urlarez.

“I was their greatest site manager they had ever had in their near half-century of business.” The father insisted bewildered as his family smothered him with their supportive embrace.

Claroza pulled away looking her husband deeply in his eyes. “That’s right, dear!” She intertwined her fingers between his.

His grin returned more mischievously now. “It’d be foolish to fire such a hard-working employee.”

The wife started a second at his unfittingly happy demeanor before replying with markedly less gusto “Yes, they are... all fools.”

“So they provided me an offer.”

The family pulled away from the father, lending to an inertia so intense that the gasp of the gusts through sheets surrounded them as they leaned in curiously awaiting their father’s elucidation.

“It’s complicated. Tanzal Supply had skimmed over my employee record and passed it along to their grandfather company, Pequeñón Extraction Ventures. They provided me one offer for the management position of their most volatile district on this planet!”

“District manager?” Suddenly Claroza cradled her cheeks with a gasp, “Honey, this is-you’re being promotion!”

“What!” A monster frog from Honstur Brog couldn’t launch into the sky as high as the children did.

“Pequeñón Extraction Ventures.” Jun added. “A top-20 company according to Caruzo Magazine. What district are you going to be overseeing?”

“The Metropolitan Rigalios District!”

Again the family was quiet.

“The big city?” Claroza stepped back, not certain what she had heard.

With a spark of glee and an affirmative nod. He then pointed in some random direction that could have been the direction of the planet’s capital. “Pack up your things kids! We are moving out!”



An entire house was soon in disarray as the scurry to gather up their belongings ensued. Walls decorated pictures portraying slowly fading through a slideshow of various family members growing up over the past decade were quickly plucked bare. Day by day, more cardboard boxes, lamps, were brought in and sat along the living room floor.

Sweat dripped off Herdanon’s forehead onto the shoulders of his old weathered tee as he prepared himself mentally for the task he dreaded most. Eyes on the trapdoor on the ceiling of the third-story hallway, he hoisted his tattered high-school jeans which could barely fit his waistline now--thus becoming the go-to pants for all messy chores— and clicked the chain like a lamp switch. The trapdoor chain unfolded a wood ladder into the dark recesses of the attic above the ceiling.

Jun, who had been in and out between the house and the garage all that week, was currently appointed to wait nearby the ladder with open arms while her father assembled and deposited what would basically become more boxes for the den.

“Estúpido!” Herdanon shouted before coughing “Why did I think it was smart to blow the dust of that! Bleh, I got attic dust in my mouth! Hey! I just found some of our parent’s old paperbacks novels! Some old journals too!”

The daughter stopped right before the first steps downstairs, “Books?”

“Eh, some old family journals. Nearly tattered. Think we should pay somebody to scan and upload them onto a floppy-”

“Yes.” She yipped back without him having to finish the question. The fact that they had a secret stash of literature just hiding away in their attic, waiting to be discovered was like a moment out of a young adult mystery series novel and utterly intrigued the aspiring teenage journalist. “They’d be easier on storage. Besides gotta protect heritage and stuff! You could even put them in my room. I wouldn’t mind! At all!”

She couldn’t see how her father’s brows rose. This abrupt rush of pep from his daughter was more exuberant than she had been all week! Herdanon had blamed it on the move. He scratched the back of his head. How could he say no? Why would he say no? Finally, he offered to ‘talk about it with your mother.”

“Yes!” She exclaimed as she descended the stairs, which caused the father’s heart to swell a bit.

“Wait a minute.” he pulled himself out of his self-celebratory haze, before frantically digging around inside the boxes. “Better fish mine out!”

Jun speed down the stairs and into the living room. Spotting from behind the living room futon, the peeking top of Kin’s brown-black curls, she cooled her pace and composed herself, before, a brow rose at the sound of the smashing buttons and a growling announcer yelling, “Victory!”

“Haven’t seen him play that game in a while?” The clever sister figured immediately; when Kin wasn’t being sent to Villa del Sol on his bike for some errand, he had to resort to the MobilePlay their parents gave them both for the holiday, as the televisions had been unplugged and packed up.

“Oh, these boxes are sooooo heavy!” She projected as authentically as she could. “I wish there was someone who could help.” She rested her box on top of the couch shouting directly over Kin’s head. “Too bad everybody is just so damn hard at work!”

