Free Yellow Sun

I asked, “Why don’t you tell the story, dear.”

It answered, “I would really rather not, dear.”

“Please? Your omnipotence is so much more endearing than my first-person banality.”

“Well alright, dear. Will you not at least introduce yourself?”

“Considering the circumstance, I do not want to introduce myself with my regular name. May I choose a name? I am not too fond of the one I was given and being that there is to be documentation of my nonsense and yessense and essense, I think I would like a change.”

“Well okay. Let us play a game to decide. Alright?”

I agreed, “Alright.”

It dillydallied, “Oh dear, I now cannot remember the game.” But then it went on to proceed, “Oh yes, I know. I will shout out a consonant and you will shout out a vowel at the same time. This way we will follow the pattern of all good words. And then, to be fair, we will switch. By the end we will have formed a suitable name.”

I blurted, “Let’s begin.”

It diverted, “You mean, let us begin, dear. No contractions, please.”

I said, “L.”

It said, “A.”

I said, “M.”

It said, “A.”

I said, “R.”

It said, “E.”

I was dismayed. “Lamare. I do not like that at all. It just does not suit my height. Does that make sense?”

It offered aid, “No. We, however, cannot help what answers our imaginations might contrive. And, I agree. In my imagination, Lamare is not exactly sixty seven and three fourths inches. Being exact with the measurements correlating names and heights might brighten up the story a bit. May we try again?”

I was wary, “Yes.”

It said, “L”

I said, “U”

It said, “C”

I said, “I”

It said, “L”

I said, “E”

But then I became cheery! “Oh how lovely! Lucile! I do rather like being called Lucile!”

“Alright, now how about a last name. What nationality would you like to be?”

“What a silly question! Russian. Always and for sure. There is something oh so serious about a Russian. No one would take advantage of me or think me foolish or try to lie to me."

“Well, let us be honest, my dear, if this story is going to about your yes’s and no’s and maybe so’s, we must realize that a name that disallows you from being taken advantage of or being foolish or being deceived would not really be fitting.”

“Hmm. I guess no nationality will fit. Perhaps a nationality of an animal, or species, I believe they are called. Hmm. I do have a love for caterpillars. May I be called Lucile Melachacka jeseri?”

It said, cautiously, “That’s a bit of a mouthful. How about Lucile Melach?”

I responded, doggedly, “Alright, Lucile Melach it is. Now, you said you wanted me to introduce myself? Well, I am of a child bearing age, I love caterpillars, and I wish I was Russian. I think that is about it. Oh, and I do love to love. It is a passion of mine.”

It was satisfied. “That is fine. Now, with whom, with what, where, when, and how should I begin the story?”

I was electrified, “With the smile, with my schoolbooks, before the tea party, at Paradise and with great thought. I think that is when the story starts to get good. No use in reciting the bad.”

“Oh yes.  That sounds about right.”

“Also, just one last thing… could you recite it in your best British accent? I really would love that. “

It faded, “Well alright.”

As she continued walking to her cottage, Lucile realized how tired she was. It had been a long, exhausting day in Wonderland, watching others ride on wheeled boards and sitting. A lot of sitting to be precise. At one point she was sure she had lost her keys. They were sitting right next to her. Good thing. Dog, who was waiting at the cottage for Lucile’s return, would not have been pleased if Lucile had lost her keys again.

Lucile had a propensity to lose things. May it be her telecommunicator, her satchel, or her keys, it was always something. However, it would not be fair at all to judge Ms. Lucile Melach for this. She was a rather bright girl with a fantastic imagination. It was just that a few too many trips to Wonderland would leave her tired and bewildered and plus, she had much more important things on her mind than a wallet or schoolbooks or her sunglasses. You see, Lucile was in love. She was very, very deeply in love. But young love is a complicated maze, especially for Lucile. This was Lucile’s first real love. There had been others for whom she lusted for or imagined caressing her, but this was love. The kind where you can feel the chemicals in your brain, so addicting, so soothing.

At least love is like this in the beginning. But this is a story at the beginning about the beginning, so there is no need for pessimism or realism or unhappyism or whatever –ism they use these days to deprecate the deep feelings of love that Lucile was feeling.

As Lucile walked through Paradise, she wondered about what excuse she would give to Dog about her tardiness. Lucile was not supposed to be wandering around by herself that day and especially was not supposed to be as far away from home as Paradise. It was a weekday with extracurriculars and pre-determined activities with little space for young Lucile to go off on a long jaunt by herself. No, she was supposed to be running in large circles for exactly two hours. Dog said that it was important to run in circles because circles had no exact beginning or end, just like life. Running in circles taught discipline and hard work and values – like not asking where babies came from or what happened after you died – so Dog liked it when Lucile did her daily circles.

Lucile, on the other hand, was much more interested in exploring her whereabouts than attending to the tasks that Dog required of the people on the planet. Lucile’s two favorite spots on the parts of the planet that were accessible to people were Paradise and Wonderland. Dog required that Lucile follow all the same rules as all the people on their shared planet, Canransoficus, and she usually obliged. Paradise, although it was part of the people’s section of Canransoficus, was a very isolated natural area and was difficult for most of the planet’s citizens to explore because of its rough terrain and wild animals. Wonderland, however, was where a lot of people Lucile’s age would go to be away from civilization and within the comfort of familiar plants and animals as well as a few old structures that had turned into interesting, decrepit landmarks that kept the young people from getting lost because they had existed long into the past. In Wonderland, people were much less entranced by never-ending circles or discipline. The land on which Wonderland stood was adjacent to Paradise, given that one could scale along the windy, sometimes wet outer path that made Paradise somewhat inhospitable to adventurers and look over Wonderland. Lucile often visited Paradise alone because she noticed that the woodland creatures that lived in Paradise would only come out to play with her if she was by herself. On the other hand, Lucile liked Wonderland because there were almost always activities and people could be whoever they wanted to be, in whatever form they chose, without having to deal with Dog or anyone else like Dog. The funny, agreed-upon secrecy that the youth had about Wonderland was what allowed it to also be an enclave of ravishing fun and wild ideas. Often, Lucile would go to Wonderland and sit next to her crush and best friend, Henry, for hours and discuss ideas she had for inventions. Henry seemed to especially like Lucile’s companionship when they were in Wonderland.

Just today, in fact, she had come up with an amazing invention that she was excitedly shared. After classes finished but before sneaking off the Paradise, Lucile had been sitting with Henry and his friend, Jean-Paul, in Wonderland talking about something funny she had thought of. What if people trapped sound inside of bubbles and then made music by popping each bubble? Concerts would be an amazing site, that she was sure of. Henry reacted to this idea like he did to most of Lucile’s ideas – with a half smile and a sympathetic laugh – but this time his eyes showing both admiration and pity for her. It seemed like this sound bubble idea of hers was especially perplexing to her friends. Henry was one of the few people who did not mind if Lucile went on long soliloquies and she was happy when her ideas were complex enough to baffle her friends.  

To get from Wonderland to her cottage, Lucile did not have to walk through Paradise. After hanging out with Henry and Jean-Paul in Wonderland, however, Lucile wanted time to think about everything that was going in her life and in school and she decided to take a chance on being a bit late in getting home by taking a detour through Paradise. While hiking around, Lucile revisited the day’s occurrences in her head. Her Mushrooms 101 lesson had been particularly intriguing and she recited her new scientific vocabulary, “Agaricus bisporus, coprinus comatus, bjerkandera adusta, peymisiloeatbe seclanceat, panaeolus cinctulus.”

Mushrooms 101 was Lucile’s favorite current class. She especially liked the days when the class went on field trips to pick mushrooms and then take trips on them. The mushrooms on Lucile’s planet were special in the sense that you could ride them on a trip. Under the instruction of her teacher, the students found it easy to make friends with the odd fungi. Lucile would only have to go up to a mushroom, gently rub its button back to wake it, and the whole fungus would push itself off the ground with the little legs it had hidden under the soil. She would then climb on the mushroom’s back, for these were very large mushrooms, and the mushroom would begin to run. At first, it would start at an adagio, and the surroundings looked exactly as they normally did. However, the mushrooms, even with their legs so small, would gain momentum and get into an allegro, and then a vivace and then a presto and then finally a presstisimo! At that point, Lucile would be going so quickly on the back of the mushroom that the colors around her began to mix together, and her eyes could not focus on any one thing as it whizzed by. Time seemed to move both slower and faster on her trips, and it allowed her to think thoughts that were usually difficult to be thunked. She would feel more connected to the earth, less connected to her classmates, but generally at peace with it all.

On such field trips, the teacher would tell the class about the good mushrooms and the bad mushrooms. When Lucile just started her Mushrooms 101 class, she tried to the ride a very unpleasant mushroom. The ride was very bumpy and made Lucile feel very sick. However, Lucile was ever an optimist and she did not let one bad mushroom button change her whole outlook on fungi altogether. Letting the little things in life go was just the way that Lucile viewed life – even the worst things are over eventually. After swearing to herself throughout the entire, bumpy mushroom ride, she almost went up to the teacher and complained that she would never take a class under her leadership ever again. Before Lucile could begin her diatribe about her headache, one of her classmates got off the mushroom and immediately tripped and fell so Lucile decided not to complain. Then, a different classmate made a comment about how they had a great experience and their mushroom was a very good runner and very obedient. Therefore, feeling ambivalent about whether she had a bad experience because she only did half of the classes’ reading the night before or the Mushroom field trip was unpleasant because of poor teaching, Lucile did not say one word until the headache wore off. Ultimately, Lucile decided to play it safe and pretend she was satisfied by the skills of her teacher in case the whole bumpy ordeal was due to the difficulty of riding a mushroom. After the day-long field trip was over and Lucile was walking home, she got a stomach ache and vowed to do her homework. She puzzled over the reading and met with the teacher after class to check in about homework. Although the fun part of the class turned out to be worst, the thinking part of class turned out oddly fun because mushrooms were incredible flora who connected almost all living beings. Lucile liked how fungi fed on both animals and plants, grew above the ground and below, came in almost every color, were impacted by the wetness of the water instead of just the amount, and had funny personalities that interacted with the air. Lucile found the class to be very interesting although she decided not to be a mushroom rider in the end. She found that riding mushrooms was based on dexterity and usually people who had good peripheral vision were the best at balancing and getting healthy pace. Lucile knew that she was good at learning facts about the inner workings of creatures but not at balance so she was find just being a nerd. Lucile was also glad that she never complained about the quality of the field trip because her teacher even mentioned she was being a lovely student by answering all of the in-class question. Much to Lucile’s delight, she received an A+ on her midterm, final, and every single lab in that Mushrooms 101 class and the teacher commented that Lucile’s excellent participation as a pupil would make her a great scientist one day.

Returning from nostalgia, Lucile looked at her telecommunicator and realized that she was quite late in getting home. If she had only done what she was supposed to and just run those darn circles she would have been home on time. Lucile was worried that Dog might make her plant flowers in the garden all week just to instill some discipline. Lucile chastised herself in her head. She starting feeling stupid for avoiding running in circles like everyone else did. Instead of taking the chance to be included like everyone else, Lucile went to Wonderland and then spent time in Paradise and as usual lost track of time. But, beyond worrying about how she had become so sidetracked, what would be her excuse for returning to the cottage so late?

As she was contemplating her excuse, reciting it in her head, and working out every detail, the grass smiled at Lucile Melach. The wind seemed to blow in all different directions, somehow forming two eyes and a toothy grin in the green field. Lucile lived on the planet Canrancosifs, where she was born and raised and spent all of her days. Canrancosifs was known for its huge rainbow-colored sky, interesting people, and dopamine raindrops. Everyone on the planet seemed happy and peaceful – and Lucile was not the fighting type – but Lucile still had a hard time making friends and getting included in groups. She often felt confused about conversations and why people treated each other the way that they did. Therefore, instead of spending her time trying to find people interesting, Lucile spent her time outside looking at the rainbow-colored sky and taking in the dopamine raindrops. Ultimately, and it had always been this way, Lucile only felt understood by the creatures of Paradise. And Lucile liked feeling understood.

Paradise had many entertaining creatures. They would come and go, and always had something very interesting to tell Lucile, whether it was important to her or not. Some of creatures had regular physical forms and others occupied alternative dimensions, such as her new friendly visitor who was peeping through the grass. Lucile looked over Paradise's scenery and was happy that a creature showed up. This new friend was of the Smilius Grassicus variety, known to most people as ‘smiling grass,’ and it had sleepy eyes and was wearing little, circular glasses. If you did not know any facts about its history, you would think that the field of grass randomly grew a face with a big smile, like a magically appearing crop circle. Lucile, however, knew better than to chock off the odd shape in the grass as just her imagination. She was both surprised and excited to see the Smilicus Grassicus (graphic picture can be found in appendix 2) make its way from the soil onto the surface of the planet.

And then the smile spoke and said, “Where are you going?”

“I do not know. Well I do, but it is a long story,” Lucile answered.

It replied, “I guess that is for the best. Living is easy with eyes closed.”

“What," and Lucile winced, "what, do you mean?”

“Remember that there is nowhere you can be that is not where you are meant to be. I am guessing that if you are finding yourself to be lost, just look around a little and you will realize you were walking towards your destination all along.”

"That is very ominous," said Lucile back to the Smilicus Grassicus, “I am not quite sure what you are talking about.”

The smile then seemed to melt back into the grass and with another blow of wind the Smilicus Grassicus all but disappeared. However, the last gust of wind before the smile left the grass almost sounded like a weeping guitar. Creatures such as the Smilicus Grassicus were common visitors to Lucile’s daily life and she liked to think that she had a special connection with nature that made the living things trust her more than the other people on Canrancosifs.  

Beyond helping create a friendly, symbiotic relationship with the flora and fauna on the planet, Lucile’s long walks through Paradise also allowed her the silent space of solitude to think about her daily life. For example, her classes that day had been so interesting that she needed time to walk around by herself in Paradise and reconsider the content of the lessons. Dog, who was at Lucile's cottage waiting for her, however, would never understand such a logical plea, especially when the choice was between reviewing her classes in her head or running in circles using her legs. It was obviously preferential to run in circles. Dilydallying in Paradise while playing hooky to circles would not be something that Dog would ever allow, if it became too obvious. Dog, although a wise and benevolent care taker, could be a dictator when it came to knowledge and exploring the lessons behind the lesson. Lucile took this into account and even believed that because her cottage-Dog was strict that she, herself, should actually spend more time going out on her independent intellectual adventures and spending time with her friends than making an effort to obey Dog's ridiculous rules. It made much more sense to Lucile to rebel against the tight grip of authority in cases where it improved her own intellectual prowess than to cave into some historically engrained structure that kept her oppressed. Whether or not Dog would ever understand, however, Lucile knew that she was right and that it was a good idea to skip her physical education extracurriculars that day and do some philosophically exploratory hiking instead.

But what would be Lucile's excuse for being late getting home that day? Lucile was halfway through Paradise, and that meant she still had over an hour to come up with a plan before being too late. Last week, when she was late, she told Dog that her friend Jean-Paul needed help studying for his Ancient Masks 101 class. Dog was pleased that Lucile was very intelligent, hardworking, and her peers would ask for her help. Even though it was another one of Lucile’s made up stories, Dog believed her and even gave her a compliment. Sometimes, it seemed as though Dog preferred hearing about Lucile’s imaginary life more than Lucile’s real one. Dog would reward Lucile’s made up stories with affection and excitement, like Lucile was the most special person on the whole planet. After a while, with her excellent grades and ability to squeeze a good amount of time in Paradise and Wonderland, Lucile felt that it suited everyone best if she continued telling little lies to Dog pass off her time as being used legitimately. 

Considering the success of her recent excuses, Lucile decided it would be a good exuse to say she was helping some other friend with their Mushrooms 98 lessons. Dog knew that Lucile had done stellar in that class and would think it was nice that Lucile was offering to help students again who were in classes behind her level. Lucile figured that she could tie any suspicion about being extraordinarily late that evening along with a verbose planning session about future classes. Lucile would sometimes use her intelligence as a shiny object by which to confuse Dog. Lucile started coming up with ideas for things she would ask Dog to get Dog to forget that she had been extremely late. For example, for tonight’s excuse, Lucile thought she should converse about and the merits of skipping Mushrooms 102 and taking Mushrooms 112, the more advanced version of the class with more prerequisites, instead. She could say that she was doing so well in Mushrooms 98 that everyone wanted to study with her and, therefore, she would be an excellent candidate to ask for the advanced 112 class. Dog loved to discuss Lucile’s academic plans and would usually forget the original argument if the conversation ended in Lucile taking out her planner and the two of them looking at future months and plotting out dates and drawing different schedule configurations. 

Ultimately, for those in positions of authority, there is something immensely calming about planning things out. Authority figures, whether they are good or bad, enjoy thinking in terms of things that have not happened yet and considering what they would do in each situation accordingly. Lucile always felt this was odd because in the case that one had three calendar months to consider, with each month on their planet having 24 days split into 4-day weeks, it made no sense to plan out the future in terms of a schedule. Each event, and there would likely be at three different occurrences with at least two different outcomes, would lead to eight different final options. To take a frozen moment in time, one that only measured a few hours and had a less than significant chance at a catastrophic occurrence, and plan what one would do over three months had little utility to Lucile. Dog loved doing it, even if it meant getting excited about things that were not going to happen, but Lucile still thought it was bizarre. Sitting and planning was more of a cathartic exercise, in Lucile’s opinion, than one that actually improved future outcomes. That is not how Dog saw it all and Lucile knew that by diverting her excuse into a planning exercise, everyone would be satisfied. As she started walking home, Lucile went over other hypothetical plans for future classes that she could share with Dog as interesting options that would get Dog to forget that she came home late. 

After a little malicious planning, Lucile’s mind wandered back to her crush, Henry. Trying not to get to fussy about how she acted in every single situation, Lucile noted to herself to remember what the Smilius Grassicus had just said minutes ago. It was one of the less philosophical sayings she had heard from that species and more like almost a warning. Usually, the Smilicus Grassicus had something more phenomenally compelling and less cryptic to add to the things she was thinking about and the way she thought about them. The thinkingness of her thoughts often got tickled by the forest’s odd way of explaining its own thoughts.  All the creatures had something helpful to say sometimes. Once, Lucile even had a conversation with a Stunter Snake that turned out to be very helpful to her love life. A Stunter Snake is a long, slithery animal that is half white and half black with a huge, red tongue. The tongue was known to fall off occasionally and a new one would grow. It was easy to identify the Stunter Snakes because their tongues were also sometimes very short, even as they were hissing at some rodent they were about to eat. It was almost embarrassing to watch a Stunter Snake with a little tongue try to scare its prey and it was said that the falling off of the longer tongue had something to do with the snake’s food supply and when it was time to hibernate. In any case, once of Lucile’s favorite stories from the woodland creatures was the encouraging love advice from the Stunter Snake.

You see, the day that the Stunter Snake improved Lucile's life was this one day where it was extremely rainy and Lucile wanted to cry. She had spent the day trying to be coy with Henry, and all day he was completely unresponsive to her batted eyelashes and soft touches. That happened quite often, in fact. She would spend about forty three minutes the night before falling asleep planning all the interesting things she would tell him. She would imagine how the following conversations would go, and then plan her every word. The next day, she would be beyond excited to have this preconceived interaction with Henry, and she would be drunk with anticipation for his smiles of approval, playful nudges, and the way he would flick his hair out of his eyes when he was enjoying a conversation. Sometimes, her plans would go somewhat on track, and Henry would respond with his usual half-hearted approval of her extremely intriguing topic of choice. This pleased Lucile to no end. On the other hand, some days Henry would be in one of his moods and be completely negligent to Lucile’s advances. This is what had happened on the day that the Stunted Snakes words turned out to be very helpful. On that occasion, Lucile had planned on making a coy bet with Henry. The day before, Henry had said he was willing to pay her five Kafkas- which was Canrancosifs’ form of currency- to devour a pound of wasp honey. Wasp honey is similar to the bee honey on other planets, except that it comes from an evolution of intergalactic wasps and has a very, very potent taste. In any case, Lucile thought that she could get close to Henry by making a joking remark that the two of them should drink the honey together. This would then lead to a long period of them attempting to finish the honey, and then finally giving up; a time that would be littered with good conversation and laughter. In her head, she had spent time thinking about Henry’s different responses and arranged how this future interaction would go. Unfortunately, the bet did not pan out in a way that suited Lucile’s hopes. When Lucile went up to Henry the following morning, she went on with her rehearsed speech about the honey and how she was going to eat all of it for the Kafkas. However, instead of giving her the response she expected, Henry curtly replied, “When did I make that bet? I do not remember that at all. And there is no way I am eating more than a drop of wasp honey. Are you crazy?” If there was one thing that Lucile hated to be called, it was crazy. When she was walking and crying through Paradise that evening after the horrible Henry incident, a Stunter Snake said that next time Lucile should just take the money from Henry's backpack before making the bet and then surprise him with the stolen Kafkas just in case he was mean again, The Stunter Snake vengeful take on the altercation between Lucile and Henry made Lucile feel much better. 

Still, Lucile was a bit emotionally scarred from that day even though a rare Stunter Snake came out just to make her feel better. That was because, from Lucile's perspective, on top of all this, the honey-bet debacle felt even worse because after leaving school and feeling dramatic about Henry basically calling her crazy, it was also raining and she had forgotten a rain-coat. Usually, Lucile did not mind the rain because it was made of dopamine, but on that day she felt a strange allergy and just wanted to get home as quickly as possible and cry in her room. As she walked through the rain, getting very wet, she sneezed and dropped her satchel. Looking inside, she found the jar of wasp honey that she had brought from home to show Henry and sighed that it did not break. Based on the fight and the symbolic relationship between the honey-bet and Henry’s opinion of her, she irrationally started to cry, and was unable to stay composed. Her facial emotions hidden by the thick, liquid weather, Lucile tried to shake off her tears and started rearranging her satchel but dropped it again on accident. 

Again, strangely, though she had dropped it, nothing was broken. Checking through the bottom of the bag to be sure, she glimpsed at the diary that was hidden at the bottom of the bag and realized there was something moving at the bottom. Gently placing her bag down and taking a few steps backward, another Stunted Snake came slithering out of the top of her satchel and up a tree. Then, it slid across the wet tree’s branch towards Lucile, tied its tail around the thin wood, and hung down. With its face near hers, it tried extending its tongue. All that came out, however, was a piece of red about the size of a lady bug. 

Although it felt like her entire friendship with Henry was going to get ruined by some silly fight - which was obviously not true but Lucile felt it was that way because of the weather - seeing a second Stunter Snake sneak out of her bag after catching a ride with her shocked her out of her emotional state. Then, Lucile instinctively wanted to break into a cacophonous laughter after crying but instead suddenly noticed, and was surprised by, the snake’s funny dental situation. It was one of the Stunter Snakes that had lost its tongue! Trying not to react too oddly and call too much attention to herself in case there was another person walking near her in the rain, she held back her laughter and ran up to the tree where the snake was hiding. Lucile then reached out to tap the Stunter Snake on the head. Realizing it was unable to spit poison, when the Stunted Snake bobbed its head out of the way Lucile tried to grab its body with her hand. The Stunted Snake seemed to enjoy being toyed with and started moving in funny concentric designs while Lucile tried to touch its body. Then, when it seemed like Lucile had lost interest, its plopped out of the tree and started spinning its body to form words in the rain drops. The Stunted Snake’s magical storytelling dance was complimented by an explanation  about the surprising merits of bad weather. 

The second Stunter Snake said, through twists of its body and a hissing voice, that even if the sun is not out, one can still get a tan by sitting in the rain. Then, getting oddly personal with Lucile’s life, the Stunter Snake wrote that it heard from another Stunter Snake about trouble with a mean person who conned her out of money. Without using his name, the Stunter Snake said that even if Henry did not love her at all that day and even if her fingers were about to get painful from the cold and wet, she was at least getting a tan. 

This seemingly unsound logic made Lucile chuckle. The creatures of Paradise had such an odd way of explaining things that Lucile felt as though even when these animals' logic totally misaligned with her own understanding of the world, it made her day instantly better. When one came out of the blue to visit her, Lucile felt proud of her knowledge of Paradise. The day of the awful wasp-honey-bet with Henry which ended up with Lucile crying was healed by Paradise because of one its creature. Therefore, when Lucile thought about the Stunted Snake’s funny words of wisdom more than Henry’s mean dismissal it made her want to spend more time in Paradise. When Henry ignored her great joke, Lucile wandered around in the cold rain all day, downhearted about her experience being worthless and trying to override her sullen heart with visions of a great tan. Maybe if she had a tan it would make her pretty and Henry would want to talk more. Luckily, instead of internally analyzing her feelings about her appearance or the various reasons that Henry changed his mind about the wasp honey, the actions of the Stunted Snake and the dopamine raindrops from the sky made her feel better. Instead of hating herself, it felt good to hear some nice words from the Stunted Snake and at least Lucile was not as sad as she could have been. Within an hour of when Lucile got home that day, soaked, she felt blessed to have a place like Paradise on her planet. “Oh what a day this was,” Lucile pondered." That night, Lucile also proceeded not to cry at all, despite being a little melancholy.

As this daydream about advice from the woodland creatures fleeted, Lucile realized that she was still standing in Paradise. In fact, she was standing still, looking out at a point on the ground about twenty feet away. How long she had been standing there, wondering about bygone memories of Henry? She was not certain, but because Lucile was already late getting home, she did a quick stretch and started to run. Daydreaming about the wasp-honey-bet day had taken a long amount of time, however, thinking about how much she loved all the creatures that lived in Paradise and Wonderland was a good exercise in optimism for Lucile. Running home, she started reciting that day's animal advice as a mantra to remember it in case it turned out to be useful. To herself, Lucile muttered what the Smilius Grassicus had said to her, “Living is easy even if I close my eyes…there is no place I can be that is not where I should be. Being is simple with eyes closed…” As she ran, Lucile felt as though what she was doing should basically count as running her assigned circles because not only was she getting in physical exercise but she was employing the use of circles by making a train of thought in her mind with the Smilius Grassicus’ hypnotic words. Importantly, her feet were doing actual running, even though technically she was running in a straight line home. After a while, she felt a bit content with herself, as though she was able to do everything at once all in one day: learn, play, and run. 

Realizing the amount of time she had spent remembering when Henry rejected their agreement that one day, Lucile got frustrated about being late getting home just because she was distracted. Regardless, Lucile was a good student so she decided that, all in all, Dog would not be upset. This was especially true because Lucile had done extremely well on the past week's exams. After convincing herself that she had actually made a lot of accomplishments in one day, Lucile eventually ran out of mental and physical energy and had to slow down to walk the rest of the distance to her cottage. Lucile mind’s confidence melted a bit and her thoughts wandered back to Henry as she caught her breath. Lately, things had been going well between them because she was writing down and analyzing her interactions with him using diagrams. It was hard to know when or where anything would be useful but writing things down was helping Lucile and Henry get along because it was good for Lucile to reflect on their play dates. One day Lucile would be learning about the teeth of giant flutterbys and the next day one would bite her, or she would be learning about the composition of Canransoficus's atmosphere and never understand the relevance because Henry would point out a flaw in the argument. Lucile wished one of the creatures of Paradise would help her understand other people, especially Henry. Other people and their other thoughts and their other meanings were so confusing to Lucile – especially Henry’s. One day he would be so in love with her, playing with her hair and complimenting her knees, and the next day he would be angry, not so much at her, but at everything, including her, and Lucile felt as though she had done something wrong. Maybe it was because she did not offer him sugar in his tea. Or maybe it was because she was in too good of a mood and telling too many jokes. That was so like Lucile, always thinking that everything was her fault. When Henry did not immediately respond positively to something she said to him, or did for him, she was sure that she was being utterly annoying and chastised herself in soliloquy. In her diary, however, she would try to find things she learned and apply to them to her situation so that in lieu of picking on herself she might find some seed of hope to improve her situation with Henry. 

“I am so dumb. I am so irritating. If only my knees were just a bit nicer then Henry would surely think I am less bothersome. Maybe I should get new socks. Yes, if I had new socks that covered my knees Henry would surely think I am less bothersome.”

But then, in her writings, when she included new information from the creatures of Canrancosifs in relation to her entry about her own sense of bothersomeness, she might add, “…therefore, Henry will surely think I am less bothersome if I was more nicely put together on the outside. Also, I learned that the flutterbys attract pollen that can get between your toes and cause a rash. I bet that in this season that is another reason to get new socks.”

If the creatures of Canransoficus would just help her by telling Lucile whether to get striped or polka-dot socks it would be much more accommodating than only feeding her poetic jargon. However, Lucile was always one to be optimistic and she reminded herself that even though it was not as relevant as socks, a little philosophy from the creatures never hurt anyone. She mentally chastised herself for being so unappreciative. “That is probably why Henry sometimes does not like me: because I was so damn unappreciative. Living is easy with eyes closed, living is easy with closed…”

Now tired from stints of running to make up for time, she spent the rest of the walk to her cottage thinking about her other favorite place, Wonderland. She would go back tomorrow and forget about all of this. She would become an elephant and be entertaining, and funny, and interesting, and everyone, including Henry, would find her adorable. Lucile had the special ability to always become so much more interesting and enigmatic when she went to Wonderland. She wished she were there right now. 

Finally, after a long time walking, she arrived at her cottage. Lucile fiddled through her satchel for her keys. Her satchel was too big, and there was always a moment when she was fuddling around that she thought she lost whatever she was looking for. Had she not remembered to put her keys back in her satchel when she saw them sitting on the floor next to her in Wonderland? She took out every single thing and at the very bottom, in a corner, were her keys. She let out a big sigh and unlocked her front door.

Usually when she got home, Dog would yell out an exciting greeting. “Oh, my darling child, how I have missed you!”

But, today was different, there was a loud silence. It was the kind of silence that is so apparent and moving that it pushes you with more force than a 10,000 hertz. The sound, or lack thereof, hit her quite forcefully. Lucile pondered if silence was a noise. Silence does sound like something, because she was quite aware of its presence. It is like the taste of water. Nothing else sounds like silence, but it still sounds like something. You cannot quite describe it, but it exists.

She walked through her cottage, calling throughout the rooms, “Dog, are you here? I have returned from running circles for exactly two hours! I am sorry I am late; I was helping a friend with their lessons!” 

There it was again, that stupid, loud silence. With a sudden sense of anxiety, she shouted, “Where are you?”

When the silence blasted back, she grabbed her satchel, poured it out on the dirt floor, and frantically searched for her telecommunicator. Lucile was afraid that it was happening. Then again, she always thought it was happening and it never was. However, that did not mean it was not happening.

A long time ago, before her time, it was said that Dog disappeared, maybe even died. In those days, Dog had a precious planet, known as Earth. On Earth, there were people just like Lucile. Also, Dog loved those people more than the word “love” can explain. Whatever petty thing that Lucile felt for Henry cannot be put in the same category as what Dog felt for the Earth. Unfortunately, however, Earth was born with a horrible disease. Lucile was not sure exactly what happened, because Dog did not like discussing Earth too often, but she heard that Earth had a piece of its heart missing. Over time, Earth got more and more sick, and finally it passed from existence. Dog was so sad when this happened that it is said that Dog actually died too. For a long, long time, nothing existed at all. The universe and everything beyond it were empty. 

However, one day, and no one knows exactly how this happened, but one day Dog came back. Dog was different and the same all at once. Dog had changed immensely, Dog was now broken and weak. In its first day back into existence, Dog made Lucile’s planet, Canrancosifs. What Dog did differently this time, however, is that Dog duplicated itself and put itself into every cottage on the planet. That way, Dog did not feel so responsible for everything. This is not to say that each cottage-Dog on Canrancosifs does not love its cottage as much as the One Dog loved Earth, it is just to say that that the individual cottage-Dogs on Canrancosifs operate on a much smaller scale than before. Lucile and all her friends lived in a village in a nice part of the planet. It was the only part of Canrancosifs inhabited by humans. There were other sections of the planet, but the village in which all the humans lived in cottages with their own Dog was supposed to be most beautiful. 

The humans were not supposed to go too far into other areas of the planet. Dog, and all their classroom textbooks, said that this was to keep peace on the planet between all the life that lived there. Beyond Lucile’s village, there was Wonderland and Paradise, and then a forest full of candles, known as the Candle Forest, with giant trees that were made of wax and had flames as leaves. Lucile mostly spent time in Wonderland and Paradise and only came home when she had to. She loved being outside because all the creatures loved seeing her. They were much kinder and much more interesting than the people in school. 

Despite not having much luck with friends, Lucile loved Dog. It was Lucile’s greatest joy to do something that made Dog happy or proud. Lucile liked to think that her great grades made her Dog one of the happiest Dogs in the whole village. Sometimes, however, Dog and Lucile would fight and often Lucile would take advantage of how much Dog loved her, slamming the door of her room or giving a snide reply when Dog asked a simple question. It is easy to take advantage of the things that we love, mostly because we know that it will not affect the way they love us. All the humans in the village had their own Dog, because in this new universe, Dog wanted to make sure nothing terrible would happen and to ensure everyone was protected, Dog made more of itself so it could be less omnipotent and pay more individual attention to the safety to the people. The pain and sadness that Dog felt after it lost Earth a million year ago was too horrible a feeling to risk having it ever happening again. Spreading itself among the people on Canrancosifs felt like a safer bet than being the one and only Dog, like on Earth. After Dog lost Earth, there was a long time when Dog could not even exist because it had been shattered by loneliness and the emptiness of being without its human companions, over which it used to watch as a single, spiritual entity.

Even in the new solar system that was created after Earth died due to a heart defect, Canrancosifs was not always habitable for Dog. Humans can just be mean and even, possibly, too cruel for Dog to be able to stay. It was rumored that every once in a while, a cottage-Dog dies from grief, just like the One Dog died when Earth passed. This is what Lucile often feared. While Lucile felt that she was pretty great to Dog, she was not perfect and their fights were sometimes mean. One of Lucile's fears was that she would make her Dog too sad to continue to exist. 

That day, after doing very few of the things that Dog liked her to do, Lucile had a bad feeling about the silence she found when she went inside her cottage. Immediately, she was paranoid that her own Dog had found out that she was visiting Wonderland, wandering around Paradise, not running her circles, and not being both disciplined and hard working. She was horrified that Dog might have been so disappointed in Lucile about her wild behavior that day, that Dog died. What if Dog was dead, and she had killed it?

Lucile, looking around her cottage and not finding Dog anywhere, could only come up with the conclusion that Dog had died. The house was totally quiet, even though she continued to call out for Dog to emerge. Furthermore, recently, Lucile had been extra flippant with Dog, not speaking to it when she came home and even yelling a few times to go away when Dog asked if she was okay and Lucile started to think that the time had finally come when Dog could not bear her anymore and disappeared. She, even if was extra paranoid,  theorized that her current situation felt as though she would not be able to live with herself if she had accidentally disappointed Dog past its final ability to exist, like the cruel inhabitants of Earth. 

Sitting by herself on the floor of the cottage with which she was once comfortable with her cottage-Dog, Lucile was beyond sadness. In the shared living room she usually happily shared with Dog just one day before, Lucile cried and cried and cried in the blistering heat of Dog's absence. It seemed like Lucile could not do anything right. She was always ruining everything,and now she had pushed away the only living thing that always loved her and always cared for her, no matter what. Lucile was overcome with her feeling of incredibly aloneness. Lucile always felt somewhat alone and that it was clear that no one really understood her, period. Right then, however, Lucile felt so alone that she could not even understand herself. Other times, when Lucile felt alone, she could rely on a tiny voice in the back of her mind to reassure her that everything was going to be alright. Someone understood her, even if it was just her own brain. However, when Lucile realized that Dog might be gone and that she might have killed Dog, even her own little supportive voice could not console her. She was absolutely and utterly alone without any verb-inducing thing in her small abode. Lucile felt as though her very existence was in question because she relied very much on Dog for definition of what it meant to see the world through a lens outside just her own little perspective.

Then, as Lucile was about to question herself further, there was a knock on her door. Lucile did not answer. The knock became more forceful and belligerent. Lucile still did not answer. Finally, she heard shouting, “Lucile, something terrible has happened! It is Henry, open the door!”

There was a moment of intense excitement at hearing this. Lucile, for a split second, forgot that something terrible might have happened and was overcome with excitement that her school crush, Henry, had arrived without her summoning him. This adrenaline passed quite quickly, however, and Lucile was again horribly depressed, if not slightly less so because Henry was possibly outside her cottage waiting at her door to tell her important news.

Getting up from the ground of the cottage floor from which she was hoping that Dog would re-appear, Lucile walked to her cottage's door. She opened the door. Henry looked awful. He was sweating and looked as though someone had roughed him up. Standing next to him was Henry’s best friend and Lucile's good mutual friend, Jean-Paul, who also looked quite tired and ragged. Both of the boys' boots were wet. On Canrancosifs, the soil was extremely fertile and after it rained there was rarely any water droplets left over on the ground or the grass. However, the grass had a bit of an incontinence problem and every once in a while, when the dirt was very excited or very scared, from the grass there would be a release of some of the rain it had absorbed during the clouds' dripping. For the ground to be so wet as to make Henry's and Jean-Paul’s shoes spotted with fluid, there must have been something quite intense happening. It was quite unlike the grass to release that much water. 

Immediately after she opened the door, Henry grabbed Lucile and held her close. This may or may not have been the first time that Henry had showed unfettered emotion towards Lucile. In the past, Lucile usually considered incidences when she thought that Henry was exhibiting emotional behavior to her, at first, as strange, but then would get frustrated that she did not react positively when such nice surprises happened. Because Lucile had trouble understanding others, she could not be sure what to do when Henry showed unexpected friendliness towards her but then would often get agitated when she planned a big, exciting moment with him and Henry responded by being annoyed. The combination of Lucile's inability to properly appreciate Henry's nice attention while her attempts to reach out to him were often construed by Henry as pestering, and not complimentary, created a nice foundation for a platonic friendship between Lucile and Henry. However, upon finding Dog was missing from her cottage and Henry arriving out of the blue, this situation created a sort of consolation-prize emotion that, coupled with her recent crying alone in her living room, created a chemical balance that led her to smile and not fidget upon Henry's embrace. It finally felt like Lucile was sure that Henry appreciated her. Being hugged on her doorstep felt like being in some sort of drawing out of one of her classes on art history. Instead of fussing about her current problems, like she sometimes automatically did when Henry tried to give her hug, this time, with all the drama of the moment, Lucile was willing to refocus her attention on something other than missing Dog. Usually Henry's one-on-one personal attention made her feel flighty, but then again, Lucile was always somewhat hyper and awkward. The realization that she was also not being annoying made Lucile feel also like there had been some personal growth in her personality and, despite everything that was going on, made Lucile start laughing. Henry then put his hands on either side of her body, pushed her in front of him, with his hands still tightly grasped on her shoulders, and looked deeply into her eyes before turning his head to look downwards at their feet. Henry spoke very sternly, while still looking at the ground and not at Lucile's face, to ask her, “Is your Dog gone?” 

Understanding Henry's words, even in the midst of her artistic and real-life daydream, reminded herself that she was just crying in her living room. His awareness of her present problem made Lucile feel strangely fuzzy, like her life had been turned upside down and she was standing on both sides of an ambivalent situation at the same time. Even though they were no longer hugging and Henry was not looking at her face, Lucile responded to his inquiry quietly. Because her cottage-Dog had been unresponsive to her pleas for its usual greeting, Lucile nodded yes in order to try to explain her situation without also breaking the beauty of the moment. Henry looked up, realizing that he did not get an answer to his question. Staring into her eyes in a vulnerable way for which Lucile was unprepared, Henry waited a moment and Lucile nodded again. 

Seeing his subject's gestures, Henry continued by saying, “We do not have a lot of time. You have to get your belongings and we have to get out of here. I can explain on the way. Hurry up and get your stuff because we need to leave right now.” 

Every week, Lucile would make a mental note that she should pack a safety bag. This safety bag, if she packed it, would be filled with one extra set of comfortable clothes, one brush for her teeth and another for her hair, a weapon, and some accessories for Wonderland. In this way, if anything were to ever suddenly happen on Canransoficus, Lucile would be able to grab a safety bag and leave immediately. Unfortunately for Lucile, however, her weekly mental note to herself never actualized. Now, faced with the awkward situation of actually immediately needing a safety bag, Lucile chastised herself for being so lazy. In any case, her weekly mental notes had at the very least allowed her to prepare a cerebral checklist of what she would bring in the case of an emergency. Going inside upon Henry's orders, she quickly assembled a mental list of what she needed. As she thought about her mental checklist, it occurred to Lucile that, truly, beyond simply seeming like something was wrong, a real emergency was occurring. Along with the things she remembered from trying to put together a safety bag and some odd weapons and odds and ends that she had hidden in the bag of her closet for problematic situations, Lucile packed her comfortable black pants, her sensible outdoors shoes, and a long flower-print tunic because, well, she was leaving with Henry and she thought she remembered that he had once given her a compliment on that particular piece of clothing. Lucile was at least glad that she seemed to be able to get all the necessary items stashed in her giant satchel and also had space for a few extra things to look as presentable as she could in front of her crush. Plus, with Dog out of her business, Lucile was free to wear whatever she wanted. 

Lucile did her packing with blank concentration. There was a sense of urgency in her movements but her intense focus and confused manic-depression allowed for a good balance of motor skills and mental prowess. Getting all her items inside her largest satchel and lacing up her knee-high boots, Lucile took barely fifteen minutes to re-present herself to Henry. Right as she was going to tell Henry she was ready, however, Lucile realized that she did not have her vapor tube. Her vapor tube allowed her to ingest many different plants when she was in Wonderland. Although she was very well aware of the fact that she would likely not be visiting Wonderland anytime soon, given that there seemed to be some sort problem, Lucile still thought that her vapor tube was important because ingesting different plants was important because thinking about things other than running in circles was important because that could not be all that life had to offer because that just seemed quite saddening.

When she re-presented herself to Henry, he gave her a little smile of approval and started walking away, without saying a word. He also tapped Jean-Paul, who had been quietly watching them the whole time, on the shoulder and the boys dramatically marched away from Lucile's cottage. Lucile took this as a signal to follow, and the three of them departed in silence. 

A Little after the Beginning
After walking with Jean-Paul and Henry for only eight minutes, Lucile could not bear the silence anymore. This was one of Lucile’s weaknesses, being uncomfortable with silence, and she often chattered off about random topics until someone interrupted her. She did not mind when she was interrupted, but she did feel as though people could at least wait a moment for her to finish her sentence before saying what they had to say. 

Finally, she could not bare the silence any further and asked, “Well, tell me what happened?”

Henry and Jean-Paul looked at each other but neither said anything.

After a short silence, both boys started to speak at once, accidentally interrupting each other, then stopped, then tried again at the same time, and stopped once again. Jean-Paul let out a little laugh at this coincidence, and then after a head nod from Henry, proceeded with the story that Lucile requested. Jean-Paul had a funny sense of humor where he would chuckle at inappropriate times and then explain something unrelated and un-humorous as if he had never laughed at all. This was one of those incidences. 

“Lucile," Jean-Paul said, at first breaking into an awkward laughter and then taking a deep breath to continue speaking, "there has been an attack on the planet.”
Before Jean-Paul could even finish saying his last words Lucile interjected, “Was it the Sonic Phi?”

“Yes?” Jean-Paul responded, looking over at Henry, perplexed. “How did you know that? Yes, is the Sonic Phi. Henry and I only know because we saw them but you were at your cottage like usual, right?”

Lucile knew a lot of things about a lot of things. In fact, some might say that often she knew too much to be easy to get along with. One of the things that Lucile knew was that the Sonic Phi were a very advanced society that began on the planet Hazer. It is said that after the re-emergence of Dog following the end of Earth, Dog made the Sonic Phi’s planet as a beacon of thought and science. No Dog ruled that planet, because Dog had assumed that with all the Sonic Phi's abilities to think innovatively, they would not need any help extra help. However, although the Sonic Phi began their society very peacefully and intelligently, like all the new planets, they soon became angry that they had no Dog, and began invading other planets and turning these planets’ inhabitants into their slaves. The Sonic Phi were known to be terribly harsh rulers, showing no mercy or empathy for their slaves. 

In school, Lucile had learned about the Sonic Phi during their school's Aliens 101 class. They were far, far away, her teachers said, and the planet of Canrancosifs never had to worry, they said. 

“No, you are right, I was at home like usual. Well, actually, I got to the cottage really late which is why I think my Dog is gone, but that might be a different matter. In any case, the reason I suspected that the attack you mentioned was the Sonic Phi," Lucile began explaining to Jean-Paul, "was because a few days I was outside playing in Wonderland and there was this little cricket that came up to me and asked for a fife. The crickets I always see in Wonderland have little lisps and it is hard to understand what they are saying so when this particular cricket asked me for a fife I, in return, asked the cricket to explain to me what a fife was. It jumped on my arm and then onto the top of my ear and then started making a buzzing sound followed by the word 'fife.' It kept going *buzzzzzz* fife, *buzzzzzz* fife. Then the cricket jumped on my arm and said, “Gets it? Fife! The fife is buzzinga. Just a fife? No! I knows because *buzzzzz* is easy to hear because I can make *buzzzzz* too. See! *Buzzzzz*’ and then some other crickets started jabbering about how they could ‘buzz” and ‘hear the buzz’ because they make ‘buzz.’ As I was walking home that day, I realized that ‘buzz’ was a vibration, like a sound vibration."

Lucile's stories were usually strange and Jean-Paul often enjoyed her funny explanations of things. Jean-Paul and Lucile had been friends for a long time and he was no longer bothered by her verbose way of talking. Looking at Jean-Paul and Henry to make sure that they were still listening, Lucile continued upon noticing that Jean-Paul was entranced by her experience with the cricket. She said, "Then, when I thought to myself, ‘sound vibration fife,’ it sounded closest to ‘Sonic Phi.’ Sonic because it can be a type of sound and sounds are a type of vibration. Phi because it sounded like it completed the riddle. It could also be that the crickets were explaining something about the instrument fife but I could not figure out how a cricket would be able to play the fife instrument or any other reason that a little bug would even want a fife in the first place. In fact, the last time I saw a fife was when a strange interplanetary traveler who had thick fur on his back that almost blended with his hairline had passed through Canrancosifs to play the instrument as entertainment. In any case, it was ominous, but I did not really think about it because I assumed it was just the crickets being weird.”

While the end of Lucile's story seemed a bit far from the truth, the rest of it seemed reasonable. Canrancosifs was a magical planet with chatty living beings that were not scared of interacting with people. Dog taught the people that it was important to listen to all the planet's creatures and also organized the planet to make it easy for all the creatures, including people, to get along. Then, after divulging this recent occurrence to Jean-Paul and Henry, Lucile began to think about the crickets to try and remember any other details for the relevant memory. As a chain of instantaneous blips of ideas passed through Lucile’s head, Jean-Paul started talking.

“Wow,” Jean-Paul replied, changing the tone of his voice, “it is absurd that those crickets could hear the vibration of the Sonic Phi from so far away. Crickets truly are incredible creatures. Did I tell you that I once saw them singing a song as a chorus? Some of them had learned to come in slightly later than others so they were singing in a chorus. It was beautiful! It was especially amazing because it was a song that was certainly not supposed to be a chorus, based on its syncopation and beats, they were able to do a perfect job. It sounded so good that I almost wanted to start my own line of the song to follow.”

“I have seen them do that, too.” said Henry, “And, I know that crickets are especially amazing and I understand that Lucile’s piece of information helps develop our investigation but, Jean-Paul, can you get back to explaining what you and I already know without Lucile's contribution?”

Jean-Paul quickly conceded, “Yes, yes. Sorry, I got lost thinking about those crickets. In any case, Henry and I figured out that the Sonic Phi landed yesterday. Your Dog and my Dog and Henry’s Dog and all the cottage-Dogs have left the village to fight them." Lucile's affect stayed flat when Jean-Paul explained the part about Dog and Jean-Paul was surprised that Lucile did not seem excited that he knew what happened to her loving companion. Continuing, Jean-Paul said, "Henry and I are planning on hiding in the Candle Forest for a few days until we decide what to do. I have camping gear and Henry brought his hunting gear. That way, we can sleep at night knowing we will not starve. What did you bring?”

Silence.

“Lucile, what did you bring?”

Silence.

“Hello, Lucile? Are you even listening?”

Lucile had forgotten about retelling the cricket story and was now thinking about Dog. Oh, dear, she loved Dog so much. Dog, who was always showering her with love and affection, was even willing to fight for her when no one was on her side. She felt deeply sad. Why had she always treated Dog so poorly? Dog would wake her up in the morning with a kiss, comb Lucile's hair back, and whisper into Lucile’s ear, “Darling, it is time to wake up. You will be late for classes.” And do you know what Lucile would do in response? She would roll over, grunt, roll back over, and make a snide comment to Dog about being annoying and constantly disrupting her life. What a poor disciple Lucile was. Thinking about her past behavior, Lucile wanted to cry. 

As Lucile seemed to be lost in a daydream, Henry looked at Jean-Paul and said, “Sometimes she gets like this. Take note, Jean-Paul, if you spend too much time in Wonderland, you will end up like her. Give her a shake, will you? She will not pay attention to what you are saying if you do not.”

Jean-Paul hesitantly touched Lucile’s shoulder and said to her, “Lucile, could you please pay attention  to us for just one minute. This is really important.”

Lucile shook out of her fog and looked sullenly at Jean-Paul. “Yes?”

“What did you bring?” Jean-Paul repeated.

“I brought my vapor tube," began, Lucile, "a change of clothes, two brushes, some magic herbs, and a mini bomb launcher.”

Henry and Jean-Paul both looked startled. Henry cocked his eyebrow to the side and asked, “Why do you have a mini bomb launcher? Where do you even get a mini bomb launcher?”

Lucile responded like she did to every other question, with fast words and adept adjectives. 

“Oh," Lucile began, "I became friends with the man who built me my vapor tube. I brought him to Wonderland once, and he really liked it. I even showed him the perimeter where Paradise began and Wonderland ended. While we were there, I became a walrus and he thought that was really great. He then got very nervous and started telling me it was important to protect myself if I was going to visit other places that were not as safe as Wonderland and that I should have a mini bomb launcher. He said he had been to many planets and knew a lot about danger. Then, this guy offered to build me a mini bomb launcher. So, he did. Now, I have one.”

Lucile was phenomenally nonchalant about her explanation about why she had a mini bomb launcher. It did not seem particularly outlandish to her when she told the story, although, in reality, it was quite strange. This often happened to Lucile: she would explain something exceptional to someone, not finding it exceptional at all, only to have the other person be very uncomfortable by the bland ending. This was the scenario as neither Jean-Paul nor Henry knew what to say with the news that Lucile had a bomb and a launcher in her small backpack. 