“Credit chip in the swear jar, Jun!”

For a moment it seemed as though Kin was completely drawn into his game, but as his head slowly sunk out of Jun’s view as he slouched on the couch she steamed slightly at the idea of actively being ignored.

Her fourth greatest pet peeve; being ignored. Next to being silenced when she wanted to speak, books with cliffhangers, and those amateur stories published in the back of a few of the tri-monthly literature magazines she had subscribed to years ago with improperly paced dialog and sentence-and-paragraph structure. She marched around the seat to place her cargo with the pile, and, hands freed, hoisted the boy’s legs by the sleeve of his jeans, moving them from off their mother’s favorite palette-shaped coffee table to the nearby plastic cooler.

Caught by surprise, the young gamer was unable to dodge a laser causing the heroic, 16-bit avatar in his hands struck a dramatic pose and groan in hamfisted agony. He tossed what was basically a plastic gray brick onto the table with a loud, almost comically heavy bang. His sister glanced down at the “GAME OVER!!!” text blinked in zig-zagged, lightening-like font of sunset tangerine.

“I’m busy!” Kin crossed his arms grumpy at having lost the level he was on.

“Yeah, I see that.” Jun produced a chip from her jean pocket and deposited it in ja marked ‘Swears’ behind her. “Would have been great to get some Kin-sized help with the move.”

In response, He knocked two boxes beside him with his elbows. One was full of movie cassettes near the bottom and the more fragile floppies containing comics issues and music at the top. The other had their Entertainment System, packed along with a stack of a dozen cartridges.

Jun finally understood. He had begun assisting with the move until spotted a game he’d forgotten existed and immediately dove into it. Not that she was particularly concerned about him ‘not doing his share of work’, as she was making out to be; he had been sent to and from town after all, which was hella far for a boy and on a bike in the sister’s opinion. What did concern her was the name scribbled in permanent marker on these particular boxes. She popped the cap off the marker with a particularly mischievous grin.

“What are you doing?” Kin worried, brows furrowed.

“Don’t see you playing Season of Harvest or Simulation Tycoon anytime soon.” She squeaked her name onto the boxes.

Kin protested “But… girls don’t play-”

“Whose score is highest on Space Ace II?”

“Yours.”

“And whose score are you still trying to beat on that game?” She pointed to the coffee table where his fighting game had returned to the ‘Press Start’ screen. She leaned into his face with a thumb pointed toward her chest. “That’s right, mine.”

Kin burped. The smell of scrambled dinosaur eggs wafted straight into Jun’s face, eyes twitching, evil still smile frozen stiffly on her face. Satisfied with himself, he returned to his encounter with the Evil Glob Barbix.

“Kin, get your feet off the cooler.” Mrs. Urlarez chided upon entering the room, eyes never having lifted from the Datapad to look her son to notice his offending feet resting on top of the plastic ice box. Her usually splendidly fashioned curls and winded buns were hastily slung together this morning.

The mother finally looked up at the amazing shrinking living room. Her eyes widened, not impressed by the number of new boxes added. She opened up the most recent addition which Jun had just brought down and pulled out a plastic iguana-shaped wall-clock.

“I forgot we had this thing.” She muttered, adjusted her wrist to rock the adorably designed, time-telling lizard back and forth causing the tale to pendulate and eyes to osculate. “Honey! I thought the idea was to clean out the attic, not bring it with us!”

“Only the important stuff is going with us, sweetheart!”

Her gaze immediately fell on a red-and-silver dented machine hiding behind the unplugged TVs, which she found hauntingly familiar. “Oh no! Not this old popcorn popper!”

“Claroza!” The father shouted with a chuckle that seemed more of an afterthought. “If you get to bring your abuela’s decorations and that creaky old rocking chair, then my movie posters and popcorn popper come as well!”

“But it’s busted and rusted and doesn't even work anymore!”

“Was from my first job and it’s going!”

“I suppose we are going to pack it up with that robot from the garage?”

“Hey! Lawnbot 2000 is a state-of-the-art autonomous hovering lawncare robot with quad-wired weed-whacker and hyper-advance software Pest Recognition! I saved up my 1988 tax returns on that thing! It has 2000 in its name! That’s gonna be such a great year!”