As the three of them continued to walk, Lucile thought gloomy thoughts about Dog. She planned all the things she would do differently if Dog were to return. In the future, Lucile would really run her circles; she would spend much, much less time in Wonderland; and she would make Dog a beautiful mushroom garden behind their cottage. Dog loved gardens and Lucile would take all the knowledge from her Mushrooms 101 class to create a beautiful landscape of red and white and purple and brown for Dog to look at. Dog would be pleased,and Lucile, in return, would feel like she was in some way repaying Dog for everything it did.

While Lucile was concerning herself with improving the future life she would live with Dog, the planet  of Canransofis continued to turn and its rainbow sky was getting dark. Lucile could see the light from the Candle Forest in the distance but if her and her two friends did not get there in time, they all might be in danger of being intercepted by the Sonic Phi. Paradise and Wonderland would not be good hiding places by any means. The Candle Forest, given the amalgamation of what everyone knew, was the best place for the three of them to stay while Dog was missing and they were all scared for their wellbeing. Moreover, Henry and Jean-Paul were quite hungry and they were not sure how much longer they could wait before finding a resting place.

They walked for hours towards the light of the Candel Forest, which grew brighter as the sky grew blacker. Finally, Jean-Paul was the first to stop and say to the group, “I think I need some energy herbs. I am extremely tired and if I do not eat something and consume some energy herbs, I might pass out right here.”

Lucile and Henry agreed that Jean-Paul's proposition was indeed a splendid plan. If everyone just took a short break for the energy herbs right now, they would make it to the Candle Forest in faster time. Lucile took out her herbs and her vapor tube, and the three of them enjoyed some Excitementium. Excitementium was a great herb because it provided energy and it was one of the herbs that allowed Lucile to better communicate with the creatures of Wonderland. In fact, whenever Lucile consumed Excitementium, anywhere she was turned into Wonderland. Jean-Paul, the most practical one in the group, also shared some of the unicorn jerky that he brought from his cottage to make it seem as though he was not just asking for herbs from Lucile. 

After their break was over and as the Excitementium was kicking in the three went back on their journey. This time, though, they all had a great amount of vigor in their steps and every motion felt important and powerful. Lucile imagined someone from space watching them at that very moment. She was sure that they would think that she looked stoic and motivated. She was sure that from the mere sight of her footsteps they would know she was a woman on a mission. As Henry unknowingly walked faster, Jean-Paul would try to catch up and then end up walking faster than Henry. Then, Lucile, not to be defeated, would walk faster than both of them. At this rate, after eleven minutes, their paces were frenetic and they slowly started morphing into different creatures. Lucile became a cheetah, the epitome of speed and grace. She moved smoothly through the high grass and had the elegance of an experienced hunter. Henry, on the other hand, became a wild boar. His movements were also fast, but more of a stumble than a swish. Henry's footsteps were heavy and his panting was cacophonous. Then, there was Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul was a jackrabbit. His movements were so quick that it looked like he was gliding across the ground, only touching the soil to convince those around him that he was not other-worldly. Jean-Paul's jumps were full of alacrity for the moment and he led the pack towards the seemingly on-fire, distant forest. 

The Candle Forest was an incredible sight in the impending darkness. As dusk set over the valley, the lights from the Candle Forest showed even brighter, like a gigantic fire in the distance. It is said that Dog made the Candle Forest in order to ensure that Canrancosifs would never be dark. There were giant candles growing from the ground, some huge and some not so huge. Most had bright, burning lights atop of them, although their degree differed from candle to candle. Interestingly, although these candles were luminous, they did not give off any heat. They were only pure light. 

Henry, who wanted both Lucile and Jean-Paul to know that it was he who came up the wonderful idea of where to hide, remarked, “The Candle Forest is clearly the perfect place to stay overnight because the spatial distribution of the trees is very, very dense. You can even hide inside the candles for safety. Regardless, it would be very hard to find anyone at night or during the day, given you were already inside the forest.”

Lucile, who would never defy Henry out loud but was feeling inwardly tired and obnoxious, remarked silently to herself, “…unless you did not mind a little wax in your hair.”

Lucile looked over her shoulder to see where the reply came from. Finding no one who would have said that, Lucile continued to drudge along. 

“Hmm, that was strange,” Lucile thought, in her head.

Once Lucile, Henry, and Jean-Paul made it deeply inside the lit-up trees of the Candle Forest, Henry announced to the group that it was time that they should set up camp. Jean-Paul agreed and the three of them set up their knapsacks. As Henry unpacked his things, Lucile watched him. All his movements looked rugged and tough. She wondered if he had just arrived via time machine. Henry looked like a totally new person in this intense situation. Henry and Lucile had been friends for a long time and Lucile had admitted to herself that she had a crush on him many years ago. Sometimes, although she barely tried to act out her feelings towards Henry, Lucile still enjoyed watching him talk to other girls and would pretend that she was as interesting and as easy-going as they were. Henry was also fun to spend time with because many girls wanted to be his friend and ergo she would be able to spend time with popular people who often avoided her. Seeing Henry lift heavy objects to put together his campsite made Lucile blush. His kinky hair was parted on the side and it looked so soft.

Lucile looked to her left and right and saw no one. She started to worry a bit, but then brushed off the weird input about where to put her face. Looking down, Lucile tried to look through her bag to find something to seem distracted if Henry or Jean-Paul glanced in her direction. Realizing that she was not able to find anything she needed, Lucile eventually sat back down and went back to looking over at Henry getting his camp together.

Henry’s wide nose had character; it stood proudly on his face and gave him an air of depth and gravity. Most people would describe Henry as relaxed and shy, but in a way that made him elusively intriguing. And, when Henry did speak, which was a seldom occurrence, a slow baritone came dripping out of his cushions of lips in such a way that everything sounded like poetry. He was tall and lean with gigantic hands. He had the kind of body that does not spend much time taking care of itself but is still able to pick you up and press you against a tree. Staring at him, Lucile was driven to lunacy. Her loins ached. And, so, Lucile continued to wonder about Henry pressing her own body against the candle tree he was standing near. Her sweating. Him panting. His mouth sweet. Her…

“Lucile, do you have any magic herbs we could use?” asked Jean-Paul.

…excited. His hands grabbing her face. Her hands grabbing his…

“Lucile?” Jean-Paul repeated and looked over at Henry, shrugging.

“Remember, Jean-Paul,” said Henry, “when she has that look in her eyes, you just have to talk louder. Otherwise, she just stares.”

Jean-Paul lightly touched the back of Lucile’s arm. She was laying on top of her knapsack with her belly down. Her head was propped up by her hands which were propped up by her elbows which were propped up by the ground. She looked enamored by something in Henry's direction and was staring off into the expanse behind their little campsite.

Feeling someone touch her, Lucile flinched and glared at Jean-Paul, “What?”

“Oh, um, I was just wondering," Jean-Paul began, "if you had any magical herbs to share for the night. I thought I remembered you mentioned that you had some. I brought some Racrotoot and it does not taste very good without any herbs and you always had a lot to share in the past when we were at Wonderland so I was just thinking that maybe…”

“Yeah," Lucile said, going into her satchel and not looking up at Jean-Paul, "that is fine. I do.”

She was a little irate that her thoughts about Henry had been interrupted, but it was nothing a few magical herbs and food could not fix. Using her hand to dig into her satchel and find some herbs, Lucile pulled out one of her favorite natural faunas. It was a purple Melancholia Metriculus. She pulled it out, Jean-Paul shared it with Henry, they all ate some food, and soon, each of the three was in their own knapsack staring up at the sky. 

Lucile’s knapsack felt itchy. Even when she held her body completely still, it felt as though the fibers against her skin were doing a little dance. The tiny bristles were brushing up against her arm to give it a little tickle and then receding immediately every time she tried to scratch them. Right after trying to get rid of the itchy sensation, her knapsack would only present its lining's uncomfortable qualities again in a ballet of itches. Henry’s knapsack felt too warm. He could feel the heat floating off his skin, like looking down on a long highway in the desert… heat emanating upward from his pores. The cocoon in which he was attempting to sleep, unlike the open air of the sky above, trapped this hot mess of perspiration. He believed that if he were being shot across the sky, he would look like a meteor with a path of fire trailing behind him. Jean-Paul was quite comfortable. In fact, he was asleep and dreaming about holding hands with Lucile. Henry was not included in Jean-Paul's dream for Henry did not deserve to be near Lucile, even in a dream. Jean-Paul often found Henry to be rude and inconsiderate. Did Henry not see how he affected Lucile so? Was Henry really that hard-headed?

Finally, a few hours later, Lucile and Henry also fell asleep. At some point, Jean-Paul woke up, got out of his sleeping bag to check on his friends to make sure they were okay and then feeling too warm under the heat of the candle trees to go back to sleep, laid on top of his sleeping bag and stared at the scenery.

Looking around the Candle Forest, Jean-Paul saw the tall candle trees, with their little lit flames, and tried to consider how lovely it might be to spend time with Lucile in such a pretty place. It seemed like the candle trees were about fourteen feet tall, or a bit over what would be Henry and himself standing on the shoulders of the other. All the branches had flames at the ends, the smaller branches with smaller flames and the biggest, sturdiest, trunk-like pieces with big fires at their ends. Jean-Paul liked how the insides of the trees seemed to be lit up with the little buds that grew off the candle tree's trunks' sides. The tiny parts of the trunk that were trying to turn into branches were absolutely exquisite. These little tree buds showed almost more brightness from the inside of the tree than a flame on the outside and Jean-Paul wished someone could video-tape and then time-lapse-film the little candle twigs growing into full candles. Jean-Paul also thought about what it would look like for the tiny lights, mostly hidden inside the trunk of the tree, to pop out as flames and then grow in a branch of raging fire. Wishing he could watch the time-lapse film with Lucile because she would have something lovely to add to every second of the film, even if it were only a minute long, Jean-Paul felt calm thinking about what the film would look like. After finishing the imaginary version of the film, his pretend Lucile probably talked about it with him for hours.

Jean-Paul had been enamored by Lucile from the start of his friendship with Henry in early school days. He liked that she was different from everyone else and that she was always a loyal friend. Even when someone hurt her feelings, which people often did, Lucile always wanted to continue being friends afterwards and never brought up gossip or said mean things to others. Jean-Paul would sometimes get angry at Henry because Henry did not treat Lucile as nicely as Jean-Paul thought Henry should, especially given their history. Henry and Lucile had become friends first and then Jean-Paul became friends with Henry, ultimately creating a fun trio of young people who spent a lot of time together adventuring through Wonderland, Paradise, and their classes. 

Lucile had mentioned once, in a passing and casual conversation with Jean-Paul when only the two of them were sitting around in Wonderland enjoying Melacholia Metriculous and eating bugs, that she thought Henry was attractive. After she made the comment, however, she blushed and then, weirdly, immediately made Jean-Paul promise not to tell anyone. Then, even weirder, after she got Jean-Paul to swear to secrecy about her opinion of Henry's appearance, Lucile suddenly confessed that she also had a little crush on Henry, but then said, for the second time during that conversation, not to mention her feelings towards him to anyone. Even though Jean-Paul kept his promise and never told Henry, based on the amount of time the three of them spent together, Jean-Paul believed that Henry found out for himself and knew that Lucile liked him, but that instead of having compassion for Lucile’s unrequited love for him, it made him feel powerful. To Jean-Paul, it seemed that Henry wielded this sense of power over Lucile in the meanest of ways. In general, people at school were always very insensitive to Lucile but Jean-Paul felt that as a supposed friend and her only romantic interest, Henry could be more compassionate. Henry played games with Lucile's mind, threw around her heart, and stepped on her feelings. Jean-Paul knew that if he, himself, were the object of Lucile’s attention, he would never treat her so terribly.

Suddenly, Jean-Paul heard a sound. It was not loud to him, but it sounded like from wherever it originated it may have been loud, albeit very far away. Laying on top of his knapsack, Jean-Paul was able to quietly get up without having to pull on any zippers or move away any blankets. He tried not to pay too much attention to where the sound came from and instead decided to quietly crawl over to Henry’s make-shift tent situation and attempt to rouse him from his sleep. Over his knapsack, Henry had built a small covering for his head, neck, shoulders, and a bit of his chest using parts of his satchel and sweaters he had packed. The strange covering was like an igloo and although it probably did not do a good job of protecting his face from bug bites or sound, it looked like it did a good job circulating his breath to keep at least the top of his body warm and maybe even create some darkness to help facilitate sleep. As Jean-Paul crawled over to Henry, Jean-Paul was unsure whether or not Henry had this weird tent thing set up when they all went to bed hours ago. Contemplating the tent's design for a minute, Jean-Paul heard another booming sound, but this time, it was much closer and much louder. The second sound seemed to wake Henry up before Jean-Paul could get his attention and using one of his giant hands, Henry plowed the tiny tent off his head and tossed its few pieces out of his way. Henry immediately tried to react to the sound but before he could say anything out loud Jean-Paul covered his mouth with his hand. Lucile also woke up from the loud sound but immediately saw her friends’ frozen glares of fear and kept still in her sleeping bag. After yet another loud sound, again even closer, Jean-Paul took his hand off Henry's mouth and sat on the ground cross-legged, with his hands placed solemnly in his own lap. All three of them knew what was going on: they were here. The Sonic Phi were actually here.

In school, all the young people learned that if there was an attack on Canrancosifs, it would most likely be Sonic Phi. This was because Dog, when it created the new universe, knew that the only civilization that could ever run out of things to do would be the Sonic Phi. All the other planets were based on trust and compassion, but Dog thought that putting a somewhat evil planet in a far little corner of the universe in order to include a few of the sick parts of the olden Earth, would at least commemorate the original planet that Dog had loved so dearly. Keeping the bad parts of Earth intact as part of the new universe would at least ensure that after a million years no one would forget them, just in case Dog was wrong about what caused the ruin of Earth. While Dog wanted to destroy everything that went wrong with Earth – the extreme reliance on science, the need to constantly fight for who could have the best science, and then the eventual reliance on fighting to ultimately be the only fuel of science – Dog considered that maybe something else had gone wrong to create this cycle and that maybe a planet that was purely science and war might somehow be an important aspect of any universe. The cottage-Dogs on Canrancosifs tried not to worry about the Sonic Phi very often because it was the nature of the universe that the Sonic Phi would always win any battle they fought. But then again, it is the nature of all things to eventually lose to something greater than itself. While the idea of a planet created to commemorate science and war was morbid, this was what everyone learned in school and what Dog reiterated to all of them when they were at their cottages.

Realizing that all their lives were in danger, the three of them did not know what to do. Everything was usually extremely peaceful on Canrancosifs and trying to battle a force inherently more powerful that one's own is complicated to comprehend. Henry, after not getting angry at Jean-Paul for putting his hand over his mouth, signaled that he understood that he needed to be quiet by making the gesture for "silence," the gesture for "okay," and the gesture for "are you okay?" that were well-known on Canrancosifs. After both Lucile and Jean-Paul gave him the thumbs up, Henry jumped up but tripped on his knapsack on his way to standing and fell down. The Melancholia Metriculus he ate before going to sleep had messed up his balance. Some of Lucile’s herbs, although delicious, were calming and if taken with a big meal could cause tiredness. Regaining his balance, Henry stretched, anxiously rubbed his face, and then both realized and accepted that he was definitely not in the safe place that was his cottage. There was no Dog here to save him. Because he was done sitting, Henry stood up but almost lost his balance again, this time not due to the Melancholia Metriculus but due to a sudden onset of disorientation. Jean-Paul, who had already stood up, tried to console Henry by putting his arm over Henry’s shoulder and Henry took a deep breath, remembering that the other two were relying on him to stay calm. Henry then whispered in Lucile's direction, “This is scary, huh?” and then smiled. 

Lucile smiled back, although she was not enthused to be flirted with as an escape from a panic attack. Careful not to repeat Henry’s clumsy mistake, Lucile slowly eased herself out of her knapsack and walked over next to Jean-Paul. She did not want to stand between him and Henry, but rather place Jean-Paul in the middle because he seemed to be giving the best instructions.  

Kneeling over to put her hands on her knees and stretch her back, Lucile turned her head to look upwards at Jean-Paul and whispered, “Jean-Paul, what should we do?” She put her finger in the belt loop of his pants to pivot her not-fully-awake body back upright. Lucile then tugged on his pants a few times to try to remind Jean-Paul of his consciousness and lighten the mood. 

Right as she took her hands away from his pants, Jean-Paul remembered a silly dream he had about Lucile. In his dream the two of them were at a picnic in the grassy pink fields of Wonderland. Out of the pink grass grew spirals of frosting and the dirt was made of cake. They rolled around the ground scooping up clots of delicious chocolate mud and delicately placing it into each other’s mouths. Jean-Paul dreamt that Lucile had gotten some cake in her hair, and he was slowly combing it out. In that moment the two of them locked eyes, she smiled, and Jean-Paul went to put his lips on hers…

“Jean-Paul, please, are you okay? I’m scared. We have to go.”

And before their lips could meet in his daydream, he blinked his eyes and saw Lucile standing over him. She looked beautiful. Unaware of the context of her proximity to him and still caught up in the emotion of his dream he smiled at her. 

But Lucile did not smile back; her eyes welled up. Composing herself, she said, “Jean-Paul, I think that the Sonic Phi just arrived in this forest. You just fainted. Do you remember what just happened? There was just a loud noise. Both you and Henry seem really frazzled but I think it is in everyone’s best interest to start quietly packing. Henry did not faint and I'm sorry I grabbed your pants."

Henry smiled, "Since when are you the boss of our plans? You just tried to kill Jean-Paul."

Lucile giggled a bit too loud, caught herself, and then took a deep breath before whispering, "I did not try to kill you on purpose, Jean-Paul. I promise." Then, she made a fake stabbing gesture with her arm and the sound of a creaky door opening and closing. "Also, I almost certainly would cry if the Sonic Phi killed you." 

Jean-Paul was still staring up at Lucile, confused about how much time had passed. 

Henry said to Lucile, "Although you are a suspected murderer possibly known for murderizing our friend Jean-Paul, you might be right about packing. I know we are hidden in the Candle Forest and it is supposed to be safe but if we pack our things immediately we leave no chance of having to run away without our supplies. "

"In case we have to run,” responded Lucile, "we should have everything already put away."

And with that Jean-Paul’s dream was officially over. No cake, no kiss, just worry. Lucile and Henry continued to talk as he fumbled around for a minute trying to figure out how Lucile was now standing over him instead of sitting next to him. The situation felt awkward but Jean-Paul, trying to get up too quickly, shared Henry’s Melancholia Metriculus induced fate and tripped over a sleeping bag that had accidently gotten tangled up below him. The sleeping bag was Henry's and Henry apologized, although it was not his fault, that Jean-Paul had fallen right after fainting. It was like a scene from a play of buffoons. 

“These boys,” thought Lucile, shaking her head and thinking to herself, “they must not take many naps. Hmph, one would think that formable boys such as these would at least be able to stand up correctly. I wonder if it was the herbs. That does not sound possible. In fact, I barely feel anything at all, and I probably could have added some more…” but then remembering that they were being pursued by a clan of evil, other-worldly creatures who made it their destiny to enslave others, Lucile decided that her usually stoic and heroic friends needed her help instead of her opinion. Refusing to further contemplate about the boy’ abilities in stressful situations, Lucile put her inner frustrated dialogue aside. “Sometime in the future I will have time to analyze,” she compromised with herself.

Again, Lucile noticed that commentary. She checked over her shoulders and seeing only candle trees everywhere she became a bit agitated. “Either my thoughts are acting strangely or there is a fairy following me around,” she confided in herself. 

The three young people fumbled around for a few moments, not sure exactly what to do, until they were interrupted by the loud noise. It was another booming sound that reminded them of the characteristics of the Sonic Phi which they had learned about in Aliens 101. The adrenaline from the oncoming threat caused everyone to start moving around. Taking a few more deep breaths and doing their stretches, Jean-Paul and Henry were able to keep themselves from getting too anxious. Jean-Paul used some of his excess energy to climb up a few waxy limbs of a candle tree to see what exactly was happening. In the distance, he saw giant orbs raining from the atmosphere. Each orb would plummet directly into the dirt below and roll for a short distance. The sound the trio was hearing were these spherical objects smashing into the ground. In the short time Jean-Paul was looking out into the field, three more hit the ground. He also counted about thirteen other orbs raining down in the distance. Watching to see what happened when an orb was done rolling on the ground, Jean-Paul was finally able to track one as it lost speed upon smashing into Canransoficus. Out of the top of the orb, from what Jean-Paul could see, and orange peel slice of the space craft would open like an eye, and out would pop the strangest creature he had ever seen. It was the first time Jean-Paul had ever laid eyes on the Sonic Phi and they were even scarier than he remembered. In textbooks, yes, he had seen pictures with similar features, but those pictures were nothing near the gruesome site standing in the distance. 

In their textbooks, the Sonic Phi were half bug, half weasel with scales for hair. They were not particularly evil looking but rather just seemed like creepy crosses of too many beings to even exist. What Jean-Paul was looking at was similar in description to what he had read in books, but rather than looking kind of cute in a strange way, the Sonic Phi emerging from the orbs looked like vicious wolves with mouths made to tear into flesh and with bug-like bodies were much more conditioned to hurt others and infect them with a deep, disturbed itch that they only could have picked up from a bloodthirsty vacation on a different planet. The Sonic Phi had bodies like a praying mantis with giant bent arms that came to a sharp point at the ends. Their bodies were plump and hairy. However, although they were insects below the neck, their faces were like a cross between a hairless wolf and a person. The snout, in accordance with its rendition from their textbooks, was deliberately doglike and the nose was wet. Their eyes and ears, on the other hand, looked reptilian, and fit well with their insect bodies. And their skin, well, their skin was that of an old man who had worked in the sun and gotten in too many fights. It was leathery and had craters of scars all over it. Jean-Paul could not see the neck, as there was a covering from one ear to the other that encapsulated the bottom half of its head. 

The creatures that Jean-Paul was staring at were the most horrifying things he had ever laid eyes on. Jean-Paul remembered learning about the Sonic-Phi in his Otherworldly Aliens 20 class as well as some information about emergency protocol related to the Sonic Phi in his Aliens 101 class. They were small and fragile in the pictures from the textbooks. They were supposed to only be powerful because of their knowledge of science, not because of their actual physical shape. Whoever wrote their textbooks had either been blatantly lying to the children or had never actually seen a Sonic Phi before, in person. “I knew everything in my textbook was wrong,” Jean-Paul thought to himself, “those textbook authors are severely incompetent. I guess I already knew there had to be inconsistencies. This, however, this is outright false.” 

As he moved his foot to a more comfortable location on the Candle Tree from which he was peering at the Sonic Phi, Jean-Paul slipped on a melted portion of the branch and fell to the ground. He wanted to lay down and curl up into a ball and hide like a stone buried half by the soil and its back exposed to the air only after a heavy rain shower washed it clean of moss and dirt. Instead, he sat leaning back, with his palms on the ground slightly behind his sit bones, holding his elbows tight and strong to keep them from collapsing. Then, he took the last bit of energy he had and stood up, dusted himself off, and started neatly packing up his bag. Lucile had already packed up her belongings and was looking at Jean-Paul, suspicious of his recent fall and ready to start moving. Although they had all decided that the Candle Forest was the best hiding spot in proximity, Lucile was not anxious and knew that the three of them needed a bit of exercise or they would be overcome by exhaustion because of their situation. Even if they reduced their ability to hide, Lucile thought that being agile would be the best possible way to avoid getting caught by the Sonic Phi. 

As they thought about the direction in which they should walk, the booming arrival sounds of the Sonic Phi only got louder and the three of them could feel the ground shake as the thumps got closer. They could feel the vibration of the shaking ground shuffle through their cores out through the little hairs on their stomachs. This chakra-bending fear compelled them not to move but only uncomfortably worry passively like they would never be able to run away fast enough even if they needed to. It was pure fight over flight. Each too scared to show the other two that they were incapable, they all leveraged their most inwardly prideful level of competition and tried to pretend as though they could easily escape the oncoming threat. With enough fear to avoid worrying about the others making it to the end and maintaining some semblance of control over their now crumbling civilization, the trio got ready to react. 

Lucile looked over at Jean-Paul and Henry to see what they were going to do. She was standing still waiting for something that was about to happen moments ago – moments before the shattering landings of alien spaceships created an ominous surround sound – and when she focused her concentration on analyzing the boys' body language she noticed that she was only watching Henry and Jean-Paul stand in place. 

She whispered to them, "Where are we going?" and unfrozen them from their catatonic position. Maybe it was fear, or maybe it was a survival instinct, but after Lucile spoke to them they both put down their bags at the same time. Henry and Jean-Paul looked as though they were still trying to gather their belongings but everything was already packed. To Lucile, it almost looked like they were taking off their bags in order to run away.

After maybe one or two seconds, they both put back on their backpacks. From Lucile's perspective, her two friends were repetitively picking things up and putting them back down. It was like a looped four second picture. To Lucile, this was disconcerting because as far as she could remember of the recent past, Henry and Jean-Paul had started packing a long time ago and she had been ready for an overwhelmingly long time. 

"It is more of a looping film than a hula hoop." It confided.
"Do you think one can loop a hoop?" I did not derided. 
"The scoop is that one can group some hoops and feign a loop, but really it would just be a dupe loop. Fake." It decided.