“But we’re moving to a condominium. We won’t even have a lawn!” The mother covered her face with her hand, before looking towards her innocently staring children “Jun, Kin, do you know where we put that swear jar?”

A sweat broke above both their brows. Finally, Jun answered, “It’s behind the yellow pages and the box of home videos.”

“Why?” Kin wondered.

Their mother picked up her purse and the jar. “Could you kids find something to do outside for a little bit?”

“Don’t have to tell me twice!” Jun was already slipping into her frilled moccasins at the door.

“Where are you getting ready to go in such a hurry?” Kin asked shutting off the Mobileplay.

“I’m taking a final trip out.to the monks.” Jun tapped the toes of moccasins to adjust their fit while strapping on her bicycle helmet.

“Can I come?” Kin asked sheepishly. The boy had always acted as though the monastery was the most boring place on Pequeñón. Jun had long accepted her visits to them was not something of interest to her brother. ‘What extradimensional demon had possessed him to want to go there?’ She jokingly wondered to herself. She could only theorize that he was really that bored.

Misreading her lack of an answer for refusal, Kin turned to their mother. “Can Jun take me out to the-?”

He halted mid-sentence as a helmet was suddenly plopped down on his head. Lifting the edge of it off his eyes to look up at his sister.

“Just come on, weirdo.”



Donning their biking gear, Jun and Kin set to pedaling along the dirt road away from their country-side home, pasting the row of a dozen fat, hairy palm trees marking the unofficial border into their neighbor's farm, where the road then passed the grazing edmontosaurus and coasted around half the edge of a few rice fields.

Jun waved to the farmhands tending the crop as she always did along her trip out to the monastery, and as always, they were friendly enough to wave back.

“Kinnie, they’re waving at you, too.”

“Totally Tubular!” the boy uttered dreamily, brushing the curly black bangs away from his eyes as he removed his right foot off the pedal and onto the ground to lean in for a closer look; an enormous agricultural mech-suit tromping in the paddy directly behind the workers.

The mechanoid, which the savvy boy recognized as a Rice-class Mech Harvester, squatted until half-submerge the water. Its crimson UltraSteel casing clunking and the pistons of its joints hissing. Most likely the exquisite product of a local subsidiary of Zilch Automotives by materials purchased from Tanzal Supply and Warehouse of which the father worked for.

As it stood itself back up to it’s original 20’-plus height and marching over to an enormous trough, Kin promptly identified the steps of this collection process, having previously rented a VHS documentary on industrial mechanoids from the village library. Jun had even joked that it had been the most she had ever seen Kin study a single subject.

“What’s it take to drive a mech?” Kin asked his sister while the harvester dumped what had to have been several tons of rice. “I mean-like-legally speaking?”

For his older sister, an intuitive self-researcher, answering questions like these didn’t require the bat of an eyelash. “Depends. All mech operators must hold a Commercial Driver’s License straight out the gate. Then Special Vehicle Certifications are required for more specific and complex models; as well as additional certificates for any and all periphery accessories or extensions.”

Kin’s heartbeat raced. All the training and studying when he really just wanted to go on a joyride in one of them. “Really?”

Jun nodded. “Even the Omni Force needed to earn all their certificates!” She lightly elbowed her brother. “I think you should look into it, bro. Professional mech operators cash some major chicken. Plus, they're unionized! You’d be protected by United Commercial Drivers of the Universe.”

“Yeah? That could be cool...I guess.”

Kin head sunk downward in thought for a moment. His sister was so certain what she wanted to do and where she wanted to be in her future. Him, not so much.



Further along, the children and the path began coasting the jungle fringe and scrambled after her on his bike. Eventually, Jun braked at a fork, turning left into the narrow opening leading the thick brush darkly colored flora, allowing the boy to skid to a halt behind her. The sleeping maw of wild trees and vines snored a humid breath on the children.

“It’s like the jungle is alive!” Kin’s hand clenched the handle, both exhilarated and nervous.

“That’s because it is, buttmunch.” Jun whipped back toward her brother with a grin, “It’s like a brownish-green lifeform!”

“What do you call that? Breen?