(See appendix 2)

Was Lucile thinking too hard? Or was she just standing too comfortably, staring at her worried friends, as they attempted to get ready and therefore it was important for Canransoficus to bother her out of her calming presence? Lucile brushed off her calmness and tried to feel frazzled, only to find that the amount of time she had spent in Wonderland and Paradise made her feel more excited, than scared, about an upcoming journey. She had barely been able to explore her planet without having to check in with Dog and a part of her wanted Jean-Paul and Henry to get their act together so they all use the Sonic Phi as an excuse to jump their town's wall and venture into the illegal parts of the planet. Lucile gave herself a hug and then waved again at her friends, hoping that she could rouse them out of their funk. Henry glanced at Lucile, staring at her blankly, and she suddenly felt much smaller than before, her adrenaline coming down from wanting to collude with an alien invader in order to allow her greater access to the banned part of her planet. 

Although she was also concerned about the impact of the invaders, she still had room to feel embarrassed about the possibility of lurking over Henry and Jean-Paul, especially Henry. Deciding that it looked, from their perspective, that she was not helping, Lucile went up to her friends and silently re-wrapped up the sleeping gear that they were not working on packing. They had done an alright job packing their backpacks but Lucile thought that maybe if she just corrected a few of their errors her friends might be less disturbed by the present situation. Although the boys were actively moving their torsos around and combing their hair out of their faces with their hands as though they were focusing, they were making almost no progress. The situation would make Dog feel like bursting into cries of frustration if it saw the uncomfortable shock to everyone's survival hormones upon interacting with the Sonic Phi for the first time. Lucile took in a giant breath, held it for a minute, then put her hand over her mouth and nose until she relaxed, and continued to watch Henry and Jean-Paul for any mark of worry or frustration with her possibly annoying attempt to help. She did not want to make them feel worse by touching their belongings. 

Lucile continued to pack up the boys’ things for them, noticing no change in their behavior, and also continued to worry that Henry was going to chastise her for disregarding “other's personal space” or doing the reconfiguration of his belongings incorrectly. Luckily, this was an unfair evaluation of the situation and after Lucile finished doing most of the organizing she stood back up and tried to keep her body from getting too agitated. 

Lucile was able to pack most of Henry and Jean-Paul's belongings before they noticed she was doing anything. Then, as Lucile was putting both their sleeping bags away, the snapping and zipping of her attempt to get the sleeping bags down to their smallest size roused the boys into paying attention. They noticed she was messing with their sleeping bags but instead of getting upset that Lucile was fiddling with their things without asking, Henry and Jean-Paul started looking around to make sure nothing was left on the ground. Lucile was glad that they seemed to be less anxious about the Sonic Phi. After finding a few pieces of trash in the area they were sleeping, Henry and Jean-Paul refolded their sleeping bags, noting to Lucile that they already knew how to figure out the best way to package the smaller items. According to the boy, by 'letting' her try to package their sleeping bags first, they each knew how they were going to carry their bags in the most efficient, lightweight, and compact way possible. Once the booming sounds of the Sonic Phi's crashing vehicles began to wobble the land beneath their feet, however, everyone realized that wasting time being scared and lollygagging was a total misuse of  their time and that they all might die if they, as a group, did not quicken their pace. Instead of being uncomfortable and lazily finishing the last of the cleaning, however, the trio turned into wonderful pupils of Canrancosifs’ education system and did a final, thorough check that nothing was getting left behind. Following all the psychological protocol from their Emergency Alien Vistors 106 class, they acted as calmly as possible to convince themselves that they were not pointless pieces of mass floating in a reality crushing in on itself. They felt as though following exact protocol decreased the chance they would die. 

The details of this process would be unclear to anyone who did not do all their labs with Lucile, or so both Jean-Paul and Henry thought for about a moment, because Lucile loved to do extra labs for fun in every single one of her classes and she had been very helpful while they were too scared to move. Lucile used to force Henry to do his assigned labs once on his own and then do it again with her or she would steal homework from his backpack and switch it with a previous assignment. She liked to pretend that she was the teacher but because she had no other friends than Henry and Jean-Paul usually her teacher-antics involved parsimonious displays that were in-line with the tough and rugged games they liked to play together.

Henry often pitied Lucile and did the labs twice instead of getting into a passive aggressive conflict with her pointless, competitive nature. In this instance, however, with the need to recall information from his class about alien invaders, Henry wondered if all the labs that Lucile had forced him to complete were somehow finally relevant. Overall, however, he kept himself from thinking too much and quickly went back to paying attention to cleaning up and making their existence undetectable.

Henry and Jean-Paul looked over at Lucile to see if she had finished packing her own things and realized that she was already totally ready with her satchel attached securely to her body and everything securely fastened. Then, they also watched her climb up the closest Candle tree to see what was going on in the distance. Much to her chagrin, it looked as though the Sonic Phi were heading towards the Candle Forest. Lucile debated in her head the merits of hiding as the Sonic Phi passed through versus trying to make up distance by running. Once Jean-Paul had all his items on his back he checked on Henry, who was still searching through his satchel for something he though he lost. Not sure what to do, Jean-Paul went up to Lucile to ask her what she saw of the Sonic Phi from where she was standing in the tree. She explained to him the situation and what she thought the options could be of where they should run to avoid getting attacked by the Sonic Phi. Jean-Paul also climbed a tree to look through the trees, into the distance, to see if he could come up with any observations. Seeing only small lights that were not decipherable to his eyes, Jean-Paul got frustrated. 

“I need to get some exercise. We should run,” said Jean-Paul.

“Aha!” shouted Henry, “I found it!”

Jean-Paul and Lucile glared at Henry, “Shh!”

“Sorry,” replied Henry is a low whisper. “It is just that we have more food that I thought we did. If you do not want to share you do not have to. I will be happy to eat it myself and you all can…”

Lucile jumped over to Henry and gave him a big hug. “We are glad you brought food. Jean-Paul and I decided to try to gain some distance by running. The Sonic Phi are headed towards us right now. I just climbed a Candle tree and saw it myself. I don’t recommend trying to look. Jean-Paul tried and couldn’t see anything.”

It seemed like Henry had been in a daze. Although Lucile had not only packed her own stuff very quickly but also had done the lion’s share of his and Jean-Paul’s packing, Henry was still unable to figure out who had organized everything during his emotional nap. He was in an anxious haze and had not noticed that it was Lucile who had helped him pack. Usually Henry would say something if he saw Lucile being too idle – once he even kicked her in the shin with the back of his foot because he said that she was only pretending to do her homework – but in the moment he could not figure out whether she was being wasteful with her effort or if she was doing something productive. His whole emotional understanding of the situation was off balance with the incoming, physical threat not far away. When Henry jokingly mocked Lucile for not doing anything to help the group, she looked offended and walked out of his view. Henry meant this in a kind way because sometimes Lucile was zoning out in an overly obvious way that distracted other people. It made other people uncomfortable. Whenever he mentioned this odd habit to Lucile, who always said she was not doing it on purpose, she would get quiet and seem upset. Henry was only joking with Lucile to let her know she was zoning out while staring, not because he was trying to make her feel bad.

Lucile, while being wonderful with her teachers and an interesting participant in the classroom discussions, was not particularly fun to be around when she was not on an adventure, so she had few friends other than Henry and the people who Henry called friends. To be honest, her nonchalance about having no friends made her cooler and friendlier and prettier than she would have been if she conformed like everyone. Henry wished that they were in Wonderland and Lucile was sitting around as usual explaining some strange thing she noticed while staring out into the distance. Instead, they were about to be stolen from their planet by disgusting-looking alien creatures. He wished it was a regular, sunny day in Wonderland. From his Emergency Alien Visitors 106 class, however, Henry knew that there was no place for wishes at such a time and the he needed to hurry up and relax to get ready for a strenuous jaunt away from the Sonic Phi. He knew that they would be running away soon enough.

Jean-Paul, not trying to waste more time, was the first to suggest taking off from their present hiding place. Everyone agreed and Jean-Paul started dashing off running, for he knew it was likely that someone might start some sort of conversation that would waste more time. Once he got agreement from the other two, he ran as quickly as he could away from him friends to increase the tension in the situation and keep Lucile and Henry from entering some long, problem-solving discussion. This would undermine the entire idea of running away. Luckily, as Jean-Paul took off, Henry and Lucile immediately paused their conversation to keep pace right behind Jean-Paul knowing their cue to follow and maneuver through the dark Candle Forest.

Lucile’s First New Place

              Everyone ran as quickly as they could through the Candle Forest, reaching its perimeter within an hour. Lucile had never been this far from home before. Yes, her trips to Wonderland took her to different places, but those were just in her mind. In Wonderland, she would sit around and re-plan the structures in her village to create imaginary terrains in her mind that she would later explain to her friends. People liked Lucile best when she played imaginary games and invented reasons to go on adventures to find things that did not really exist. Lucile was good at making things up and convincing the others to play along because she always yearned for the world beyond the village. Because of her insatiable curiosity, she always had a lot of ridiculous ideas for content to share about what she thought might exist beyond the little world that Dog had created. There was a part of Lucile that always wanted to see different places and to wander farther and farther from the city. A part of her thought that coming up with excuses for being late coming home would be especially useful if she were to escape Canrancosifs and visit somewhere else. Dog was very strict about allowing the villagers to leave even just the town and the privilege of visiting other planets was only for a few talented hunters.

Dog had created Canrancosifs into sections, many of which were inaccessible to the villagers. The reasoning was that the human village had everything to sustain human life except for one problem. The issue was that the humans were not trustworthy enough to have uninhibited access to the natural, wild parts of the planet. In fact, unfettered access to all reaches of Earth was how Dog suspected Earth had caught its heart problem. While Lucile agreed with Dog that it was important not to disturb the life in other parts of the planet or try to leave the planet and possibly get lost, she always felt as though she, herself, would be able to live symbiotically anywhere she moved. She often tried to convince Dog that it should let her explore Canrancosifs without telling anyone else in the village about her departure. Once she tried to explain to Dog that the Smilicus Grassicus only spoke to her and that the flowers and big animals were always playing with her, even when she was just sitting and reading, and that once she had even gotten an unicorn to bring her an edible plant from inside its shelter and also that she had never ever ripped off a leaf from the giant flowers that grew near the exterior pasture but it was no use. Dog never agreed. Sometimes, Lucile told her stories with a bit of sarcasm and untruthiness to see if Dog might let her go on an pseudo-adventure beyond the confines of Dog’s official law, but that also did not work. While Dog listened to her explain her special attachment to nature and believed that Lucile would never be the one to harm or mutilate Canrancosifs, Dog kept its stance and agreed with Lucile’s teachers that unless she wanted to change paths and become a hunter, she should try to find happiness by staying near to her hut. Also, her Dog pointed out that Lucile was lucky to have such a great Dog because some of the other cottage-Dogs would not have let Lucile even visit Wonderland or spend as much time as she did not helping around the cottage and therefore Lucile should try to be understanding that there were policies to keep the planet safe. In such instances, Lucile felt as though there would be no arguing and decided to go off and do what she wanted without conferring with Dog anymore.

Lucile often had some good points about why the villagers and their cottage-Dogs were so much different from the residents of Earth. If she were the creator of Canrancosifs, she would not have created so many rules about accessing the other environmental zones of the planet. Lucile disagreed with Dog about many other facts concerning how Earth died and how Dog created the new planets. These types of conversations came up often between Dog and Lucile but, ultimately, Dog always said that it could not handle another tragedy like what happened with Earth and that Lucile was not allowed to leave the village, like everyone else. She was no different than any of the other citizens of Canrancosifs.

Lucile felt as though everyone was an individual and that Dog should just tell the other cottage-Dogs that there was some reason that she could not attend school because, for example, maybe she was doing a personal project that caused her absence. Then, under Dog’s excellent excuse, Lucile could sneak out to the ocean climate or maybe even the jungle and come back without being caught by the others. Dog always thought that leaving the village was a silly thing to request over and over but it let her express her position. Freedom to converse about any topic was always welcome on Canrancosifs. Dog was extra understanding of Lucile’s questions Dog liked that Lucile would disagree politely but never break any of the rules. In fact, Lucile was often chastised for being late because there was nothing of worse consequence that she would ever do or had ever done. Lucile understood that rules were for listening to rules and that listening involved using her ears and nodding, so she always assumed that if she agreed long enough she would eventually believe everything she was told. Unfortunately, after being stuck inside her village for so long, this rule-following tactic was not working particularly well.

Lucile had been yearning more and more to have her opinion understood. Then again, Lucile often thought that her personal problems were worse than they were, compared to her peers at least, and she could be very dramatic about the way others perceived her way of thinking. She would throw private tantrums, in her cottage away from the others, getting angry at herself for being so much worse than everyone else.

Now, however, her personal problem was that she was in a totally new place. It was literally the opposite of what she always complained about. Physically, above all else, her body and senses were in a new environment, just like she had always wanted. This unfamiliar place looked like Paradise, with an expanse of rolling, grassy hills in all directions. Feeling strange that she might actually get to the other side of the wall and into a new environmental after all, Lucile got anxious and thought about all the rules that Dog had instilled. To calm herself, Lucile repeated to herself, “there isn’t anywhere I’m meant to be that isn’t where I be” and she realized what the smiling grass, aka Smilicus Grassicus, meant. Sometimes we are far away from the location we expect our lives to be, however, that does not mean we cannot find perfection in our current situation. Even though she was lost, scared, and sad, she realized that in the current state of things she might be able to complete one of her life’s goals. She always wanted to leave her village, so she tried to think about how she should reframe the situation as a happy event that reinforced her current lifestyle to help her achieve one of her personal goals. Instead of focusing on being scared of the oncoming Sonic Phi, Lucile thought about all the conversations she had with Dog to allow her to access the other climates. Although she tried her best to put herself in a better mood, however, the impending doom of the Sonic Phi and the other worrisome aspects of her escape compelled Lucile to be uncomfortable and agitated. She wanted to be happy but all she could think about was the Sonic Phi. The situation was not as happy as she had imagined in her mind. Still, while her physical self was a bit unwell, Lucile tried to take in observations of her incredible new habitat and not pick at her own feelings of being unprepared and in danger. Relaxing and trying to remember every bit of the Candle Forest and how to get to the wall was the best way to keep the situation tolerable.

Lucile could have wondered about the little things in her past that she could have done better, she could replay every bit of minutia between her and Henry, she could think of all the instances she could have been a better disciple to Dog, and she could regret not paying attention in her classes. But, instead, she thought about what an accomplishment it would be to get farther from home than she had ever imagined before. Lucile also thought about what she was going to do next and what her tomorrow would look like. She tried to compose herself and consider the fact that she was doing better than Henry and Jean-Paul, so it was important for her to be strong and not worry so much. And, that is why Lucile was an outstandingly great girl. Her sense of concern for others always allowed her to find something lovely or smart about which to wonder. As the three of them ran away through the Candle Forest, away from the encroaching Sonic Phi, she thought about how to find perfection in where they were going. With her hopes now in the clouds, it was easy for her to relax and run quickly without losing breath. Jean-Paul and Henry started running behind her and the three off them trotted off in some unknown direction away from the noises of the crashing space ships. The running was good because it helped her expend some of her physical discomfort with the surprising scenario and take her mind off the impending doom.

              Although Lucile was feeling better by running, the boys did not share the physical relaxation of burning through their anxiety. Jean-Paul, who seemed the most flustered of all three of them and was not finding any sort of meditative place in his own mind, was the one to finally give the first sign of resignation. “I must stop running. I cannot do it any longer,” he said.

              Henry was happy to hear this because Henry did not like the feeling of trying to outrun an object that was faster than him. The Sonic Phi’s orbs were fast and landed on the ground with such neglible force for the impact that running away from such an intelligent species made Henry’s stomach churn. Lucile conceded to taking a break from running, in her affable attitude, and lied by agreeing that it was a perfect time to take a break even though she wished they all could have continued. It was good that Lucile did not try to keep the others running because when everyone paused to slow their pace Lucile saw that the boys were rather fatigued. Jean-Paul had long been exhausted, but being a proud person, he did not want to be the first to cry Mary. That is probably why Henry liked Jean-Paul so much, his obstinate nature about things. Henry and Jean-Paul would often compete and because neither liked giving up, their contests often got more and more extreme.

              Henry was often the source of swoon by girls his age. He was, by any measure, rather attractive. In stature and in gaze, it was hard to avoid being attracted to Henry. When he was a boy, he was staring out of the window in school, and through a corner of the vector of his sight, from his eyes to the tree outside, walked by a girl, heading to her seat, two rows over. Turning his head from staring outside to looking around the classroom, he saw that the teacher was explaining something that he had already read about so he tried to go back to daydreaming. Wondering about nothing, lost in the void of unconcentration, he looked around again and noticed the girl who had just walked by had made it to her seat. When he accidentally made eye contact with her, she turned her head away and started giggling loudly. This roused him from his daydream and when he looked over his teacher, who now was facing the board to write an equation, he considered whether or not anyone in class had noticed that the girl had made a coy smile in his direction. Ms. Hucklebee was the teacher’s name, she was one of the few teachers in the town, and as she went on explaining something about the physics of string theory. Everyone else in class was either paying too close attention to the lecture to be aware of the tiny interactions among other members of the student audience or were pretending not to notice. However, despite the quiet of the classroom, the girl two rows over turned around and facing towards him, made a nonsensical gesture with her hands, and then opened her eyes very widely and made a toothy grin. Then, seeing the young girl start giggling and bat her eyelashes in his direction, making direct eye contact with him, Henry tried to hide the astonishment and embarrassment of being singled out by some stranger in a big classroom. At the time, Henry did not have many friends, but he still felt as though this person’s type of friendliness did not make the girl the type of friend with whom he wanted to make a friendship. People who were loud and tried to get attention by acting strangely were the total opposite of Henry’s naturally cool and composed nature. 

              Henry, however, being a quiet boy at the time, still had not had the pleasure of making friends with this girl, who turned out to be no other than Lucile Melach, and did not know the many adventures they would eventually enjoy together. At the time, he was uncomfortable, but being smart and observant, he tried to ignore her obnoxious laughter because he had a theory that girls were weird to boys at that age. In any case, a month went by where this strange, outcast specimen of a classmate continued to giggle whenever Henry would stare out the window. He thought nothing of it, although he did notice that the girl had very few friends and was often the butt of jokes. He wondered if she was trying to get him to pay better attention in class or just get his attention.

One day, however, he received a note, handed clandestinely from the person sitting in front of him. It read: “Dear Henry, Do you like me? Do you want to be my boyfriend? -Jill” and under each of the two questions there were two boxes with the words yes and no next to them. He looked up and tried to remember who Jill was. As he went through the rows trying to match Jill to a familiar classmate, the giggling girl looked over and gave him another strange look.

              “Huh.” Thought Henry. “Maybe that’s Jill.”

              The other thing that made Henry so popular among feminine creatures was the amount of importance he put on, as he called it, “living an honest life.” Outwardly, this came out as bluntness and a masculine non-sensitivity. Inwardly, it was based on his frustration with superficiality and emotional anxiety around deception. Even as a child, he seemed serious and contemplative.

              In this circumstance, because he could not be sure that the girl in question was, in fact, Jill, he looked though all the other desks to see if any of them fit Jill instead. As he was doing this, Ms. Hucklebee asked a question, and ten seconds later he heard her turn to the girl who was constantly staring at her and say, “Lucile, would you like to answer?”

              “Yes, Miss Hucklebee. I think that the reason that we can’t be totally certain about particle physics is because…”

              Henry, noticing the name, was surprised that some other girl in class would write such an inappropriate note. He expected it to come from the audacious girl who, to be fair, was now giving an excellent answer to his question.

              “Huh,” thought Henry, “that weird girl’s name is Lucile.”

              Returning to the note and filling out its questionnaire honestly, he refolded it, and handed it back to the boy in front of him, expecting that it would get back to this Jill person at some point. He went back to staring out the window. Henry decided that the strange girl who sat close to the front and whose was Lucile should be upgraded to being considered enigmatic over annoying. As she finished giving her answer to the questions, she looked over at him and made another creepy smile, did not giggle, and tried to hold Henry’s gaze. Henry decided that this bizarre behavior might be able to be excused as one of the qualities of people too smart to have normal social skills. In any case, Henry went back to ignoring her, as usual, and paying attention to Ms. Hucklebee. Class went on, and soon Henry was daydreaming again. This time, however, when he looked back over to see what the other people in class were learning, he noticed that there was a girl in the back, looking down, with tears on her cheeks and her eyes red. She was rubbing her temples and wiping the moisture from her cheeks but not making any crying sounds.

              “Huh,” he thought.

              Class ended and as Henry was gathering his belongings to leave, he noticed Ms. Hucklebee approach the weepy girl in the back of the classroom, sit on her desk, and try to make a light conversation. Then, with Ms. Hucklebee watching over her, the girl pointed in Henry’s direction and then put her face back in her hands with her facing downwards. Henry assumed that the crying girl was Jill and left before anything got worse.

As he walked through the hall and down the stairs towards the exit of the building, he heard a light jog coming behind him. Just as he was about to turn, he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Ms. Hucklebee. A bit winded, but still being a young and vibrant young lady, she smiled, took in a big gulp of air to catch her breath, and asked Henry if she could have a quick word. He agreed, and they found a nice place to sit in the school’s courtyard. Once they were seated, Ms. Hucklebee asked Henry why he had said, as she put it, “such awful things to Jill.” Henry responded that he did not even know who Jill was, let alone that he would say something mean to her. Ms. Hucklebee said she did not understand; Henry was always dazing away whole class periods looking towards the back of the classroom. Henry wanted to reply that Ms. Hucklebee was lying and that he was actually staring out the window, not at some person he did not know sitting behind him, and that it was not really in line with what they were reading in their physics textbooks that the vector of his vision would even point towards something behind him with his head in a resting position, and that Ms. Hucklebee should have at least noticed this before making such a serious allegation, but he thought the better of it and decided to stay quiet as she questioned him further.

              “Jill said that you told her that she was ugly and that the only way she would even stand a chance at being pretty was if you were her, well, I do not even want to mention the word because it was way beyond the scope of your age group, but she said you told her she needed to ‘try to be your boyfriend.’ She even showed me a note where you are taunting her,” began Ms. Hucklebee.

              Ms. Hucklebee was being outlandish. Now worried that the teacher was also about to suggest that Henry was not being a good student, and that she would bring up the one – and only – assignment he forgot to turn in as evidence that he needed to stay after hours on school days to get some extra help along with some extra discipline, Henry responded:

              “Oh, I am sorry Ms. Hucklebee. I do not want you to think that I do not like your class. I just missed the assignment because I lost the paper. It was not because I was spending my time calculating how to be mean to that girl. I promise that I do all the readings you assign and I will try to be better about class participation and the way I am perceived by the other students in class. I also promise that I did not even know that girl’s name was Jill and that I am not cheating off her homework.”

              Confused, but now smiling, Ms. Hucklebee responded, “No, I am sorry Henry. I think I misunderstood the situation. Henry, this talk is not about your grade or how well you are doing in class, although it is nice to hear that you are enjoying the material. No, Jill was just very upset today. She thought that you were looking at her because you liked her.”

              “I was not looking at Jill,” Henry said, getting a bit angry on the inside, but keeping his temper tepid as usual. “I was looking at the mango tree outside. In fact, that girl who sits in the front of the class has been looking at me and trying to get my attention. If anything, you should tell that girl, the one who always answers questions, to stop staring at people. Maybe she is the one who said those bad things to the crying girl.”

              “Oh,” and Ms. Hucklebee paused for a moment. “Yes, I did notice that Lucile… um…” and then, in a questioning tone, “Are you talking about the girl who sits in the front of the class and asks lots of questions and gives lots of answers?”

              “Yes, I believe I am. Ms. Hucklebee, I can promise you that I do not bother anyone. If any of the students is being mean to another one of the students, it is that girl because she is constantly making faces at me when you are turned around writing on the board.”

              “Well,” responded Ms. Hucklebee, “Lucile is very nice. Also, I would not worry about Jill. I am sorry I brought it up, there must have been some confusion. You are doing well in your classes and I hope you keep up the good work.”

Ms. Hucklebee said this in a way you that would tell your anorexic friend that you think it is “great!” that they are joining a new gym. It was a feigned compliment, with a clear sense of awkward obligation. It was strange, at first, to Ms. Hucklebee that Jill would make something up about someone she did not know, but upon realizing that Lucile, who was both odd and also a very good student, seemed to consider him a friend, it made sense. The other students were often mean to Lucile, but because of her tenacious character she ignored them, only to realize that it made her even more of a pariah. Ms. Hucklebee decided that it was Lucile’s interest in Henry that probably got him noticed by Jill, although it was rather interesting that Lucile wanted to be friends with Henry at all. Henry did not seem particularly outstanding and it was a bit dismal for him to respond to Jill’s note, although unsolicited, by marking both of ‘no’ boxes with nicely handwritten checkmarks and then writing in bolden, capital letters, “NO,” at the bottom of the note. Then again, in her opinion, he was still young and also an okay student so maybe making friends with Lucile would be a possible solution to the problem.

Trying to assuage any anxiety that she had caused Henry, Ms. Hucklebee said, “Henry, this is complicated, and you will understand better when you are older, but girls show affection in weird ways. Jill was probably trying to tell you that she wanted to be your friend and she got angry when you said ‘no,’ so I think ...”

              “Ok. I promise not to look at anyone anymore.”

              “That is not what I am saying at all!” Ms. Hucklebee responded worriedly, “Of course you can look at people. Um, it is just that maybe you might want to try and be friends with Lucile,” and she paused. How was a teacher supposed to tell her pupil that he should be friends with someone? Of course Ms. Hucklebee could not force people to be friends, but the situation seemed too easy to fix. She thought for a moment.