“Breen?” She scoffed, “Like the color of garnish on Stegosaurus steak?

“No; like the poop I made, yesterday!”

“Grody!” Next thing Jun knew, her brother had bolted forward into this canopy of breen with a wickedly childish smirk and his trollish, little tongue peeking from between his teeth.

“Hold up, Kin you don’t know where you’re going.”

The children were immediately swallowed by the thick musty air of the sun-boiled sauna. Between the sultry conditions and blazing a trail unfamiliar to him, Kin was traveling at a speed that his sister easily caught up to.

As the path descended, it had become swampy. Their wheels splashed against the slimy puddles and mosquitos buzzed and pestered the children as they continued to weave about the teeming foliage.

While swatting at the bugs landing on his face or neck he managed to spy margarine-white column throughout the trees. Ancient, man-made pillars of marble.

“We getting close?” Kin dared to ask.

“Kinda” Jun started, “These are just some old ruins.”

A second look revealed, most of the columns were broken in halves or thirds. Jun eventually stopped beside two which were short enough to be worthy of semi-comfortable seating, where she and her brother sat uncomfortably sipping from their of Strawberry-Kiwi Straw-Stabber juice pouch.

Slurping loudly at the emptying pouch, Kin began chewing both the thin yellow straw and the scenery. He coughed on his last dribbles of his drink when suddenly he found himself sharing a gaze with the darkest pair of stone eyes of a statue staring back at him.

It was the top half of marble representation of a lean soldier leaning mournfully on the hilt of a rapier, his head more skull-like than human with a face stiff that seemed deathly stiff. Also unsettling to the boy the garb of the figure, which was nearly bare, save an ancient war skirt and a royal cape with flourished shoulders that sort of reminded the Pequenonian youngster of the capes that present-day emperors and highest-ranking military officers would adorn to formal political events and occasions. Both the uniform and those middle-aged men who seemed obliged to wear it for traditions sake, otherwise, Kin thought they looked incredibly burdensome to wear and the thick capes hella heavy.

Kin caught the goosebumps from gazing too long into the grim glare of the eyeless sockets and finally addressed his sister while rubbing at them on his arms.“So, uh, what’s with the creepy statues?”

She swallowed a fruit-flavored roll-up snack she had been chewing on. “It's a memorial.”

“For who?”

“Abuela would have had your head for asking that?” She chuckled, shaking her head. ‘He’s your heritage!’ She would say. ‘The god of our people!”

The boy blushed, “Should I know who he is?”

“Cool off, dork!” She waved lazily about to urge him comfort, as she returned to her bicycle seat. “Grandma never had the chance to teach you about him. Dad and mom aren’t very religious people.”

“You know so much about religions, though?” Kin nervously ventured to ask his sister while they buckled their helmets back on. “Are you... religious?”

“Ha! As if!” She shouted enough to scare the birds away as they set off once more through the foliage as mote-speckled sunshine glittered through as the stars blip in and out of distant space. “I just love the myths of the monks and stories of traveling storyboarders. They’re like bottled messages, in a way. Drifting for all this time before finally reaching us.”

“That’s...heavy.” Kin stared blankly at his sister ahead of him for a moment. She was always this wierd about things like history and science and politic. Though it made sense to the boy why she wanted to become a journalist.

Suddenly Jun began gaining speed as she leaned in on her bike, pedaling stronger. “Get ready! Just about there!”

The eager boy attempted to peek beyond his sister’s back as the foliage tore open like the wrap of a birthday present, thankfully the sudden sharp decline of the hill lowered her out of his way, providing him with an unobstructed view of the wide clearing with a steady, unagitated pond near the center.

Beyond the pond stood the stoic pagoda of the mysterious monastery, or as Jun accurately referred it, “A Palace of the Princesses’ Parliament”, which Kin since refused to call it as it twisted his tongue on too often embarrassing accounts.

The seven-tiered tower had of multiple curved eaves of chestnut-brown stone tile with a jadey emerald frame, all which seemed to compliment the wild surrounding in both the children's eyes. Standing out most, however, were the golden-corn and salmon-pastel touches, including the enormous chandeliers shaped like cornucopias which hung from all four corners of each of the eaves. In them were rich rainbows of wildflowers, ripe fruits, and fresh vegetables, all arranged in a beautiful bouquets.

Coasting down the hill, Kin noticed that Jun was heading for what appeared to a small prayer garden, both along the left edge small pond in the shadow of the pagoda.

At the the arched entrance of the garden’s adobe-clay walls, Jun leaned her bike up near a barrel cactus. She also removed her moccasins and hung them on her handlebar.

“I suggest you take them off also,” she then recommended to her brother, “out of respect to their ways.”

Kin propped his dirt bike under a shady stubby palm and did the same as his sister with his boots.

Their bare feet slapped against the cobblestone and echoed through the courtyard. The only other sound to accompany respond to their footsteps were the rare breath of the jungle in the rare mid-morning gale. No sounds that the birds were around and definitely not a monk to be found.

There were several additional paths lead out of this central court, both leading to and from the tower and the pond. Jun had peeked down one and then rushed over over to look down another, so Kin figured that he should do so as well, although he wasn’t sure what he would find. He suspected they were searching for monks.

Kin drew a large long breath and shouted “Anybody there!” at the top of his lungs

Jun stiffened up immediately and turned to him with an enraged frown and a finger to her lips “Shh! Zip it!”

The children continued their search of these narrow paths, although Jun had slowed down to a dejected pace, her hands tucked deeply into her jacket. Kin noticed that while some of them lead away into shaded and secluded sections in the garden, others lead to immediate dead-ends where rows of concrete prie-dieus hid unoccupied by any bald regulars with sagging wheat-and-honey gold robes.

“What are the kneelers for?” The boy whispered to his sister when she had passed by him.

Jun frowned staring down the empty way, finally, barely, uttering “prayer” before ambling towards enormous double doors into the monastery.

“Are we allowed inside?”

“‘If the monks are welcome ready, the doors will open for anyone.’ A proverb held among all the Princesses’ subjects.” There was a stream of irritation to on a breath of irritation, like spinning cap on a boiling crockpot. her temperament didn’t seem focused on or sourced from her brother. “The values of friendship, community, and hospitality are the highest regarded among them.”

She pushed against the doors. No budge. Not even a creak or groan.

Kin spotted a glassless window with an olive wooden pane and grilles of intersecting bamboo rods and hopped up onto the base-molding of cracked stone to peek inside.

The inner altar of the temple was entirely unlit with dusty stream of sunlight beaming in from the higher windows of the tower. Tables and floors seemed freshly cleaned and the only trace of recent life was in the furthest corner, where a desktop computer dully glowed above unfurled scroll with what looked to be its incomplete transcript on-screen.

“Nobody’s home.” Kin concluded simply to nobody in particular. He glanced toward Jun to find her still at the front door, leaning her back up against it with her arms crossed. Without an answer the boy lifted hand onto one of the bamboo grilles, resting his chin on his other arm. ‘Damn, she’s bummbed’

The altar was built focused on a particularly tall woman with round thighs garbed in an elaborate royal garb. It was the sight of her eyes made the boy jump; numerous smooth ovaloids like bunches of white grapes embedded into her face. Unquestionably the statue of some sort of alien some sort of. A boa snake was swaddled the alien princess’s broad shoulders as she cradled human infant in arms. The pups of various dinosaurs slumbered at her feet, including a stegosaurus, triceratops, and the decades-extinct Maned Tyrannosaurus Rex. ‘Was she, like, A mother or something?’

Spotting a frog, lizard, and a Ness Tortoise hatchling on top of her leafy tree-vine dreadlocks elicited an boyish grin across Kin’s face. “Aliens are so weird. Who is she?”

He turned, expecting to hear an answer from his sister, but she was instead meandering, arms crossed, along the narrow boardwalk to the gazebo at the center of the pond. Catching up with her under the thatch roof, he hopped onto one of the four stone benches that surrounding a single podium holding papers UltraGlass casing.

“Computer papers?” The boy wondered after a closer peek. It seemed some stanzas were written on them in ancient alien. The dark grey ink had a slight shimmer to them.

“It’s a transcript of an old scroll printed off that desktop computer in the palace.” she confirmed meekly, holding herself tightly as she sunk down onto the bench beside her brother. “The ink is specially made from the meteorites on the precipice of Supernova Zx-3. Dad told me that independent scavengers mine them for his company to refine before shipping them to mixers.”