              “Henry, as you get older, you will notice that some people are mean for no reason. Friendships can make someone very happy, but it can also make someone very sad if it does not work out. Nice people, in general, are not always the friendliest. If I were you, I would interpret the situation as a chance to do your homework with Lucile and forget that Jill was a bit mean. It is a big class and I will make sure that Jill does not bother you.”

              Though he did not know it then, mean was something that Henry, and not Jill, was going to be called frequently in his life. And, of all people, it was Lucile who would remind him that sometimes other people just do not know what they are talking about.

              “Lucile is very smart,” continued Ms. Hucklebee, “and I think she needs a partner with whom to do her homework. If you have even the slightest inclination to spend less time looking out the window and more time staying up to pace with the lecture, I recommend you say hello to that girl who keeps staring at you and ignore the one who tried to get you into trouble today. I hope you can also spend some time thinking about how we can affect other people through empathy.”

              “Sorry Ms. Hucklebee,” said Henry, as he was getting up. “It will not happen again,” and Henry started walking away.

              Ms. Hucklebee stared at Henry as he put on his backpack. “Men,” she thought to herself. Ms. Hucklebee, being an extremely kind, and sometimes overwhelmingly sweet human being, had a hard time accepting that sweet little boys turned into mean men because of little girls. It seemed unfair because later men could be unaware of the power they had over women. Some men, when they look at you, see what you are. Other men, when they look at you, make you feel so strange, that you forget what the verb “looking” means. In fact, you forget what most words mean altogether. Your brain just stops working. One moment you could be wondering about what soup you were going to have that evening, but if a man’s gaze was targeted at you, even accidently, it could feel as though your entire world was melting so quickly that it would become a hot, creamy soup itself.

              This was also a difficult concept for Lucile, from the perspective of how she was treated by other students. At that age, other people were extremely intriguing to Lucile, so much so that her amazement at everything that everyone did made interacting with her feel awkward and forced. She would gush compliments at anyone who talked to her. In fact, many girls learned new adjectives from their conversations with Lucile. It was easy for Lucile to be utterly engaged with what another person was saying and this excitement about other people’s ideas turned out to be one of her very best traits. In Lucile’s particular case, however, her extreme ability to pay attention, coupled with a joy of learning and a quirky way of making jokes with her teachers, caused her classroom attendance to be beyond precocious and more like a suck-up. The other students began to dislike how much attention she often received from the teachers and school staff.

What also annoyed the other students was that along with having unlimited attention to give to the teachers’ lectures, she never ran out of attention to give to the other students. Such girls, however, often fizzled out over the course of a school year, because it is so easy to be the center of every debate and piece of gossip. Other students began to listen to Lucile’s every word and check for errors in her every detail and then, finding none, they began to make up mistakes that she was making. Being constantly fawned over, possibly, makes it hard for accidentally attention-grabbing girls to conceptualize that being different is actually a deep and emotional feeling that can be painful for the members of their audience. To see someone else naturally gain the favor of those in authority can make classmates gang up on such students out of a sense of utilitarian fairness where, for example, a teacher spends equal time commenting on each student’s behavior and does not focus on anyone more than others.

To Lucile, however, such an explanation seemed like a farce. She liked that everyone swooned over all her answers and that just by sitting with her for a bit, they would have feelings of true gravitas. She was always giving compliments to the other students and enjoying all the stories they told her. Being singled out was a feeling that Lucile enjoyed, especially in class.

From Henry’s perspective, people who talked a lot made him feel unsure that learning was even real. On a few occasions, Henry had heard a totally incorrect answer, checked that it was wrong in the book, and then remembered that neither the teacher nor anyone in the class had tried to make a correction. Moreover, it was almost always people who constantly gave answers who were prone to making errors and he could not understand why teachers loved those types of students so much, only after spending a few months in same the same room together.

As Henry walked away and Ms. Hucklebee trailed off in thought about how to keep Jill from bothering another student in class, Henry considered re-evaluating his views on the strange girl in the front of the class. Being a sensible student, Henry tried to think of some smart questions to ask Lucile to gage whether or not she might be worth getting to know. It could not hurt to at least have a companion with whom to do homework, whether or not they were obviously odd. The two questions he thought of were: if you are running three circles in one hour and I add a three foot moat, by what fractional multiple of three does it take to run one circle?; and two, if being mean is different from being selfish, how was it possible that someone else could be mean to him, and then he, himself, get blamed? Meanness was likely some sort of selfish trait, although emotionally directed to someone else.

              The next day, Henry asked Lucile those questions after class, also ignoring asking her about her pestering behavior.     He was amazed by her answers and they sat around contemplating deep thoughts for so long that they were both late to their next classes.

With Lucile, Henry could imagine the world a bit more out of line and disorganized than with any of the other people in class. He liked how she always brought up something from class and then would argue that the teacher was actually wrong and that her own theory about some obscure angle of the subject was actually correct. A couple months later, after meeting in this class, Henry introduced Lucile to his only other friend, Jean-Paul, who was his neighbor. For a few years, they were inseparable. Then came the later years of school, and Henry grew very tall, too big not to notice by the other peers. Lucile stayed strange and was lucky that Ms. Hucklebee had helped her make friends with Henry when she was young. Whether or not it was true, Henry turned out to be much more interesting than Lucile, at least to the other kids in school. His presence, however, helped her make friends and enjoy her life. Eventually, Lucile developed a little crush on Henry but at least had the good sense to keep the word “love” out of all their conversations and avoided sending any notes like Jill. Her naïve teasing, giggles, smiles, and obvious attempts to be near him as much as possible were never really noticed by Henry, although it did help maintain a willing and eager attitude to always be available whenever he was free, which solidified their friendship. Even when Henry did not want to make time to see Lucile, she would show up unannounced and follow him around.

              Henry, although unaware of Lucile’s feelings, did start noticing that he was well liked by many girls in school. Tall and handsome, fast and stern, he noticed it was simple to make friends and get invited to social events, as long as he stayed quiet and mysterious. Initially, he left a few girls heartbroken with the same attitude with which he had responded to Jill’s note. Then, he went through a phase of isolation because he felt as though he was the cause of other people’s frustration. Over time, however, he stopped pitying the young women who fell in love with him based on the logic that he did not think that these women were in love at all. They were confused, like Jill, and getting involved with their flirtations too much only made the girls vindictive and angry when they found out that he was also responding to other advances at the same time.

This unfortunate outlook on love, that most girls needed to be kept at a distance or they would try to hurt him, was one he shared with no one, not even Lucile, with whom he shared many inciteful and personal conversations. Although, if Henry were to share this outlook with anyone, strangely, it would have been Lucile because such confessions would not have any effect on her warm, friendly feelings towards him. It was possible that this comfort with isolating himself from specific was what made Henry so cool and popular. Henry was often a bit off-putting, and he added to his pessimistic attitude about other people with a rather melancholy mood.

              Despite this perceived melancholy, Henry was still active and strong. This matched his physical tenacity and was probably the main reason that Henry and Lucile spent so much time together. Lucile was lazy about all the activities that were actually required of her, but used all the energy instead on long, alternative, journeys and raucous adventures. Rather fittingly, the two of them had totally contradicting reasons as to why the other liked spending time with the other. Lucile assumed that the reason Henry enjoyed her company was because he was somewhat interested in her and Henry assumed it was because Lucile enjoyed physical activity as well as following him around.

              “This story seems a bit unrelated, do you think otherwise?” it questioned.

              “But an unrelated story in the context of a good story makes the tale relatable.” I answered.

              “Getting back on track would be best,” it seemed to remind.

              “I like this part of the story. I want to know more about what happened before all this mess took place.”

              “The point of a story is that you cannot know what happens before or after, unless it is in the story itself. Characters will always have parts that you will never get to know,” it recapped, and then continuing, “Now let us try to get to the important part of the tale, shall we dear?”

“Okay. I believe that the three, Lucile, Henry, and Jean-Paul, have finished taking their break and are running.”

The three of them, after taking a short break, ran as fast as they could to try to get as far away as possible. They were all fast, Lucile sometimes in a clumsy but quick way, and they made good time and distance because of their speed. During this lap, again, Jean-Paul was the first to get too tired to continue. No matter how much running Jean-Paul was used to, his anxiety caused him to stop and take a break. Right before he totally ran out of breath, Jean-Paul stopped and put his hands on his thighs, shaking his head and coughing. Henry slowed down and stopped a few paces in front of Jean-Paul, delighted that Jean-Paul was not outrunning him as he usually did. Henry would have been more delighted if it was Lucile who asked to take the break, but, alas, Jean-Paul was a skinny and sickly-looking boy, so it was no surprise that Lucile could outrun him.

Lucile, unlike Henry, however, did not notice that her friends stopped running, so she continued for a couple hundred feet. A few moments later, she looked around, saw no one, and turned around, finding that the two boys were standing around trying to compose themselves a way back behind where she was standing. Henry felt bad for Lucile, remembering that she hated getting lost or even the feeling of starting to get lost. Henry bet that when Lucile noticed that he and Jean-Paul were not near hear, she got scared. He wished he had said something a minute earlier to her to keep her from running too far ahead because he knew that the moment she stopped running and saw no one around must have felt awful. Lucile had not run far enough to lose them from her sight, but her disorientation still unpleasantly increased.

Henry’s empathetic anxiety for Lucile, however, was dwarfed in comparison to the anxiety that was starting to build up on their run. It could have been the endorphins, or it could have been a sense of realization, but as the sun was setting all three of them began to not only worry about their present physical stamina, but also their long-term stamina. Starting, stopping, sometimes almost getting separated from each other was getting agitating. Would they be able to survive without Dog? How long would they be away? How long could they evade the Sonic Phi until they were captured or even killed?

              Feeling dizzy from both their situation and the physical extremes of the day, the three of them plopped down on the grass, all agreeing to take a break, if not just fall asleep and give up on running altogether. When they sat down, however, Henry and Jean-Paul made faces because the ground was wet. It was the same grass that was found in their village, which was surprising given that they were in the Candle Forest and the heat of the trees did not dry up the ground like one would expect. Lucile, on the other hand, put both her hands on the familiar grass, even though it was also cold. Petting the wet grass, Lucile said, “Don’t be embarrassed grass, I understand how nervous you are. It’s okay to have leaked a bit of water. No one is judging you for it. We all have accidents sometimes and today is a particularly good day to have one because no one will blame you.”

              Remembering why he enjoyed her company, Henry interjected, “Lucile, you’re crazy for talking to the grass like that. You know it can’t understand you. It doesn’t understand humans.”

              “Well,” replied Lucile, “did you know that the reason the grass releases water is because it has an incontinence problem and when it gets nervous it releases the water under the soil to the surface?”

“I knew that,” Jean-Paul retorted. “That is true.”

              Silence from Henry.

              “Well, did you?” asked Lucile, raising the pitch of her voice.

              “You guys are both ridiculous.” Henry said, denouncing the two others for turning what could have been a nice conversation into an argument. Of course he knew about the grass, it was the most common form of life on the planet.

              You’re not ridiculous.

              This time, Lucile didn’t look around. She knew that there was no one there and that it was just her mind. It frustrated Lucile that her mind was taking on a mind of its own, but it did not cause as much frustration as Henry’s negligence. He was not even commenting on any of her trivia and fascinating facts. Lucile knew a lot of interesting anecdotes and usually Henry really, really liked it when she shared them. With her mind playing tricks on her and Henry ignoring everything she was saying, Lucile was getting agitated and her blood felt warm in her chest. The awkward isolation from mental pains and the hormonal buzz of being rejected by someone she liked was not weighing well on Lucile’s motivation.  Luckily, before getting upset about the situation, she started wondering if her mind could have a mind, and whatever mind was in her head at that time trailed off into some deep thought.

              As they all sat in the grass, they felt better and even a sense of gratitude for having each other around. Henry put his arm around Jean-Paul, reminding him that he was not upset. Jean-Paul, getting out the funk in which he often found himself after a conversation had gone awry, started talking about different ideas he had for what they were going to do next. Jean-Paul shared some of his unicorn jerky which also caused her gut to strain when she was reminded Lucile of their lack of a sustainable supply of food. She wondered how they were going to find more. All their lives, their existence had been so simple. Everyone had a small orchard behind their cottage and the rangakoos laid giant eggs for them to eat along with their fresh fruits and vegetables. During certain seasons, there would be herds of unicorns and hippalectryon passing through their village and a local band of hunters would gather their meat and distribute it to the whole city. Times were simple. The hippalectryon was an especially tasty meat because not only did it satisfy one’s hunger, but it was also once of the best providers of energy in the food system. After a dinner that included hippalectryon, one could go for long runs that lasted for hours or even use some Excitementium herb over the food to give the person enough energy to stay away for two nights. Lucile knew, however, that there would be no way to catch a hippalectryon.

              Unfortunately, not one of the three was a trained hunter. Technically, they all knew how to hunt because they had all taken the required “Life Skills” curriculum, but none of them was old enough to join the hunters on their missions. Usually, good technique does not come from knowledge, but from practice. That is what Lucile was deeply lacking. She knew a lot of things about a lot of things but never really did anything about it. For example, she knew the assembly pattern, history, and maintenance routine of a hyperbolic canoe, but she never took the time to try out what she learned. There was a short period of time where she was obsessed with hyperbolic canoes. A hyperbolic canoe functions in the same way a usual canoe does, in that one person uses it to move across water, slowly, and manually. A hyperbolic canoe, however, is shaped like a conch shell with oars on either side. The rower also does not use the oars to paddle. The conch shell lays perpendicular to the length of the river and the rower basically floats down the river like a dough roller flattening the surface of the water. A combination of engineering and ingenuity allows the roller to stay stationary as the conch-shell-like apparatus spins around him. The paddles are used only to point the hyperbolic canoe in the right direction. Hunters in her village used the canoes to find fishing areas that had a lot of fish. The hyperbolic canoe would drift over areas with small fish, young fish, or fish that just did not want to be bothered, and along to areas with more fishable fish. Their village ate and made sure that there was always enough for the following season by constantly improving the canoe to do a better job, and because of its hyperbolic structure, the canoe would sometimes even improve on its own, without anyone trying to fix it.

Lucile liked most facts, but Lucile loved information about tools, nature, and history. In fact, she treasured any situation where she could learn a lot of information to keep in her mind for a useful moment to put it into practice. The practical aspect of tools, nature, and history mystified Lucile because she was a naturally adventurous person and she enjoyed going outside and finding new hints about all the things she remembered. If she was lucky, Lucile would be out with a group of other people and there might be some discussion and story-telling about one of her observations that tied the outside world to their classes. Lucile loved finding natural, outdoor occurrences that were incredibly correlated to school lectures when the other school kids were present. When she brought up ideas that were once stated in textbooks, the other people usually had at least some sort of response instead of ignoring her questions altogether. Henry, egging on the group to keep up the discussion, would often disagree with what Lucile was saying and because he barely studied as much as she did, it made their conversations foolishly fun.

Lucile was much better than almost everyone in her classes when it came to memorizing facts, but because she was only close with Henry, she would often wonder what the difference between them was and what made it so he was not learning as well as she was. Sometimes, the fact that Henry absorbed less from their coursework than she did bothered Lucile, but he seemed to like arguing with her from a place of less knowledge and he thought that when she was relaying what she knew that she was being funny, so she did not try to read into it. She also knew that with Henry being her only friend, it would be foolish to try to figure out what the difference between them and why the teachers always preferred her work to his. Lucile and Henry’s conversation always turned out much more intelligently than when she tried to speak with the other school kids so she tried not to analyze the difference in their grades. Also, it sometimes seemed that Henry was being picked on by the teachers for being a dreamer who did his work and kept up a thriving social live. Lucile would sometimes harp on him to increase his inclination to study, so they could banter more about topics from school, even though she knew that her penchant for trying to motivate people was almost never a well-received gesture.

Some of the other students would get annoyed when Lucile would take out her book and try to get them to study with her at odd times, or when Lucile would blurt out the answer to a titillating intellectual teaser that was supposed to turn into a group conversation. Henry was smart in comparison to the others, too, but Lucile was still hopeful that he would eventually do more of his homework and they could solve problems together more efficiently – for example, how to cut down a tree from Paradise and turn it into a hyperbolic canoe or how to coax the mushrooms out of the ground without the help of a teacher and get it to fly them to a different climate.

Henry always said their disagreements were “more interesting when they had different perspectives” and their views contradicted each other’s. It was also fun to catch Lucile in a lie so asking her to elaborate on her little facts was a good way to tease her and lighten the mood of a serious intellectual argument. Also, if their differences on a topic got too serious, Henry was usually the one to lighten the mood and could rely on his creativity to come up with a story that got them onto a new topic. 

In her new state of life, however, Lucile did not feel very intelligent. Sitting in the Candle Forest, running away from some creatures that looked nothing like what they had learned in the textbooks, and starting to feel the impending nightfall, the bundles of theories and smarts Lucile had worked so hard to absorb felt irrelevant. With all that knowledge and no assurance that any of it would work, everything seemed overwhelming. Lucile always felt a bit unsteady when thinking about the things she learned.

              Upon finishing a session trying to answer some immediate questions – where Dog might be hiding, if people in their village had gone missing or were captured – the trio decided to take a long silence to calm their energy. After a few seconds, however, Lucile began to chatter.

              “We need to get going. We cannot stay out in the open like this. The Sonic Phi will surely be here soon. Do you think we need something to eat? I noticed that we have some Unicorn Jerky which goes great with Excitementium. Want some?”

              Jean-Paul and Henry looked at each other with furrowed eyebrows. There was an awkwardness in their attempt at responding, but finally, Henry said, “Lucile, um, did we not just eat a little while ago? It has really only been a couple hours since we had our food with the Melancholia Metriculus and I think we should first maybe gather our thoughts. Jean-Paul, what do you think?”

              Both boys felt bashful about saying anything. It is possible that the boys felt as though they should be able to keep up with Lucile’s enjoyment of eating – they were big, manly men of course! Unfortunately, although nowhere their size, Lucile enjoyed looking at life through a kaleidoscope of magic herbs and delicious fruit a little more than most and was quickly ready to outpace anyone when it came to imbibing them. It was known that everyone on their planet, Canrancosifs, enjoyed magic herbs in everyday cooking and in the making of many important products like paper, and clothing, Lucile just maybe enjoyed them a bit too much. Or, she enjoyed the perfect amount. It was hard to tell. Dog would sometimes tell Lucile that her eyes were going to go bad if she continued using so many herbs with her food but Lucile did not care.

              Jean-Paul played it off as though the entire idea of accepting Lucile’s delicious concoctions would never have crossed his mind, saying, “Well, if Henry does not think it is a good idea to eat right now, I do not want anyone feeling burdened by our need to hunt so we probably should just wait until later.”

              Henry gave him a stern side-glance but said nothing. Although Jean-Paul was a good friend and it was unusual to find him annoying, Henry did not like it when Jean-Paul tried to challenge something by sarcastically acting like he was satisfied by the situation.

              The three of them continued on through the Candle Forest. They walked up and down, and over and under, and then back up and down the hilly sea of grass. It would have a been a beautiful and enjoyable day, but unfortunately they were under the suspicion that they might be attacked by evil-looking creatures from another planet so it did not feel quite as nice. In the distance, they saw a gigantic cement wall. Could it be? Had they reached the true edge of their village?

Dog made Canrancosifs in a very special way. Dog had learned that sometimes people cannot be trusted with having all things at once. Sometimes people just needed exactly what they needed and each other, and then they would be happy. However, this did not mean that things other than people should cease to exist. It just meant that a vast majority of the non-people things had to be separated from people so as to not be ruined by people. To solve this issue, Dog created Canrancosifs into four parts. There was the village where all the people lived; it was grassy, temperate and had all the necessities of life, including Paradise, Wonderland, and the Candle Forest. Then there was the jungle, this is where the wild things lived. There were creatures that liked to hunt just because they could, creatures that were made of poison just because they were, and even plants that ate these creatures just because they did! The third quarter of the world was for everything cold. Fuzzy, furry animals and ice was mostly what was there. The final section of earth was ocean. It was filled with everything the Earth’s oceans had, except for nuclear waste, garbage, and pesticides of course.

As they walked farther and farther from their village, the got closer and closer to the edge of their people quarters. It was rumored from books that all the four quarters of Canrancosifs were partitioned off with a wall, but rarely was there any detail about what made up this wall. Now, they could see the wall off in the distance. It was made of something thick and strong and it appeared to be a beautifully clean white.

As they made their way through the sparsening Candle Trees on the edge of the Candle Forest, they saw that they had made it to the edge of the village quarters of their planet. Looking ahead, they saw the wall that separated their people living quarters with whatever habitat was hidden behind the boundary. Lucile felt as though they had made excellent time getting through the Candle Forest and was happy that they were able to reach the perimeter of the village before being spotted by any Sonic Phi. From far away, the wall that formed the border of their permittable existence looked marshmallow-y and soft, like some sort of pillow had been forced into the shape of a wall. It went out into infinity on both sides and was also rather tall.

When the trio finally reached the wall, they were astonished at its cleanliness. Putting their faces right next to it, they noticed it did not have a drop of dirt, despite being completely white and a hard, matte colored material. Its foundation placed in dirt and grass, somehow the wall had neither been touched by dust blowing in the wind or one spec of mud from below. Both plain and surreal, the three humans stood and looked at the wall in awe. The wall was something out of the range of their society’s innovation and was an obvious original work of Dog when Dog was creating the planet. As they all knew, all four sections of Canrancosifs were partitioned off by a wall, although none of them had ever seen it before. Their village, which included cottages, Paradise, Wonderland, and the Candle Forest was blocked off from the other sections of the planet by this wall to help keep the other climates hospitable. All the nature and all the creatures did not fair well being bothered by curious humans when they had full planetary access of Dog’s previous home, Earth. There would no mistakes when it came to human and nature interaction on Canrancosifs so the wall stood as both law and enforcer in regards to getting people to respect the other forms of living life. Lucile liked that there was a huge mystery just beyond Wonderland because it allowed her to feel small. She liked the feeling of the world being unknown because it made her feel as though when she learned something new, she could question it forever.

Seeing the wall for the first time, Lucile first pointed out to Henry and Jean-Paul that it was much taller than she expected. It was so tall, in fact, that nothing on the other side could even be seen from stepping back and trying to peak over. Lucile was good at climbing, but the material of which the wall was composed did not have any holes or dents to put one’s fingers so there was nothing to grip onto to pull oneself up. Unfortunately, Lucile’s original idea was that they would traverse over the wall by means of climbing skills and continue into the next climate to hide from the Sonic Phi. Now what were they going to do? Even if all three of them stood on each other’s shoulders the wall was still too tall to climb over, jump over, or even see over. Furthermore, they knew from school that there would be no door.

Looking behind them at what was waiting if they did not get to the other side of the wall, the Candle Forest’s droopy, lit trees and waxy sap made an unwelcome image when compared to the marvelous design of the wall. Also, trying to hide in the Candle Forest did not seem like a good idea because sleeping there was unpleasant and there was no food. They all knew that just beyond the confines of their village there was the jungle, which had many different types of small creatures that they could easily catch and eat. Well, they guessed that they could easily catch and eat the jungle creatures. Technically, because no citizen of the city was ever allowed to venture past the wall, they could not be sure that the animals were in fact anything like what they had learned in school and whether or not the weapons they brought would be suitable for hunting wild animals they had never even seen before. However, going back to the village also did not seem to make sense because they had spent so much time moving away from the seemingly empty town that backtracking would likely lead to their being captured by the Sonic Phi. There was also a sense that they should not try to hide in Paradise or Wonderland, just in case avoiding these areas meant that the Sonic Phi would never find them. Paradise and Wonderland were some of Dog’s most sacred and special places and they all knew to protect them as much as they could.

The three of them started discussing emergency procedures and the different possible outcomes for this type of invasion of the planet. Jean-Paul wondered where all the other citizens were and why they had not run into anyone while traveling through the entire expanse of the Candle Forest. If the Candle Forest was a good place to hide, they probably would have seen some trace of activity, some footprint, or lost piece of equipment from a luggage. Jean-Paul remembered how they were told not to hide in Paradise or Wonderland during an emergency because it was important to try to hide these places as best as possible. To Jean-Paul, it was very odd that no one else was spotted hiding in the Candle Forest. Henry agreed, but also made the point that the other citizens might have found this occasion extra disastrous and that it was possible that they all broke Dog’s rules of not using those lands hiding. It was possible, to Henry, that with the sheer size of the Candle Forest and because they had failed to check many different parts of their village’s quarter of the planet, that other people were not far away and there was nothing about which to be concerned. The two boys talked, trying to figure out whether they trusted Dog’s laws enough to avoid Paradise and Wonderland for the sake of the lands themselves or whether they hide in a familiar terrain and should risk Sonic Phi finding the sacred places. All three of them, Lucile, Jean-Paul, and Henry, knew Paradise and Wonderland reasonably well because that was where they hung out in their free time. Although it was more risky to continue following emergency procedure, Jean-Paul pointed out that they also knew what could happen to the whole planet of Canrancosifs if those two areas were stolen by the Sonic Phi. As Dog taught it, there would be a quick end to their society and its secrets if the Sonic Phi were to follow them into Paradise or Wonderland. Coupled with their extremely advanced technology, the Sonic Phi could not also have access to Canrancosifs’ incredible, human-safe, natural places.