Her voice deepened, she cleared her throat twice. “Being that this is the place for the monks to re-calibrate with the planet’s ki, I’m betting it’s a hymnal or mantra of some sort.” She was practically whimpering quietly to herself now. “But they’re not around either. I won’t get to say goodbye to anyone at this rate.”

Thoroughly by sheets of computer paper behind glass, Kin had hopped away to the edge of the gazebo and crouched down at the friendly coy. He giggled as they they gave his finger baby-kisses when he dipped them into the water.

“Just think, half a week and we’ll have moved from farmland to funkytown. Rigalios is a prodigious transition. You sure you’re ready for the big city?”

Kin attempted to deepen his voice to sound older and tougher, “The question is: ‘Is the city ready for me?’” He passed a boyish, confident smile toward his sister.

From deeper within the pond, beneath the coy, blurred into view the finest specimen of Gran Nautilo the boy had ever encountered, with salmon-and-silver-swirls on a whorled convolute shell as large as a hockey net or twice larger than the beach ball their mother had bought for visiting Aypala Beach within the city.

Kin ogled the magnificent mollusk.

“You’re going to miss this.” Jun insisted. “Waking to Holakeet greetings, fireflies under starry skies, family reunions with plastic slides laid out on the hillside, trailblazing a jungle backroads. City life’s gonna be different.”

Kin paused a moment. “I’m sure I’ll find plenty of new things to do there.”

Jun straightened up that hand-me-down jacket her cousin got as a souvenir from the very city they would soon call home.



With everything in that old home eventually assigned its place either in a box for the move, inside the station wagon for the family’s immediate drive out, or in a heap that was sold or discarded in the village community sale, the day had come! Now, the initial plan was to synchronize their departure with the moving crew to minimize the wait time for moving their belongings into the condominium, but last-minute miscommunications with the contractor put there arrive for two days later.

Jun, lounging in the opened rear of the station wagon with her brother, aimed her Betamax camcorder accordingly.

The father, after one final inspection of the cords holding down the luggage to the vehicle roof, had climbed off, noting the red recording light on his daughter’s bulky handheld device. “Recording our departure for posterity?”

She turned the camera on him. “Quite being a dweeb, papá! Maybe you could do record this”

“I wouldn’t try that” the old-fashioned man blushed. Herdanon always had trouble with new technology. Repeated attempts ejecting music cassettes during road trips often lead to a mess of black tape all over the floor and car-phone box. It wasn’t until after accidentally recording the soccer game over a tape marked ‘Kin’s Primary School Graduation’ that he officially banned himself from all sound and audio recording devices.

The children’s swiveled their backseats, the rear-end of the woodie wagon wide open as, for a final time, the family departed from that three-story country home inherited from Mrs. Urlarez’s mother upon her passing. The only home these children had ever known.

“Everybody wave! This will be the last time you’ll see this house.”

Jun pointed her camera towards the house as it shrank away.

Their front porch was strung with colorful streamers of construction paper and thin wooden bands. These were hung with colorful yarn braids or chenille stems. The messages etched on them ranged from ‘Good Luck’ and ‘Farewell” to ‘Don’t get Mugged’ and “Don’t be murdered’.

Claroza let out one last sigh, reminded of the party two nights prior that added aluminum lanterns to the porch. They had prayers within them which were burned so the smoke could ascend to deep space. The belief was that the royalty of space would receive them. It was a ritual of alien origin, a silly one in the mother and her husband’s opinion, but it was what her abuela would have wanted, and it’s a tradition the neighbors and their children enjoyed. It was the thought that mattered in any case, and far as Claroza was concerned, for as long as those lantern had remained hung on the eves of their front porch they were brighter than any holiday lights they had ever hung.

With a slight turn, the bordering trees passed over the view of the old house like the curtain of an final performance concluded.

Jun and Kin reached up to shut the back-end of the wagon and swiveled their seats forward.

Opting to take the scenic route out of town, Hardanon selected any detour he could before the Villa de Sol, where they could climb the ascending ramp for the hoverway. Jun had shut off her camcorder, not wanting to waste her cassette tape on the long transition from the stretches of roads overlooking grassy fields or farms into the paved trails serpentining around hills in the thicket of jungle wilderness. Eventually, a dirt road climbed to emerged above the canopy onto a bare hilltop. Here was where the car was shifted into park.

While Claroza definitely admired the view, her curiosity compelled her to ask, “What are we doing here, honey?”

There was a soft melting in Mr. Urlarez’s usually stern face, which she caught. He brushed his fingers through his mustache and reclined the driver's seat. “I kinda wanted to get a look at the old stomping grounds.”

Jun glanced over the shoulders of the front seats toward the scene protruding the horizon, but from their distance it was hard to make out the details of their father’s old mining site besides the blinking crimson tips of eleven needle-like towers.

“Hard to imagine they’re planning on shutting this old leviathan down.”

“It’s hard to imagine that you’ll be overseeing the most essential districts for P.E.V!” Claroza interjected to ease his declining outlook. The ore of this eagerness and wonder for this progression in his life contained flecks of uncertainty and anxiety.

“Why not just promote you within this district?” Jun pouted bitterly. She had the brilliant idea to utilize her cameras zoom obtain a better view. Rotating and twisting the lens brought into focus the bones of steel scaffolding and catwalks, and the shapes of five concrete headframes traceable in the mist creeping the mountainside.

The father drew a long breath, “The shipping centers and other sites in Rigalios were damaged extensively from--you know--the wave that struck Luna del Marinero Wharf and other coastline districts. Of P.E.V’s losses were that area’s previous district manager.”

The mother rushedly placed a hand on her father nearest shoulder. “And, hands down, your papa is the best for the job!”

With his hands raised slightly, Herdanon’s humility showed. “Your mother’s words not mine.”

Chewing on the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from protesting further, Jun tilted her camera upwards to the mountain peak and adjusted the zoom closer to the several neon-orange specks crossing the catwalks painted in black-and-yellow stripes. Several pulley systems carrying trough-fulls of dirt and gravel out of a prominent shaft were being reactivated by the workers, which dumped their loads into several robot-operated minecart trains. Dozens of workers were packing themselves into to three elevator cars on thick black cables.

“They going into the mountain.”

“Lunchtime must have ended.” Herdanon assumed, pulling back his sleeve to glance at his wristwatch, similar model to his daughter’s, “Aw damn! It’s a quarter till one already!”



An hour seemed too soon for the family, but the Woodie Wagon began ascending the on-ramp for Hoverway 40, regardless, skirting around the edge of Villa De Sol on the way up and providing a picturesque view of the small town the family had long considered home.

A quaint collection of contemporary adobe-style residences with tiled roofs to house the town’s meager population. One intersection--Main and 2nd-- with barely enough, significant traffic to demand a stoplight hovering above it. A pizza place that refused to deliver to the Urlarez’s home as it was so far-out into the country. Two milkshake stops across the street from each other with the exact same food selections that had the children always wondering ‘Why even bother having two?’ when pedaling by. There were also four local bars, which also sold burritos and tacos which the family always found to be stale; Mr. Urlarez explained that the townsfolk continued eating there because they wanted to keep ‘the local business alive’. A local events center could easily be seen on Main Street as it was practically the largest building in the townscape. Once the highschool Mr. and Mrs. Urlarez became sweethearts before the homeschooling boom, the old gymnasium retrofitted as a event center now mostly hosting card and tabletop gamers, Schooling programs and events, dances, and bingo night for retirees.

Then it was all behind them. The highway soon yielded nothing but a dull rolling sea of olive-green wilderness 80 feet below them.

Kin dished out the mobileplay and, with his elbow fitted neatly into his cup-holder, waited for the gaming system to boot up. But after hours of losing some many street fighting matches on ‘Alleyway Cage Fighter’, slaying countless alien soldiers on ‘Gloom II: Glorious Conquest’, and dying from contracting dysentery or birthing parasite larva on ‘Super Planet Pioneers’, the lids of Kin’s eye’s became heavy.

“Rigalios is gonna be righteous!” he yawned, as his head landed on the seat belt. “What’s could be so bad about the city anyway.” He was snoring moments later. The family drove on in silence.