Feeling a sense of resignation, Lucile sat down and began to cry. It was all over. They were doomed. All the people on Canrancosifs were doomed. She hoped and prayed that the others in her village had found a better idea than hiding in that damned Candle Forest. Of course the Sonic Phi were going to check there! They were only the smartest creatures in the galaxy! From an immediate safety perspective, furthermore, the three of them were also extremely noticeable from the sky. Because the distance between the Candle Forest and the barrier wall that separated the village and the jungle was about one hundred feet, Lucile imagined what they must look like from above. In that moment, it would probably be easy for the Sonic Phi to see all three of them standing next to a giant, perfectly clean, white wall as they fumbled to climb over it.

Then, they heard a sound and saw the leaves on the nearby Candle Trees start to quiver from the sound impact of the aliens. It seemed the trio’s plan was literally the worst possible solution to have chosen. Totally the antithesis to their hypothesis, the Sonic Phi had chosen to land in the Candle Forest, above all other places. Sharing a hiding place with the advanced invaders was very dangerous and they realized that they had to re-evaluate where they would go and how they would get there undetected.

“If the Sonic Phi are in the Candle Forest already,” said Lucile, “or at least aiming for their landing point to be in this exact forest, there is a chance we can hide from them by tricking their technology. I think the lens they use to create heat maps and find enemies is categorical in nature, so right now the Sonic Phi are probably resetting their heat map measurements to consider the trees within the Candle Forest. I expect that they taking into account the shapes of the figures on the heat map and classifying them as living, non-living, and unknown. These trees might be a bad camouflage because our heat temperatures are so different. Maybe,” Lucile suggested, “if we all run out to the grassy border of the forest, I think there is a chance that the Sonic Phi’s science will not be able to detect our bodies. I think we blend in with the grass in many qualitative ways that might buy us some time.”

Henry replied, “I think we need to take a break and think. Instead of doing something immediately that will give us time later to sit and think, we should make some plans right now. Plus, I am not sure if your theory is correct, although that is an interesting way to solve the problem. Blending in with the grass to fool an advanced alien invader that we are actually grass, or that the grass is actually a person does not sound like it makes sense.”

Lucile said, “Well I think we are going to die,” and started to sob. “We did not even try to find Dog. We barely tried at all!”

As the Sonic Phi could be heard swarming from above, Lucile tried to explain her theory once again. Henry and Jean-Paul listened pensively, trying not to feel bad about choosing to go into the Candle Forest and making a bad strategic choice. Escaping out of the dense Candle Forest and into a path of grass that made a green, solid moat around the wall meant that they would be in obvious sight, sticking out like sore thumbs in the almost empty field of emerald that went around the perimeter of the wall. This was the wall that separated the human quarter of Canrancosifs from the jungle section. Going through the Candle Forest and then over the wall was one of the few ways that people could try to visit the other parts of the planet. Seeing and going into the other parts of the planet, however, was illegal. The citizens of the village were not permitted to go past the wall because it was Dog’s border that kept them from endangering other environments and causing Canrancosifs to die like Earth. Beyond the wall that Lucile, Henry, and Jean-Paul were considering running towards was the jungle, but Dogs’ law was that villagers, except for very well-qualified hunters, were not allowed to leave. Lucile, Henry, and Jean-Paul were all too young to be hunters, although they did know a lot about how to survive outside.

Lucile’s plan to run suggested some philosophical components of their problem. As the old story everyone learned in school went: humans had sabotaged Dogs previous livable planet, Earth, by moving everywhere, dispersing their waste, and using every living thing as their own. When Earth got sick and died, Dog was so sad that it ceased to exist for a very long time. Finally, feeling as though a lonely non-existence was less fulfilling than making an effort with a species that had let it down, Dog created another, new system of planets which included space for humans like Lucile, Henry, and Jean-Paul. Dog decided that the humans would stay on the planet Canrancosifs, which was very far away from the Sonic Phi’s planet, Hazer, and also rather far from the others planets which also carried forms of life. In Lucile, Henry, and Jean-Paul’s present situation, however, it made the most sense to break Dog’s rules and go over the wall and into the jungle. Sharing the Candle Forest with the Sonic Phi was the easiest way to die, but escaping back to their village seemed dangerous and almost impossible. The Sonic Phi had surely found the village already by flying above and would be looking for enemies trying to escape home for supplies. It would make sense if the Sonic Phi had already figured out the path from the Candle Forest, through Wonderland and Paradise, and back to the village. All the paths were clearly marked and not difficult to figure out. The jungle, however, was even foreign to Lucile, Henry, and Jean-Paul and it seemed like it was large enough in which to hide. Getting over the wall was a significant unknown because, likely, it was going to be an actual problem to figure out. Details about how the wall kept people from vising other climates of the planet were not well known and there were no images of the wall provided in their textbooks. All the citizens knew was there was the end of their land, and then about one hundred feet of plain grass that hugged the wall, and then a large wall.

Although no one in the group had any idea where all the other people had escaped to, or even if the others were still alive, it was decided that it made the most sense to get farther from civilization in case more Sonic Phi were arriving. Also, in the textbooks it said that the jungle had dense cover and tall trees so if they could make it in they would infinitesimally less detectable.

Weighing their options, the three seemed to conflict in their analysis of what to do. Henry was the best suited to decide, however, because he was rarely lost and often a good leader, so Lucile and Jean-Paul decided not to start arguing with each other and try to see what Henry would decide to do. They had all been friends for a long time and it was easy to solve group problems quickly, as long as they did not start trying to make complicated arguments or take too much time explaining how the intricacies of the plan would work out. There was a part of Lucile that just wanted to run off on her own and feel as though by leaving Henry and Jean-Paul she had somehow escaped the clutches of the Sonic Phi. Although it was irrational, she kept looking around for some hiding spot where she could sneak away. With Henry’s stern warning not to suddenly change course, however, Lucile stood with the group and started crying out of fear, albeit extremely quietly. Ultimately, they decided to go to the edge of the Candle Forest, without leaving the closure of its candle trees, and look out on the grass in front on them to try to figure out what to do next.

The three of them got to the farthest out tree in the Candle forest and looked over the field to try to see what they could see of the wall. Crouching over and wiping the tears off her face, Lucile sat down next to Jean-Paul and Henry. She sat silently, unsure what to do next, and rubbed her cheeks and forehead. When even Lucile stopped talking, it was clear that there was a big problem on everyone’s hands. Now sitting next to each other, they all stared out into the distance, nostalgic for a past they never enjoyed enough when they lived it. It seemed that all chance was against them. They had nothing left within themselves and knew that they would only feel an eternally growing depth in their void as time passed without Dog. Each of them wished they could just be home, with Dog, and safely tucked away in bed. Realizing that no one had seen their Dog on the whole adventure through the Candle forest, they assumed that the Sonic Phi had captured every single Dog and there was little chance that they would survive either. Jean-Paul, who was usually complaining about the village, about how Dog was so strict, and about the teachers lied about science by using poorly written textbooks as an excuse for not having answers to pupil’s questions, even missed the day he would be having had there been no invasion. Often angry at Canransoficus for having so much beauty hidden away from the sight of the villagers and, like Lucile, often yearning to see all the other environments that were kept isolated from the reach of the villagers, Jean-Paul did not want to see the jungle anymore. Less than five feet away from the border of the jungle and the villager’s dominion, he did not want to venture beyond the wall and explore the supposedly incredible environment that he always spoke about being kept captive from seeing. He wanted to go back into his cottage, find Dog waiting for him, and do his homework. Thinking about how silly it was to have questioned Dog’s protection, Jean-Paul started accusing himself for being the reason that the Sonic Phi had been able to invade. If he only had been more content with the life he already was living, and not pushed himself to be such a nay-sayer to all the rules just to impress his classmates, maybe it would have been easier for the citizens to focus on protecting their way of life and the hunters would have had some emergency plan in place that would have led him to a less disturbing outcome than the one he was presently facing. Standing on the edge of the Candle forest, where he rarely ever ventured, and seeing that they had no way of defending themselves if the Sonic Phi were to find them hiding, Jean-Paul thought about why he used to be so antagonistic.

Lucile decided that if she was going to die within the next hour or so, she was at least going out with some Unicorn Jerky piled on with Melancholia Metriculus. The three of them were still sitting in the Candle Forest and she opened up her knapsack, took out a pile of Unicorn Jerky and some of the herbs, and held them next to the heat of a nearby Candle branch. Warming up the jerky made it more tender and the smoked flavor of the herbs made the food so delicious that it could have been featured as a necessary special at a Canransoficus diner. Lucile did not often prepare food for herself and was surprised that this culinary creation turned out so delectably. Feeling like it would be her last meal, and maybe being a bit dramatic, she began to consume as much as she could. Lucile looked over at Henry, and with a look of solace he nodded his head and slowly took some food from her hands. He then passed part of the jerky to Jean-Paul, who was in the same mind as Lucile about the subject – if his ending was near, at least he should go out on a delicious meal.

Lucile took out the floral dress that she packed and laid it on the ground next to her. She put her head in the middle of it and straightened out the fabric that had folded behind her neck. Henry walked over to her left and laid next to her, perpendicular, with his head also laying on the dress and one of his giant arms raised above his head and stretched out over her stomach. Jean-Paul approached the two, and silently laid parallel, to the right, of Lucile, in a different fashion than Henry with his knees bent and his hands folded over his belly. The three of them stared at the rainbow-colored sky and thought thoroughly of all the things they would have done differently. If only, if only, if only.

Then, right as she was about to doze off, Lucile began to hear a beautiful sound quietly making a crescendo near her. Could it be? Was it really? No, it could not be, she reassured herself. They only existed in Paradise! Or did they exist other places as well?

And Lucile looked over, only to see exactly was she was hoping for. A Smilicus Grassicus appeared in the hill below them, beyond the cover of the Candle forest. The grassy perimeter to the wall did not seem like a usual place for the Smilicus Grassicus to appear but from the edge of the Candle Forest, where the three were sitting, it became apparent that this lovely inhabitant of Canransoficus was visiting them. Its typical round glasses and sleepy grin were impossible to mistake for anything else.

“Why are you not talking about the space between you all?” the Smilicus Grassicus asked Lucile.

“I do not quite feel like talking right now.” Lucile responded, but then immediately regretted what she had said.

Jean-Paul and Henry turned their faces toward each other, now that Lucile, their middle barrier, had stood up. In the distance, on a small, downward sloping hill about twenty feet away, was a face with glasses. The Smilicus Grassicus appeared in the grass at about half the distance between the edge of the Candle forest and the wall that enclosed the jungle out of reach from the village. Although the Smilicus Grassicus that was emerging from the grass had a sleepy smile and dim voice, its mere size was enough to terrify the boys. The Smilicus Grassicus’ mouth created a giant hole in the ground and the gaping ditch that was created when it moved its mouth to talk was enough to terrify anyone. It was rumored that the Smilicus Grassicus would sometimes talk to people, but it was very rare. In fact, neither Henry nor Jean-Paul had even seen a Smilicus Grassicus outside a text book. They were shy creatures, known to appear only for minutes at a time and then disappear.

The Smilicus Grassicus slowly started talking to Lucile, “Oh, you mean the wall of illusion? Try to realize it is all within yourself.”

“But I’m only very small!” Lucile almost shouted, with tears in her eyes, “Life flows within and without me!”

The Smilicus Grassicus’ smiled turned into a frown. Sighing, it remarked, “My dear, think about the wall of illusion. When you find it, hold it, because you can save the world.”

As Lucile was about to ask 114 questions, a strong gust of wind blew across the sea of rolling hills and the Smilicus Grassicus’ face was nowhere to be found. However, as it dissipated, one could hear the beautiful cooing of a well-tuned sitar.

“What do you mean I can save the world!? I am only Lucile Melach!” she shouted into the emptiness created by the disappearing creature.

But, Lucile’s cries were only heard by Henry and Jean-Paul. The Smilicus Grassicus was all gone. However, sometimes there is something to be said about someone who paid attention something in school. Maybe it was her frustration, maybe it was the Melancholia Metriculus, or maybe it was words of the Smilicus Grassicus but Lucile had an idea.

Lucile remembered that in school there was never any mention of anyone trying to get through the wall. They were just taught that there was a wall, and no one could pass into other quarters. However, as far as Lucile could remember, time also moved differently on different sides of the wall. The change in time paces was not perceptible once you were in the new climate, but if Lucile was correct, and if she was remembering this fact about the time differences properly, she possibly had an idea. The answer was not to go over the wall.

Thinking through her memories of what she had learned about the time difference in class, Lucile started to chuckle to herself as her new solution seemed to make more and more sense. It felt as though she had an epiphany when she realized that Dog was the one who wrote those textbooks. It made sense that if all the humans were not allowed to pass to the other parts of Canrancosifs but Dog supposedly also created the planet, that no one other than Dog could have written the textbooks. Why had she never noticed that before? Therefore, when the being that created the planet also wrote the textbooks for it and, also, served as protection to its people, there must be some made up content to keep the citizens safe regardless of how they used their planet. Following this idea logically in her mind, Lucile concluded that Dog would not have created a wall that would still function if Dog was missing. In any case, at this point in an alien invasion, in a sense, there was no wall! Yes, the three of them may have perceived the wall as still existing and yes, the wall may have looked daunting, but it was supposed to serve as protection for the planet, not a force to keep citizens locked in during an invasion. Something’s structure, when it is part of the makeup of a planet, is not its everything. It was odd to think that a wall’s physical structure was not its only characteristic, being that a wall is basic unit of structure, but that is probably why Dog chose it to begin with. When everyone believed it existed to separate people, it existed to separate people. The border looked real, everyone was told the border was real, and no one wanted to challenge something so, well, real because, well, that was just strange. Real things are real, by definition. Still, with textbooks that included information about aliens and even data about the evil Sonic Phi, it would make no sense for Dog to knowingly create a cage around its citizens. At that point, the citizens would be part of the planet and would need to be saved. A wall is meant to separate things from passing, an unbeatable force that cannot be moved even in an emergency. To include a class on Alien Invasions and then have no path to escape their village would mean that Dog’s law was meant to support the decimation of their population, not save them. Laws that that were so well structured to have kept Canrancosifs safe from environmental degradation for many years could not include such strict stipulations as to prefer all the climates over just the people. Plus, the hunters were allowed to pass into the other climates so then Dog would have had to prefer those who were known to take from Canrancosifs over those who agreed to stay inside the village.

This, however, was no time to play through definitions. Feeling like she needed to know the answer immediately, Lucile got ready to try to run through the sturdy-looking structure. First, thinking that there was a chance that her clothes could get tangled when she was running through the wall, Lucile took off her dress and threw it into her backpack. Both Henry and Jean-Paul did not know what she was doing and felt as though she was totally losing it from being pursued to the edge of their village by the Sonic Phi. Nonetheless, take a huge breath, Lucile backed up, and tried to measure how far she might want to get from the wall in case it was solid. When she tried to get a specific distance away from the wall it felt more and more daunting. After picking what seemed close enough to a calculated distance away, she told Henry and Jean-Paul to join her. They hesitantly followed her to her spot. Then, grabbing one of their hands by each of hers, she started running as quickly as she could into the wall. The boys did not want to move, but before taking off, she looked at them with absolute seriousness and said, “Trust me.”

At that point, because they really had no option, they began to join Lucile’s pace and they ran as quickly as they could toward the huge white cement of the wall. Lucile had a thought that dashed through her mind about the possibility that she should have had Jean-Paul and Henry disrobe. Or, rather, she felt awkward that she was the only one running with just her underwear on and had felt it was so important to remove her dress with Henry watching. As these anxieties floated through her mind, it felt like she was running in slow motion to her death. When they were millimeter away, all three of them, even Lucile, braced for impact.

Much to their delight, however, what looked like a huge block of cement was really a thick gelatinous substance only a few centimeters thick! They ran through the wall, feeling the cold wetness of the strange material pass over their skin, for a moment obstructing their sight and rendering them unable to take a breath, and then they appeared on the other side.

Unfortunately, the trees in the jungle on the other side of the wall were, in fact, very real and very not-gelatinous so after a moment of sheer joy and euphoria, they ran straight into one.

Lucile Meets A Cheshire Bat

Henry was knocked completely unconscious, Lucile had a severe headache, and luckily Jean-Paul had only a bruised left shoulder from his earlier fall from the Candle Tree. Jean-Paul looked in Lucile’s direction and saw her holding her head. She amazed him. Jean-Paul liked Lucile very, very much, but he always found her a little, hmmm, how should I put this, well…

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing, dear. I am just looking for the perfect adjective.” It responded.

“Well alright.”

              Lucile wondered about what her mind was even talking about. She had no idea. In any case, Jean-Paul always believed that Lucile was not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. Yes, she was brilliant at her schoolwork, no doubt, but Jean-Paul had always believed that her human-skills were severely lacking – she was subpar in areas such as decision making, not losing items, sensibility, cleanliness, attention to detail, etc.  However, in her moment of heroism, Jean-Paul was in completely awe of her capability.

              Seeing her holding her head, wearing just her underwear, he saw in her a beauty that was beyond what he initially thought was lovely about her. She was like one of the creatures of Wonderland, totally pure and absolutely strong, but with a strength that was only brought out in heroic situations.

              “Why did you take your dress off before running through the wall?” asked Jean-Paul.

              Lucile just grunted.

              “Do you need anything? Is your head okay?” Jean-Paul questioned, this time in a softer tone of voice, trying to take into account that she was also in pain. 

              “I’m okay,” Lucile responded. “but I think I lost a lock off my satchel. One of the straps broke. Do you still have you satchel?”

              “Yes, I have it right here. Should I go back through the wall and look for your lock? You can wait here and make sure that Henry is okay.”

              Lucile nodded, “Please.”

Turning towards the giant white wall, he realized how difficult it was to run straight into something that looked totally solid. Trying a few times, he could not bring himself to run totally through the wall. Every time, he would slow down before getting too close to the wall and then when he tried running slowly through the wall, the gelatinous substance would be too thick to pass through. He came to realize that although Lucile may not have been incredibly talented at the minutia of life, she was exquisitely adept at just about everything else. Her courage, while grounded in her incredible adeptness at school, was brought to life by adventure.

His mind began to wander about what other things she could exquisitely do. If only Jean-Paul were just a bit bigger, like Henry, his shoulders broader, his skin softer, his ears smaller, then he would be able to explore the other exquisite facets of Lucile. Yes, Jean-Paul did have very large ears.

              Jean-Paul was actually a handsome boy. He just did not quite have the je-ne-se-qua of Henry. There was something very strange about girls to Jean-Paul, in that sense at least. There would be Jean-Paul, an attractive, caring nice boy, and next to him would be Henry, a thick but cruel thing, and girls, almost every time, would choose to play on tire swings in the forest with Henry. If they had no other option, a girl might play on a tire swing with Jean-Paul, but Jean-Paul did not like being the playmate of last resort, not at all.

              Every once in a while Jean-Paul would try to emulate Henry. Once he saw Henry, on one of his good days, grab Lucile by the neck and push her into a tree. She squealed in absolute delight! Jean-Paul could not believe it, and he especially could not understand it, so he kept trying to mutilate the burned imagine of Henry using his bare hand to shove Lucile into a figurine of himself doing it. The memory make Jean-Paul’s stomach hiss. Worst of all, the next week, at a swinging party in the woods that weekend, Jean-Paul went up to a girl that was not Lucile and attempted to grab her by the neck. He knew that Lucile had a crush on Henry and he thought that maybe such a gesture could get one of the other girls to get a crush on him so he would not have to be alone. Unfortunately, Jean-Paul lacked the intense eye contact, soft hands, and masculine level of grabbing pressure that Henry had come to perfect, and the girl screamed and ran away. After Jean-Paul’s incident attempting to emulate Henry, not only did he frighten a would-be crush, but everyone started gossiping about him.

For about a month that girl and her group of friends were seriously afraid of Jean-Paul. They would go around telling everyone that Jean-Paul was a dangerous boy and that no one should talk to him. Ha, Jean-Paul could not believe it. He was the boy who just wanted to love, and was willing to try anything to please Lucile, even if it was something that was weird to him, and the girls were making gossip about HIM, not Henry! No one even mentioned Henry’s behavior. It was a cruel world for Jean-Paul.

              As Jean-Paul daydreamed about his past failings with girls, the present conundrums retook the reigns of the story’s reality.

“What person is that in?” is questioned.

“I don’t know any person to put that in but I would call it transcendental.” The answered was stated firmly. Like just putting words in any order before a key term gives it depth.

“Transitional is not a person. I mean first, second, …”

Thirsty aches started to plague Lucile as he she kneeled over in her underwear, confused and needing care. She could not even start trying the remember the last time any of them had even tasted clean fluids. Lucile, who was beyond grabbing her head and was now onto a thumping headache, grabbed Jean-Paul face. Suddenly, he felt as though she was going to kiss him! Vigor pumped through this whole body.

Alas, she was only turning his head to turn it towards her to say something to him.

“Did you get our stuff or have you just been waiting here for me to run and get it?”

Jean-Paul, feeling confused, answered, “I do not know.”

Lucile, who was holding his arms, asked again, “How long have you been looking at the wall? You are supposed to run through it.”

“I know because I already did. You know I would strongly tap on you the nose if you had touched my face any other time, right? That kind of behavior makes me mad when I look at you,” but Jean-Paul just kept staring into Lucile’s eyes.

Lucile let go of Jean-Paul, took a few steps backwards, and ran at full speed into the wall. She disappeared for a few minutes, and then popped out the other side, now wearing her dress and holding her satchel. This time, however, she looked rather excited. Jean-Paul saw her happiness and was glad that he did not run through the wall to grab their belongings.

“Nothing like intense running to cure a swollen brain,” Lucile said, rolling her eyes. “Also, when I was on the other side I found a little faucet that was next to the wall. It was not attached to the wall but there was a spicket to drink out of. If you are thirsty you should check it out.”

Feeling upbeat that their lives were not over and that they were going to be able to continue trying to find Dog, Lucile started looking around to find any creatures that they could use for food. She searched the tops of the trees and about fourteen meters away she saw one tree that seemed like it could hold many different creatures. There was also a movement in the tree that seemed unlike the wind blowing through the other treetops and she thought it might be some group of animals or a nest. Walking a bit closer, she saw that rather than a few animals, it was actually just one very large shadow next to some creature trying to walk along a branch. For a second she even thought it was a cluster of insects, but the texture of the darkness made it clear that the shadow was hiding some possibly large game creature.

              “Look, do you see that? What is that?” Lucile whispered to Jean-Paul, intrigued by whatever was happening in the distance.

              Shaken out his excitement, Jean-Paul looked a deeper distance into the tree’s inner shadow and saw the fattest, most lethargic looking bat he had ever seen! It was so fat that it was not even hanging upside from a branch. No, this bat looked about as agile as a lump of wood. It was walking towards the inside of the trunk of a jungle tree and when it got to the stable center, it leaned up against the side of the trunk, as if taking a break. Staring straight at Jean-Paul and Lucile with its giant eyes, it tried to hide the bulk of its body.

              “Zoot suit! Zoot suit!” said the bird.

              “Do you mean ‘hoot hoot?’” replied Lucile, in astonishment at the bat’s eloquent way of pronouncing his call.

              “Ahem,” and the bat coughed, clearing up his voice, “Yes, of course. That is no way for a bat for a bat to sound. Hoot hoot. Hoot hoot.”

              “You make a rather unconvincing animal,” said Lucile warmly, still frustrated by her blaring headache but suddenly feeling a bit more at ease in the company of an animal.

              “Hoot hoot. Hoot hoot.”

              “You cannot just pretend to be an animal. I already know you can speak. You just said something a send ago!”

              “Hoot hoooooot. Hooooot hoooooot. Hoot hoot…” the bat went on, even gesturing with his wings a motion that looked like an attempt at flying but really looked more like he was trying to conduct an invisible orchestra.

              “What are you anyway? Some sort of half bat, half man?”

              “Hoot hoot.”

              “You are no fun. In fact, I would say that your call should be the opposite of a hoot because you are no hoot at all. Let us go, Jean-Paul. This creature is clearly up to no good,” Lucile said, turning to go.

              “No, wait!” and the bat jumped from its spot near the trunk of the jungle tree and plopped on the ground with a thud. Lucile and Jean-Paul, both startled, turned to look at the others’ expression and Jean-Paul mimed with his hands that the bat was dead.

              The bat was not moving. In fact, it was lying very still. This bat, in particular, was very fat and clearly was not in any shape to fly gracefully down from the tree. Instead of gliding, or at least reducing the impact by sticking out its wings and making a bird-like parachute, it quite literally just stepped off the branch with its wings close to its body and landed flat on the ground. Lucile and Jean-Paul, after exchanging another set of awkward glances, walked carefully toward the bat.

They were both hungry and it was possible that they might have accidentally found some strange lackluster prey to assuage their growing fear of survival in this new and slightly terrifying place. On one hand, Lucile knew that it was totally forbidden to touch any of the animals outside their kingdom. In school, they learned over and over again: they were never allowed to go past the wall because the animals that lived beyond their reach were sacred and were never to be touched. In a history class, Lucile remembered learning that on Earth, before it got sick and died, beings from the human kingdom would hunt the jungle’s animals so much so that some of the smartest animals started to sacrifice themselves to the weather in lieu of being eaten by Earth’s citizens. Supposedly, during a lightning storm, just as the electricity would spark a tree, these animals would jump on top of the jungle trees that were of varying heights, some as tall as 9 feet and some as small at 4 feet, and get hit by the suffocating impact of the lightning and letting the rest of their body get burnt away by the flame. One account from Lucile’s history book even said that there was a human adventurer walking through the jungle in the middle of the night, when the sky was pitch black and the only light was from the top of his torch, he looked to his side and saw, near the leaves of a nearby tree, the upside down face of a large animal, about 1 foot down from the top. The adventurer accounted that the animal’s eyes were half open, as if it were meditating, and that its mouth was gaping, as if a hook was holding its chin in place and the rest of its face was sliding down faster. It was a hairy animal and the adventurer also noted that it has a massive head with almost no neck, suggesting that its body was so massive that its head just balanced on top, only supported by a long spine that must has led to some sort of tail, probably flat like a badger, and that it had at least four feet coupled with very big paws. He suggested that the animal could not have accidently been hit by lightening because it was impossible that the species had not learned to avoid natural occurrences such as thunder storms.

Finding this occurrence odd, the adventurer continued to hunt for similar animals, assuming that this behavior meant that the species would be easy to catch. Then, on another hunting trip, he saw another rotting corpse, only one foot from the top of the tree. There had been a lightening storm the day before and it seemed as though the game had died from being hit with a thunder bolt. Finally, becoming interested in this pattern and trying to find a way to catch the game birds before they rendered their bodies incapable of being eaten or used for supplies, he started waiting in the forest during lightening storms to see if he could watch a bird get hit by the lightening. Then, he saw that the birds were actually waiting in safe trees and flying over to the trees that would get hit by lightning. Lucile learned that the adventurer was not sure if it was the work of Dog or if the hunting season was improving, but he wrote down what he saw and stopped looking for game altogether.

Looking at the fattestbattest laying on the ground near the tree, she started thinking about Dog and what it would say if it saw Lucile trying to catch such a weak, helpless creature. All these recollections worried Lucile and she began wondering what would happen if someone from her kingdom were to catch her wandering through the jungle. Rules were strange to Lucile and she often thought about how they applied to her regular life. She rarely broke any rules because her Dog was very strict and if she even suggested that she was considering some illegal behavior, she would be readily chastised before she could even come up with a plan. In this situation, she wondered what the hunters of her kingdom would do if they saw her peering over this dead bat who just fallen out of a tree. If she were to eat it, would they jail her? Even with the Sonic Phi’s invasion, Lucile wondered if there would be punishments for those who broke into the jungle and hunted the animals. Dog’s policy was clear: no one from the village was allowed in the jungle under any circumstance.

Or, were there others from the kingdom in the forest, already hunting? Or, could it have been Dog’s plan to have the jungle safe from intrusion so in such dire situations the citizens would have enough to eat? The hunters in her village were usually kind, but they took their defensive positions very seriously so Lucile worried about eating the fattestbattest because there might be evidence left over that she, Jean-Paul, and Henry had been hiding in the forest.

One time, a boy from the village had somehow crossed the wall into the jungle and was caught by the hunters a few weeks later. From the jungle, he had taken leaves and created a rope which was unfortunately found by his cottage Dog. Being loyal to the plants and animals of Canrancosifs, Dog made the boy throw away the rope. Unfortunately, however, the hunters, while compositing the trash, found his rope and punished the boy. They did not allow him to go to school for almost a full semester and they put a beeper inside his hut that sent them a message every time he went out to play. Needless to say, after that boy was punished so gruesomely, none of the other children ever attempted to go near the wall ever again.

As Lucile was weighing the consequences of eating the bat, Jean-Paul tip-toed further towards the creature and it did not even make one shiver of movement. The bat seemed liked it had jumped to its death. Lucile would go no further, she looked worried and was starting to feel upset about their situation possibly digressing into something worse than being outside the confines of their sweet village. There must have been some other reason, other than the symbiosis of the environment, that they were not supposed to hunt.

Lucile whispered to Jean-Paul, “What if it is dangerous?”

“What do you mean? It is not that big and it looks dead,” he replied.

“I know but do you not remember all those lectures we had in school about not touching the jungle animals? What if there is some reason we are not supposed to bother them?”

Jean-Paul hated this about Lucile. They would be on some sort of adventure and right after something significant happened, she would get cold feet and refuse to go any further. He never understood why someone would give up right as the climax of the adventure was building into something even more interesting than they originally had imagined. She lacked the tenacity that Henry had in completing anything of significance. Even though he was often jealous of Henry, at least Henry was a great partner when it came completing some exciting task.

Lucile, in a way, also preferred to do dangerous activities with Henry. She had been enamored by Henry for so long and he had not been interested in the her the slightest so every opportunity she had to be around him when he was excited was always the most exciting aspect to a possible social activity. Even in a group of people, with other girls, boys, creatures, herbs, and whatnot, she just liked to be around Henry when they were breaking the rules or trying to solve something in which they were not supposed to be interested. During this exploration with Jean-Paul, however, hunting the fattestbattest became a strange dance of not wanting to hurt Jean-Paul’s ego but also worrying that his preferences in tools was so poor that there might be some sort of accident. When Henry was cutting open a fence, or trying to grab some tiny buggynubby, or even just running around and chasing people, he was totally collected. The melancholy way he carried himself when he was alone made him one of the best comrades with whom to do something difficult.

              While they were both wishing that Henry was the one hunting the fattestbattest with themselves and not the other, Jean-Paul went up closer to the bat and grabbed a stick to use as a club if the fattestbattest woke up and tried to run away. However, as he was only a few feet away, he was almost able to empathize with Lucile’s squeamishness. Although, to Jean-Paul, her squeamishness was due to the size of the fattestbattest and not the fact that she was not comfortable hunting with him. Still, even though Jean-Paul had just internally scolded her for her lack of survival skills and made her back away from helping, upon seeing the bat closely he almost wished he could ask Lucile for help. The bat looked like it weighed almost 100 pounds and one of its wings, which was opened at a strange angle along the side of its body, looked like it was at least a foot long. He did a few calculations in his head and re-identified the bat to be in the Fattestbattest Family. Thinking about what he could remember about the fattestbattest bat, Jean-Paul thought to himself that generally they should be able to fly because their strong wings were so aerodynamically advanced that hunters used to cut them off and use a few of them to make little planes.

              Thinking that it was odd that the fattestbattest had just fallen out of the tree, he became concerned about he would have to use his club to kill the animal. As he moved closer, he heard something behind him, and immediately became startled. Turning around, he saw that it was just Lucile trying to pull something out of her satchel and her bag had rustled some dirt on the ground. When he looked away and turned facing the bat once again, however, the bat was gone. In an instant, however, a group of bats somehow emerged from behind another tree and, in a moment of sudden adrenaline, Jean-Paul ducked, and then a second later heard a huge bang!

This loud boom scared him so much that he fell to his knees, held his hands over his ears, and, tucking his nose into his knees, crouched to the ground. He felt some rustling and a whoosh of wings in flight. He could not tell if the bats were coming closer or flying farther away but there was some wind caused by all the fluttering wings and then a blistering silence.

              When he peered up, he saw Lucile walking alongside him towards the tree where the bat was sitting. Silently, she leant forward and pushed something with her foot.

              “What happened?” whispered Jean-Paul, worried about the possible answer.

              “Well,” Lucile said, in a low-tone, insinuating that she was concerned, “I may have done something.”

              “Are you okay?”

              “Yes,” she said solemnly. “But…” and then she lunged at Jean-Paul making him scream.

“But what!” shouted Jean-Paul, now up on his feet but squatting down and kneeling over his knees, his fists up in the air as if he was trying to protect his face.

Lucile, in her best version of hiding her exciting, said with a coy smirk, “I caught us dinner.” And she pointed to the bottom of the tree. There lied the bat, dead, with its eyes open and its tongue out.

“How did you do that?” asked Jean-Paul.

“Earlier today, when you were running, you dropped your little laser cutter from wood sculpting class. I picked it up for you but decided not to tell you because we were so famished. I did not think it was going to work, but I noticed there was some movement in the tree and I thought it was some sort of attack. Then I realized that the bat that was laying on the ground was actually just pretending to be dead until the other bats could escape and the bird on the ground could also fly away. Did you know that those were fattestbattest bats? They travel in packs and gang up on their prey. They also…”

“Yes, Lucile,” Jean-Paul interrupted, “I know what those are. I am the one who when up the bat in the first place, remember?”

“Well, did you know that fattestbattest are also delicious?”

Jean-Paul let out a sigh of relief and almost laughed. “I have never eaten one before.”

“Me neither. Anyways, just as I expected, a flock of them came out of the tree so I pointed the laser cutter arbitrarily, shot out a beam into the leaves and I hit one!” She smiled a big grin, knowing that chances to show Jean-Paul her grittiness were few and far between. She also convinced herself that running away from Canrancosifs would not be so bad, and that she might have a chance to do all the wild things she had always thought about but was too scared to do. And, even better, that Jean-Paul would be there to see her be brave and when they were all safe and reunited with their Dogs that he would tell stories about her harrowing acts of survival for everyone in the kingdom to hear.

Jean-Paul walked closer to the dead thing and tried to pick it up. It was heavier than he remembered 100 pounds to be. He laughed again, sat down, and took a deep breath.

“Do you think we are going to be okay?” asked Lucile.

“I honestly do not know,” replied Jean-Paul, “but I do not think we will die. At least we probably will not die.” Jean-Paul sat down next to the bird and then said, “Do you think we can sleep before eating? Or, even, sleep without worrying the Sonic Phi will kill us?”

“I think, at least, we will not die from hunger if we go to sleep. At least probably not,” said Lucile, glad that Jean-Paul also noticed that their chances of immediate death had been decreased. Usually someone who only got more frustrated when Lucile tried to console him, Jean-Paul immediately got angry when Lucile jested about their chances of survival. Even though Jean-Paul liked that Lucile found dinner, her way of calming him down and making light of serious situations agitated him.

Lucile walked over to the two animals, one dead and the other exhausted, and sat down next to Jean-Paul. She put her head against Jean-Paul’s shoulder, forgetting about her pounding headache and the dead, soon to be rotting animal, and started to doze off. In that moment, Jean-Paul suddenly realized something very strange about Lucile.

It was in moments like this, the two of them falling asleep in the woods together, that he fantasized about when he was alone in his hut. This hidden nostalgia, on top of his anger, made him anxious and he fought the urge to push Lucile away and chastise her. In fact, he often yearned for a moment exactly like this and felt annoyed with himself because he did not know what to do with his emotions. In this instance, however, to Lucile, there was something kind of empty about Jean-Paul. Even though she was happy that he was seemed satisfied by their current situation, Jean-Paul’s reaction to her made her feel as though he was not very brave. Or, maybe Jean-Paul was just exhausted and confused and Lucile was frustrated because she wished that she could be falling asleep, by herself, under much more pleasant circumstances.

Either way, the fact that she was starting to fall asleep immediately after shooting the fattestbattest made little sense because it was obvious that the fattestbattest would begin to decay within a few hours and even though she had been the one to catch the food, it was totally irresponsible to just leave it there without cleaning it or starting a fire.

Moving Jean-Paul over and telling him that she would prepare the fattestbattest, she pulled out some of the herbs from her knapsack and some tools to start and preserve the bat as jerky. After she prepared the bat’s meat, she covered it in the herbs and used some of the pieces of her old clothing to dry the meat and help it absorb the flavor.

Putting all the pieces of bat meat on an old dress and then covering the top of the meat with a cloth and a few heavy branches that were sitting nearby, she sat down next to Jean-Paul and hoped that she would fall asleep soon.

Jean-Paul woke up, feeling her head on his shoulder, and it reminded him of how Lucile was always sweet to everyone, so much so that it was almost a personality ailment. He wanted to tell Lucile that she should stand up for herself and that other people knew when she was just laughing out of politeness. It did not seem like the time to give a lecture, but Jean-Paul wanted to be able to let Lucile know that she did not always have to do everything for everyone. Lucile would be so much more interesting if she just did not try so hard to be dreamy. Sometimes, Jean-Paul would conclude that Lucile just pretended to be an air head in order to please everyone around her and that on the inside she was deep and dark, like a murky abyss where she kept all her feelings and frustrations hidden. If she would let her gloom triumph more people would understand how complex she could be but when she kept her frustrations inside and smiled, it just made her seem boring. In light of her heroism, however, Lucile was useful and Jean-Paul was glad that she had been quick enough to think of shooting at the flock of bats instead of just trying to catch the first one they saw. Jean-Paul was deep in thought, weighing her abilities and how she would be both an asset and a liability on this journey.

 Lucile, on the other hand, just wanted to sleep, and seemed like a tired fawn who simply appreciated being taken care by her pack. In the back of her mind, she knew that it would have been better to eat some Unicorn jerky with Excitementium and use the next few hours to finish cooking the fattestbattest meat before it was out for too long, but she was too tired to care.

That night, Lucile had a strange dream. She was back at her home and Dog was outside working in the garden, like usual. Lucile’s Dog loved gardening and they had some of the most beautiful plants in the whole neighborhood. In Lucile’s dream, however, a big patch of flowers had all wilted and had mold growing all over them. In this dream, Dog was working on plants right next to the slushy, brown mess of dead flora and seemed not to even notice. The more Dog worked on the pretty flowers, the more a strange stench started wreaking from the dead ones. Slowly, the dead flower patch started melting, like a looming whole of quicksand, and Dog started sliding towards the growing pit. Lucile tried to scream, but Dog just went about trimming the leaves, pulling the weeds, and saying hello to the little worms that would pass through periodically. Worse, the stench from the now rotting pile of mulch was so overwhelming that Lucile though she was going to pass out.

When Lucile woke up, she was laying comfortably under a blanket Jean-Paul had apparently let her share the night before. She sat up and held the covers over her nose and mouth. Something smelled terrible and although she knew that the blanket would not block out the smell, it was the only reaction that seemed suitable. She looked around, not moving the blankets from her face, and saw that the awful smell was coming from behind her. It was Jean-Paul cooking the bat.

He had made a small fire out of some twigs and dried leaves and was roasting the bat on a small contraption he seemed to have jerry-rigged out some wet vines and rocks. He tied the rocks together using the wet vines until they bound together like garlics stacked on top of each other. Then, he took three of those rock stacks and used them as the legs of a tripod. The top of the tripod was also bound by wet vines. Lucile assumed the vines were wet so they would not burn and break the whole contraption. Underneath this pyramid of rocks and vines was the body of the bat, cut into a few pieces, hanging on a net made of bark and wet vines. While the whole set-up gave off a horrible smell, Lucile assumed it was the bark that was sizzling the skin on the bat that was making her nauseous. That noted, she was still thrilled that Jean-Paul had taken the initiative to cook the meat before it spoiled.

The Jungle Has Secrets

Just as she was inwardly appreciating Jean-Paul, she heard a crackle from the fire and was snapped into remembering that she had not seen Henry since running through the wall. In fact, she had forgotten about him running into a tree altogether! While the overall situation was absurd enough to make any single event negligible, breaking through the wall had to be one of the most amazing plans that Lucile had ever planned would never work, but did. She momentarily became worried about Henry but felt a slight wave of calmness that was different than when she usually worried about him. If Henry had done something that bothered her, she could sometimes be overwhelmingly grief stricken. She knew that her tears were not directly caused by Henry’s behavior or because he wanted to make her feel terrible, it was just that Henry was one of Lucile’s only friends so it mattered a lot to her that they got along. In fact, she never told Henry how much it would impact her week if he brushed her off, ignored her, or said something mean because she did not want to risk his reaction. In this instance, however, although Lucile was worried that Henry would be angry at her for getting him in a head on collision with a giant tree, she felt a sense of freedom caused by the confidence that she had been the one to solve their dilemma. Not only was Henry her friend, he was also her confidant, helping her find friends and solve her social problems. In their adventures, he was usually the hero, getting them down from trees, finding the way when they were lost, or reminding others in the group that Lucile was actually a fun person and thereby keeping them as friends. In any other situation, Lucile would be terrified at Henry’s feelings, but because she was the one to see that the wall was translucent based on what she had learned from the Smilicus Grasicus and she was the one who convinced them all to run through it, Lucile was almost excited to find him and remind him what had happened.

Lucile looked around to see if she could find Henry through the trees. The foliage was not thick but the shadows of the trees looked like they could hide small creatures and small bushes. They were bright green, the type of trees that a video game documenting “nature” would post egregiously throughout a 2D picture, but from Lucile’s perspective they seemed like strange banana trees with those big plastic-y leaves. Either from the amount of nature-documentary-themed video games she played as a child, or because she had never been here before, it was almost as if she could draw a television border inside her eyes, the whole forest looked like a flat photograph from a museum. If she were in some sort of museum, the photograph of the forest would be accompanied by sounds of water droplets because when she looked closely at one of the shadows cast by the closest tree, it looked like the tree was almost oozing with perspiration from the dew that had collected on the leaves. It was not wet, rather, a gooey liquid leaked off the leaves slowly with a noise that was like a plop, plopy, plops of water. Like a giant, single, tear falling from the eye of someone trying to hold their sobs, the dew would melt and then gather at the edge of a leaf, before falling to the ground. Lucile thought that if she was in class and learning about these trees, she would be able to brainstorm a better explanation of the sound. In this fictional museum of trees she was creating with her mind, unfortunately, the best sound she could curate for liquid dripping from the giant, almost plastic-looking bright green leaves was like someone slowly dripping liquid, in dollops, into a bigger mass of water. Her inability to find a better metaphor frustrated Lucile, because the melted dew from the leaves just fell to the grassy ground, not into some pond or river, so the sound was made more by the breaking of the fluid from the leaf, rather than its fall into some other liquid. Lucile did not like when she could not describe things adequately, even if it was just in her head.

Looking around for Henry but also taking time to observe the nature, she wondered if she would ever get to return to the jungle or if this would be her only chance to experience other parts of Canransoficus. She also remembered the boy from her school who had turned the jungle tree’s leaves in a rope and then got in trouble. She understood why he had wanted to turn the leaves into something new and beautiful because of the way that they naturally looked like pieces of equipment, waiting to be used. The water in the air that existed due to the humidity gathered on the leaves and almost as if someone had a beaker and was pouring medium amounts into a quiet lake, “plop, plot… plop.”

“Are you glad you did all your assigned reading, dear?”

“As usual, no. I wish science could just solve all my problems for me. Love, emotions, how I can measure liquid without using any instruments and just by looking at a specific volume with my eyes. I hate that there are so few answers.”

“You should read more science books. You might find some answers in those.”

“My problems are making it difficult to read. I would rather just try to avoid learning until I see something that is worth noting.”

“Well, I am glad that you did not consider the alternative. Just because there is nothing to learn does not mean that there is nothing worth noticing.”

“Yes, but do you really, really think that reading is still noticing?” questioned Lucile, in a more pronounced tone of voice.

“You notice the words, do you not? You notice how they relate and you notice that they remind you of things that you have noticed prior in your own life?”

“You notice the words, but reading is not just putting circumstances from a book into your own life. If it was, how could you learn from reading? Take love, for example. I love Henry more than I have loved any boy in my life, but if I read a science book about little things and big things how do I know if love is little or if love is big? I might notice that love, as a topic, is not anywhere in my science books and I might notice that love is also very important. I might also notice that the things in my science book are very important. Still, just because I notice these things does not mean I even did any of the reading! Maybe I just went to the index of a giant science book and noticed that the word “love” was nowhere to be found. Maybe I might have just been in love with Henry and overheard some other book readers discussing what they noticed when they did the reading themselves. You can notice facts without reading them.”

“My dear, you did do the reading, did you not?” it said, quietly sighing, almost inaudibly, but just enough to suggest that little Lucile was tiring it.

“I did. Maybe, to be honest, I just wished I did not have to NOTICE love in everything I read. I wish I could read and read and read and never notice the things that remind me of Henry,” Lucile lamented.

“Okay, just continue worrying about Henry. I know it frustrates you to see love, to see authors color your books with concepts that you have only seen in dreams, to be pulled along feeling like all the emotions that overwhelm your soul will never be reciprocated.”

“So, do you think that anyone will ever love me back?” Lucile asked, almost pretending like she was angry but still being able to hide her anxiety with the shortness of her breath and punctuation.

“Oh dear. Look at the time. Do you think you have the time to let someone love you back?”

“I do not know! Wait, did you ask me what time it is?”

“No, but I have to go. It is very late” and then with a bright puff of the freshest air on all the planet, there was an un-ignorable silence. Like a background essence dropped along with the comforting voice, leaving the air feeling empty and vacuous.

Lucile could only think. She was frustrated by the emptiness and she was frustrated that she still noticed how empty everything still felt.

             

              “What are you thinking about?” asked John-Paul, tapping her on the shoulder and moving closer to Lucile.

              Her immediate reaction was repulsion, but she knew better than to pull back and make Jean-Paul feel as though he was bothering her. He looked like he wanted her to start talking, looking at her as though she was the only one who could possibility say anything to break the jungle’s lack of human words. Jean-Paul always wanted Lucile to explain things or come up with things to talk about. Between classes, he used to ask her open-ended questions about what they had just learned. He would ask her a curious question and she would tell him this or that, or something funny that she had made up the day before. They would walk around, him asking her little questions, her responding verbosely, and then him expounding on an anecdote from her explanation for a bit, and then her asking a follow-up question, and then him responding quickly, before returning to her gaze and asking another open-ended question that she could talk about for twenty minutes or so. They used to walk around, he used to tap her on the shoulder and show her things that were happening around them, especially when she was deep in some explanation and was rattling off so many ideas that she was almost blinded by her imagination.

As all these memories raced through her mind, she came back to consciousness and smiled at Jean-Paul. What Jean-Paul did not know was that Lucile also had a plethora of canned responses if she was not listening to him. She assumed that he had just asked her a question, so she even thought she had not heard him, she responded, “Why? Am I doing something that is bothering you?” asked Lucile coyly, trying to seem nonchalant and dreamy. Jean-Paul was always happier when she seemed relaxed and he looked tense.

“No. I was just wondering, that is all.” Jean-Paul responded, still not helping her figure out what he originally asked, but at least quelling any suggesting that she was not intently listening to his questions in the first place.

“Do you want to walk around and see if we can find Henry?” asked Lucile, remembering that they had lost one third of their party.

“I have not seen him in a long time,” replied Jean-Paul.

“Me neither. Do you have any magnets that we can turn into a compass? I think we walked east into the forest. If we go back, I think we will pass him by. If I were to guess, he is sleeping under a tree somewhere, waiting for us to bother him and wake him up.”

“I actually have a magnet and some magi thistle. Do you remember which end of the magnet connects to the thistle?”

Lucile smiled her all-knowing smiling like she did when her answer was only obvious to her and needed no response to the other party. She put out her hands and waited as Jean-Paul opened his knapsack and took out a tiny magnet and a bag with a few pieces of magi thistle. For one second she worried that they should not use the magi thistle, because as far as she knew it did not grow in this environment and they might only have a few key opportunities to make the best use of it. A second later, however, Henry’s oxytocin re-entered Lucile’s mind and reminded her that she would be a bad friend if she continued to put off finding Henry, even though solving the compass problem would probably be interesting. Lucile still valued Henry’s presence and had even considered the possibility of being invited as a maid of honor at his wedding, feeling that only in that moment would she be assured that they would never be together, but still dwelling on the fact that because of all their shared experiences she would at least get to watch him choose someone else. Of course, she hoped that before that day, very long before that day, Henry might stop being so mean and confusing and that all the behavior he exhibited with her in quiet would be permitted to be seen out in the open. Until then, however, Lucile would continue to be Lucile, and she would stand by Henry as a friend and certainly not let him die alone in this forest.

Leaving someone behind, or maybe, lack of loyalty, was one of the traits that Lucile despised most, and it was this that made her a great friend. Even if one was gone for a few hours, Lucile would remember that the person was there in the first place; or, if one were to make Lucile promise never to tell a secret, she would be compelled to never bring it up again. This loyalty made Lucile the type of friend with whom to jump through a viscous wall and go on adventure.

              As Jean-Paul and Lucile walked through the forest, looking below the shade of the glistening trees to see if they could find Henry, Lucile began to miss Dog once again, and the old life that used to enjoy. Walking around, dismally staring beneath trees and into shrubs was nothing like her home. She tried to remind herself that she had always wanted to go beyond the walls of her village and into the other parts of the planet, and she chastised herself for not seeing the joy of breaking free from a life constrained by seemingly impermeable borders. The feeling of being so far from home was also starting to scare her but, unfortunately, pleading with oneself to relax was no way to assuage the anxiety that was building within her blood with every passing moment. Lucile usually knew exactly where she was and wondering around looking for Henry made her feel lost, which then made her stomach hurt and her head dizzy.

Regardless of the humans’ quickly ebbing assessment of their present situation, the jungle was beautiful and it was more dense and virile than their textbooks explained. The textbooks that the students used to read in class detailed all the different environments on the planet and why they were separated by walls. The jungle, where they were now, was untouchable to Lucile’s type of people because they had already created a perfectly synchronicity with the animals that lived within their kingdom. There were always enough animals to eat, enough flowers to watch blow in the wind, enough air to breath, enough plants to pick up and munch as snacks when one was wandering around, and they even had a central park, Wonderland, where everyone could walk and share a beautiful silence and possibly catch sight of a mythical creature. Lucile spent a lot of time in Wonderland pretending that it was the jungle and sometimes she imagined what it would have been like had Wonderland been built in a different part of the planet. While she enjoyed spending time in Wonderland, Lucile always believed that Wonderland would function much better as a traveling circus where she could see other environments. Now looking around, she started thinking about what it would be like for Wonderland to be set up in this very place. A Wonderland that was hidden inside this jungle would have the utmost incredible mythical creatures.

              She imagined herself sitting with Henry, on the concave cement floor hidden among a few giant jungle trees, and in the middle of conversation she would get up and start climbing the trees. He would glance up at her only when she got to the top of the tree and burst out laughing, asking her how she got up so quickly. In the fantasy she was composing in her mind, Lucile thought she should collect specimens from the trees so that when she got home she could plant them and have such lovely foliage on display for Dog. Looking over at Jean-Paul, she thought about what his reaction would be if she pulled some leaves from the trees. Jean-Paul loved nature and did not like it when she pestered plants.

As she looked around for Henry without much success, she tried to get herself to stop imaging what it would be like to have him around. While Lucile often thought about future situations with Henry as the focal point of the dream’s plot, she wanted to clear her head because an impending worry was starting to bother her. She turned her attention to Jean-Paul, whom she was walking next to, and started thinking about old stories of times they spent together. She was immediately drawn to a great conversation they once had about how Lucile related to plants as part of her social circle. To be fair, many of the plants in the human part of the planet were somewhat conversational so Lucile always felt that it was rude to ignore their input into her daily life. In this particular conversation, they were arguing about how much time she spent talking to the Smilicus Grassicus. To Jean-Paul, she was being annoying and tiring the poor Smilicus Grassicus who, in his opinion, preferred to be silent and rest most of the time. Lucile knew that Jean-Paul was wrong and that he was just envious that every time she went out on long walks to look at the rainbow-colored sky, the Smilicus Grassicus would tell her beautiful poems. Still, Lucile liked that Jean-Paul cared about the atmosphere. She complimented him because Jean-Paul always took care to notice when he stepped on a flower or splashed mud on an unsuspecting creature so he could apologize to the thing and offer a way to maintain the original beauty that he saw in all living things. Lucile remembered this conversation because after the compliment, Jean-Paul had nothing more to say, which made Lucile realize that if she was ever having an unpleasant conversation with him, she should just remind him of something lovely that he had done in the past.

Quickly Finding Quicksand

Looking through the trees and still seeing no one, Lucile starting thinking about how one might preserve the jungle foliage. Lucile was not sure which part of the tree would be easiest to cut or if it was worth climbing higher in the tree to grab a bigger leaf. She first thought of cutting down one giant leaf and then drying it, turning it into a powder, and keeping it in a jar, but then she realized that the pressed leaves would be dense and heavy. She guessed that it would be so inefficient that she would get tired and throw away both the jar and the powder. Then, she thought of taking some of the bark off the outside of the tree and saving the large pieces for an art project, but then realized they would break into dust within moments of being scrunched to the bottom of her satchel. Finally, she settled on her best idea: taking a piece from within the fleshy part of tree which would maintain its original form and she would not need to use any of her jars.

              “Jean-Paul, are these trees not lovely?” mentioned Lucile, casually slowing down.

              “Yes! The leaves are amazing! I bet you could use them to carry water they are so thick and rubbery,” as someone who loved nature, Jean-Paul was ecstatic about seeing the jungle’s trees for the first time. “Did you see the sap oozing off their edges? I bet if we turned one into a cup the liquid would mix with the ooze and every warm drink it would taste sweet.”

              “Only if the ooze is sweet! What if it tastes sour or bitter?” retorted Lucile.

              “Well,” Jean-Paul replied, “then you would have a very unpleasant, yet very well-preserved drink,” and then he laughed, thinking about what the liquid would taste like and the different methods by which he could manufacture a cup.

              “How would you take some of the tree back home,” and then she paused for a moment, looking at him, “if we were actually going back home that is?”

              “Of course we will get back home.”

              “Okay, I would take a piece from inside the tree. First, I would pull off the bark and then I would cut a piece from the core. Do you think that is a good idea?”

              “I think it is the best idea I have heard for a long time.” And Jean-Paul pointed at a big tree, “That one. Let us try to take a piece from that beautiful tree. I bet it is at least two hundred years old. Can you picture what it would look like in front of our school? We could all sit under it and all the students would remember that we carried it from all the way across the wall and into the jungle, but only after we shot a fattestbattest with a laser.”

              “And all the other students would think we were geniuses for using the wood cutting laser for both our dinner and for our contribution to their outdoor sitting arrangement,” replied Lucile, feeling as though the tree was already there. 

              Chuckling, they stopped walking, and went up to the tree. Lucile took out her wood cutting laser and pointed it at the trunk of the giant tree. It had to be at least four feet in diameter because Jean-Paul could be fully hidden just standing behind the tree and about ten feet behind it. If they had been anywhere else, Jean-Paul would be reminding Lucile not to disturb the natural life and listing off the reasons she should not be bothering the tree. Instead, he watched her like a student studying his teacher.

The tree’s bark was plasticky but had little dents where it looked like you could pull a piece off. When Lucile tried, it was actually not removable, and the dents just exposed another layer of bark below. Lucile took out her laser wood cutter and pointed it at the tree, drawing a line horizontally and then another line right below it. Then, in the tiny space between the two lines, she went left and right and left right a few times until there was a sufficient gap to stick her hand and tool. When she finally got her hand and laser cutter into the tree, she pointed it upwards and horizontally, and then pulled her hand out once again. Then, reaching her fingers and facing her palm upwards, she pulled as hard as she could, removing a chunk of bark.

              The inside of the tree was almost bright green, and there were tiny veins in which it seemed like the ooze flowed through the tree. She then used the laser cutter to pull out a small piece and showed it to Jean-Paul, who took it from her and spent a long time smelling it, putting it very close to his eyes, and then holding it at arms lengths to look at it like a scientist identifying something interesting. Giving it back to Lucile, she put it into her satchel, zipped it up, and then gave the tree a big hug.

              “Thanks, tree!” Lucile said, with her arms spread widely, giving the tree the best compliment she could in her state of tired emotions.

              “You are so strange,” Jean-Paul said, shaking his head but also internally thinking about how pretty she looked when she was standing, silently giving gratitude. It looked like she was praying when she was acting silly. It was as if it was both a joke and a deep experience for Lucile to do one of her odd acts of gratitude. They were meaningless but meaningful, like the time she ran after a unicorn trying to give it a kiss or when she laid with a dead flower in her lap for about an hour, refusing to go back to school until someone explained why it had been pulled out and left in an area where it would not be able to grow or when she went into the hunters basement and tied herself to a cabinet for a few days until they found her and told her she had to leave. Jean-Paul always wanted to tell Lucile that she was being ridiculous when he saw her attempting to improve the world in her own pointless way but something always kept him from completing his lecture of dismay. There was something about Lucile that suggested that her way was the right way. Maybe it was the conviction she had in the way she doth protested. Or maybe it was that even though he, and the other students at school, would tell her to stop and refuse to participate in any of her shenanigans, she would never falter from making a wild display of frailty when she felt as though she had injured another living thing or a candid show of tenderness when she witnessed something that was immeasurably simple.

              Lucile then let go of the tree and walked back to Jean-Paul and the two of them proceeded to try to find Henry. They walked around trying to hide the fact that they were worried about getting lost themselves and settled on searching the area once again, but this time quietly to see if they could hear anything. Finally, they heard some snoring from between a bush and a smaller sized tree, only to look closer and see Henry passed out and fast asleep. Lucile and Jean-Paul gave each other a glance, like they were almost appalled that Henry was still alive. Jean-Paul stood still, knowing that Lucile would be one who would want to wake him. Lucile walked over, sat down next to Henry, and gently rustled him. He shrugged her hand off his shoulder, turned, and tried to go back to sleep.

              “Wake up, it is Lucile,” she said, patting him on the back.

              He turned over, and opened one eye, “Where did you go? I thought the Sonic Phi caught you.” He was tired and seemed like he had not eaten for a few days. Lucile looked around and noticed that they were not far from where he had passed out. They must not be far from the wall, which was good, because at least following the wall from the inside would give them some point of geographical reference so as not to get lost. Mostly, however, she was glad he way okay.

              “After we got through the wall,” said Lucile, “Jean-Paul and I got distracted and wandered into the forest. We could not find you and we thought, at first, that you had gone deeper into the forest to hide. We went looking for you. Then, we found a fattestbattest, shot it, and ate some of it and saved the rest.”

              “You have food?” asked Henry, now opening his other eye and making a more focused attempt to wake up and pay attention to Lucile’s face.

              “Yes, of course. Jean-Paul and I saved some of meat. It is in Jean-Paul’s knapsack.”

              “Can I have some?”

              “Yes, of course!” and Lucile touched Henry’s face sloppily, wiping her palm on his eyebrow and down his cheek past his jaw.

              Henry made a hesitant but loud giggle, suggesting to Lucile that he was both appreciative but overwhelmed. Jean-Paul walked over and sat down next to them, taking out the bag of cooked fattestbattest parts and starting to explain what Lucile and he had been doing in the time between when they had all been together. They ate and imbibed some melancholia metriculus trying to pretend that all it took for each of them to be happy was to be in the company of each other.

The mood of the group changed and Jean-Paul went from being amazed by the incredible jungle to getting frustrated at the little bugs and the sounds of the wetness dripping from the tree leaves.            Henry, on the other hand, was quiet but not more or less so than he always was. Then, Lucile, who was the best at pretending to be happy, set up their camp for the night and even though it was still light out and she knew they should be going deeper into the forest to hide, they all went to sleep. Probably assuming that the Sonic Phi would immediately find them, sleeping in a group of three just slightly beyond the wall and smelling harshly of food and herbs, they told jokes and talked about what they thought would happen after they died.

             

When Lucile woke up, Henry was already awake and was trying as best as he could to seem busy and as though he was problem-solving a complex scenario about how their day would play out. He was pacing back and forth, looking through the trees at the direction of the wall, would stop as though he was calculating the distance, and then start pacing again. Jean-Paul was still asleep and she decided not to wake him up.

              “What are you doing?” asked Lucile, to Henry.

              Henry did not reply, clearly either deep in thought, or very frustrated and choosing not to participate in any sort of conversation.

              “Are you hungry?” asked Lucile.

              Henry looked at her and held his finger over his mouth, gesturing that she should stop talking.

              “Why do I need to stop asking you questions?” whispered Lucile.

              Henry stormed over to her, grabbed her face with his large hand, and turned her head toward the direction of the wall. “Do you not see how close we are to the wall? Why are you talking? We could be found.”

              Lucile looked at him, confused, and just shrugged. This response was enough for Henry to at least let go of her face and walk off to begin pacing again. Lucile almost burst into tears but laid her body down on the ground next to Jean-Paul to hide her surprise. Henry was often very mean, and even more often she took it personally, and frequently she would cry about it, but she had never shown her reaction to Henry in person, which probably just upset her more. Laying down and trying to cover up her face, she closed her eyes and took a big breath in, holding it for a second, coughing, and then letting a few tears go down her face as she pretended to sleep quietly, her face half buried under a blanket.

Lucile stayed like that until Jean-Paul woke up and asked her whether or not she was asleep. Turning over and mumbling that she was barely awake and that she needed a few minutes to collect her thoughts to get ready for the morning and the day that awaited them, she wiped her face and rubbed her eyes, and then took the blanket off her face and smiled.

              “You look nice this morning,” said Jean-Paul, “you look very sunny and your cheeks are really rosy. It looks like you just got out from playing in a field of tall grass.”

              “Thanks.”

              After finishing the last of the fattestbattest and packing up, they started discussing where they would go next. Henry suggested that they go to the ocean section of the planet because it was possible that the Sonic Phi would not be able to swim. He remembered that when they landed they came through the air and found a safe spot on the ground in their village. It was possible, he suggested, that the Sonic Phi were best suited in climates that were most like their village and that the ocean could be almost inhospitable to them.

He also said that there was a chance that Dog has escaped and was smart enough to find solace under the water or in caves. As they had all learned in their classes, Canransoficus was divided into four different climates. Lucile said that she thought the freezing terrain might be where Dog would hide because Dog would have no way to navigate through the ocean’s water and if the Sonic Phi found them, Dog would have nowhere to go because Dog was not a very good swimmer. Also, she had a feeling that Dog would be in the freezing climate because Dog could make a small hut under the ice to hide under, and then could keep watch by poking a hole through the ice up to the air above. It might be a great hiding spot for waiting out the Sonic Phi’s attack. Jean-Paul said that he did not care where Dog was hiding. To him, it made the most sense for all three of them to stay in the forest and that the farther they ventured off the less likely it was that any of the other villagers would find them. Even though it increased the odds of the Sonic Phi finding them, it increased their odds of survival to stay in a place where they could hunt and not get too lost. Plus, Jean-Paul added, they did not know much about how to travel throughout the planet’s environments, animals in the freezing cold terrain, or about the creatures that dwelled in the ocean. How would they hunt? How would they get around? It seemed like too much of a risk.

              For the time being, they decided to walk deeper into the jungle, to at least be hidden from sight of the wall. If the Sonic Phi were still hoovering near the Candle Forest, being inside the jungle would keep them from being immediately noticed. Also, they did not want to come to any hasty decisions before exploring the jungle to see if they were already where they were supposed to be.

              “What are you doing, dear?” asked the voice.

              “I want to remember a saying that rhymes with where I am going,” said Lucile, sternly.

              “Well, where are you going?”

              “I do not know” she mumbled, attempting to concentrate.

              “Would say you are lost?”

              “I do not know!”

              “Dear, do not get angry. Do not forget, if you find yourself lost, look around a little and you will realize that you were walking towards your destination all along,” is said, more sweetly and tenderly than ever.

              “That where you are is where you are meant to be?” I pondered.

              “Exactly.”

              Lucile then looked around again, and then at Jean-Paul and Henry, who were walking farther ahead of her and ignoring her. She ran to catch up and then gave them both a hug, with each of her arms on each of their shoulders. At first the boys were surprised by this act of kindness, but seeing that look on Lucile’s face, the look where she seemed to be bubbling with answers and totally at peace with the circumstances, comforted them. In tense situations, Lucile was an excellent measure of the level at which others should be concerned. Her warm gesture made them feel as though she was going to, again, pull them out of harms way.

              As the three of them walked, Lucile let go of her arms and started chatting about the jungle. She remembered the things she learned in class and began to explain some tidbits of information about the trees and the potential animals they might find in the darkness hidden deeper in the jungle. Seeing a tree which she remembered very specifically, she ran up to it, pointing to the top and explaining how and why the tree took such a form. As she was gesturing, however, she took a few steps forward and fell out of site, with a tiny scream echoing as she disappeared.

              Jean-Paul and Henry ran up the tree and saw her slip down a sandy hole and tried to grab her hand as it faded away. Appalled, they looked at each other and then back at the sandy hole, almost hidden from view.

Through A Loop, Into A Trap

              Lucile had accidentally fallen into quicksand. The hole was hard to differentiate from the surrounding plant life because the brown of the quicksand was similar in color to the bark of the tree. The quicksand’s depth, however, was only a few lengths the size of her body, and after what felt like a suffocating few seconds in a flume, she felt her legs touch dry sand and her arms reaching for air. Flailing, she reached around and felt the nothingness of the atmosphere around her. Assuming she was no longer in the quicksand, she rubbed her face and blinked to see where she had landed.

              Looking around, she saw that she was on a sandy beach. The water was clear and glistened like a shallow, calm bath. There were rocks in the distance, but the beach spanned hundreds of feet behind her. There was golden, white sand with no trees or vegetation in sight. With the heat rising from the horizon, it looked as though she had landed where the desert met the sea. It was nothing she had ever seen or learned about ever before. The sea was crystal blue, like a washed-out topaz, and seemed to stay shallow for miles.

In her mind, she could not place where this beach could fit on the planet of Canransonficus. If she had learned about a sight like this, she would have remembered it by at least the picture and description. Lucile loved learning about all the different environments, and a place like this would never have escaped her memory. She did not think that the quicksand taken her to the ocean, because the ocean environment was known for being harsh and gloomy, which was nothing like this peaceful spot.

              Instead of standing up, she sat for many moments longer, just looking around at the incredible scenery. Then, she shouted, for no apparent reason, “I know you are there!”

              Her voice echoed over the water, sending tiny ripples across the surface. Then, she laid her head down onto the sand and looked up at the sky. The atmosphere was rainbow-colored, like the sky at her home. It was very bright outside so the colors in the sky were like light watercolors painted in such a way that it looked like a multi-colored sunset. Although the bright red dominated the sky’s color, there was yellow, orange, blue, indigo, and violet all there, just pale. It was beautiful, but it made her miss her home.

              Then, out of nowhere, Lucile heard the sound of a man shouting. “Do not get up,” said the booming baritone voice, coming in like an echo shouted from beyond one of the distant canyons.

              Lucile thought the voice sounded like it came from a cave, but because she was alone on the sandy beach, she was too scared to make a commotion and look around so she laid there, staring upwards and trying to stay still.

              “I will dream of you and I will never forget the time or place where we just met. You seem like just the girl for me,” said the thunderous voice of the speaker.

              Lucile continued to keep motionless, hoping that whoever else resided on that beach would not notice her. She was scared that the quicksand had led her into some trap with some civilization that ate people who snuck into the jungle. There must have been some reason that Dog disallowed people from going beyond the wall and entering the jungle so she started getting anxious thinking that this beach was the reason that access was forbidden.

              The voice, seeming louder, but coming in as an echo, continued to shout, “Little girl, I do not want to forget you. If I am to be bothered by your image in my dreams, I should at least know more about you so I can add dimension to my fantasy. Talk now, or I will start creating my own little fantasy for you.”

Lucile whispered, almost to herself, “Yes? And why is that?” Her response disturbed her a bit and she felt strange speaking in such a quiet tone of voice. There was a long silence, however, so she went on speaking. Her hope was that if she at least spoke inaudibly, but the man could make out that she was talking, that he would eventually leave her along for lack of good conversation. Lucile continued whispering, “What is the time and place? You say that you will never forget where we just met. So, where are we and what time is it?”

              “We are on a beach. It is daytime! It is incredibly light outside and I am enjoying the warm water from my lovely position, acting like Poseidon, sitting on the edge of the ocean and watching a beautiful girl fall. I love watching girls fall.”

              Lucile felt her body seize up when she realized that the man could hear everything she was saying. There was no way she was going to escape without being noticed.

              “Do you like to suffocate girls as well?” Lucile said, still whispering very softly.

              “Only if they fall head first. How did you fall?” it said very, very loudly. Then, in a crescendo it started to shout, “How did you fall!? Falling is the thing I know best! How? How did you fall?! Tell me and I will love you even more!”

              “As Poseidon, do you not have anything better to do than to trip little girls and force them to play with you on the beach?” Lucile said, still whispering and staring up at the rainbow-colored sky.

              “Firstly, I am not Poseidon. No, I act as though I am king but there are a few others just like me who wait here to meet girls like you.”

              “Girls like me?” Lucile replied, trying to make her whisper even softer. She thought that if she could lower her voice even further, she might be able to crawl away, at least away from the terrifying creature lurking in the cave.

              “Show me your face! I have already seen the profile of your body, it was etched into the quicksand, and I from this etching I know every little thing about your petite outline. If you want to live, however, and not be pulled into the ocean, you will sit up and show me your face so I can see that too in detail,” and then with a roar so loud it echoed a small wave of water that splashed onto Lucile’s feet, “Let me see your face!”

              Confused, tired, and feeling as though almost all hope was gone, Lucile wondered what she should do. It did not seem as though sitting up and looking toward the cave would hurt her. If the creature wanted to see her face, she should just show it. Something about the sky, however, kept her calm. It looked so much like the sky from her home, just diluted with water, and she thought that maybe the creature was an illusion. Maybe the whole beach was an illusion. If she just ignored the roaring cave dweller, she might have a better chance of sneaking away and learning about how to get back to the jungle.

              Just then, however, she felt a hand on her leg. Thinking it was the creature, she closed her eyes and tried to picture the true rainbow-sky. She tried to pretend that the creature was actually the Smilicus Grasicus, the lovely being that would be relaxing in the grass, telling her stories and making her happy. It always had something lovely to say, although it never shouted to be heard or said anything cruel or scary.

This cave-dwelling, ocean-controlling creature was just about the opposite of the Smilicus Grasicus and she started to wonder whether or not she was even on her planet, Canransoficus. Her mind began swelling with worry, thinking whether the sky was just a fake ceiling or if the ocean was just some sort of illusion. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the candy colored sky, full of pigment, with clouds that looked edible and her home only a few minutes away. Then, she felt her leg get dragged towards the water.

              “Are you the Sonic Phi?” she said softly, just slightly above a whisper. “Why have you come?” and then she paused, “When you take me and cut me up and feed me to your kind, I want you to know that you did a bad job of making the sky seem familiar. This is a horrible version of the rainbow-colored sky. It does not look a thing like home. You are a very bad artist,” and then she exhaled deeply, getting dragged a couple feet further toward the ocean.

              Suddenly, however, she felt her body being pulled downwards, not into water, but back into sand. She opened her eyes again and caught a glimpse of the beach, before going back into quicksand and being unable to see anything but blackness for a few seconds. Then, her legs felt air, then her torso, and last her head and arms. Coughing, she looked around again, this time expecting to be in the cave with the Sonic Phi themselves. Much to her delight, however, she was back in the jungle with Jean-Paul and Henry, who were standing above her.

              “Are you okay?” Henry asked.

              “Yes?” Lucile whispered, not sure whether she was dreaming, or if the Sonic Phi were creating another strange illusion. She stared at Henry’s face, but feeling his warmth, realized that it was most certainly him.

              “We barely could pull you out. Jean-Paul was not very much help,” said Henry.

              “I saw the Sonic Phi. They are on a beach. They are hiding in some rocks, in groups, looking over a giant beach with sand and water” Lucile said, still quietly.

              “What did they look like?” Henry said.

              “They scream. That is all I remember. The sky over the beach looked like the sky from back home, but it was watered out and you could barely make out the colors” Lucile whispered.

              Jean-Paul, hearing the worry in Lucile’s voice, then interjected, “It is okay. You do not have to whisper. Your back in the jungle. There are no Sonic Phi here. We will take of you until you feel better.”

              “I reached into the sand and grabbed your foot, pulling you out. Jean-Paul grabbed my body and we had to fight against the quicksand just to not fall in ourselves,” and then, looking straight into Lucile’s eyes, he said, “But, I would never have let you fall out of reach. I would have pushed Jean-Paul into the quicksand, grabbed his feet, and made him grab you.”

              “The Sonic Phi are strong,” Lucile said, again in the lowest voice she could. “They know where we are going and they are very disturbing. I do not know why, but I cannot raise my voice.”

              Worried about her well-being, the two boys decided that they would take turns carrying her. As they walked, she would mumble whispers about what she saw, repeating the story. They carried her through the afternoon, through the evening, and even into the night.

From Lucile’s perspective, everything looked like pictures from a magazine. Because she only opened her eyes occasionally, her tired frame only caught glimpses of the miles they traveled.

They traveled like this for a few days. Exhausted, Lucile did not talk much but continued to mutter the same bits of whispers about what had happened in the quicksand. A few conversations led Jean-Paul and Henry to decide that given the uncertainty of their situation, and the fact that the Sonic Phi could trap them using portals of quicksand, that escaping to another climate was not in their present best interest. From what Lucile was able to elaborate, they were very technologically advanced and were also both cruel and manipulative.

All possible plans that Lucile could think of were likely already solved by the Sonic Phi and so she decided that becoming comfortable with the jungle, and not panicking to try to escape into the next climate, might give her some extra knowledge with which to create a future advantage. Also, the jungle was dense and dark and Henry had packed night goggles so he enjoyed walking around at night. Going to the ocean climate was also totally out because Jean-Paul and Henry could not help but consider the option that the quicksand portal had taken Lucile to a beach nearby the ocean climate. It was said that the walls that separated the water environment from its neighboring climates were like giant curves where if you walked for long enough toward the sea, you would start to stumble backwards because you would not notice your incline. Henry thought that this was similar to what Lucile recalled about the never-ending sand behind her. It could be that what she was seeing was a mirage created by the upward incline of the sand that made it look like she was on an island’s beach. Or, it was also possible that there were islands in the water environment that the Sonic Phi were using as hiding bases. Jean-Paul liked the idea that they were able to at least cross out going to the water environment, because it only left them the jungle and the cold climate to consider as options. Jean-Paul preferred having few options because it made it easier for him to think of plans in his head.

              When Jean-Paul made decisions, he liked knowing that if he had done an alternate thing, he would have also been successful. Having two possibilities made Jean-Paul see the possibility of playing a game where a team could score at both ends. While if he had tried to score on one side, using one method, for a long time, and then tried again and again, not getting any success, he could just cross out that option and go on the to the other goal. If there were too many possibilities, however, Jean-Paul would get outcomes confused with interim ideas and would get lost in his imagination. In a sense, he would end up chasing his tail and sometimes end up not acting at all if he felt he could not solve both possibilities fully. It was one of Jean-Paul’s funny personality aspects: he liked having an answer in mind and another answer that contradicted the initial one. Knowing which ideas fit under each answer helped him figure out which way he was going and how far along he was in attaining his final destination. Thinking about the jungle versus the freezing terrain, with the details that Lucile had groggily whispered helping guide his decision, also gave him hope that it would be possible to evade the Sonic Phi.

Lucile Runs Away

              As Jean-Paul was contemplating his own personality, Lucile burst into tears and began kicking and screaming to be put down. Jean-Paul dropped her and she bounced a bit when she hit the ground. She started sobbing uncontrollably and said that she did not want to go any further and that they should continue on without her. When Jean-Paul tried to console her, she started screaming. Then, suddenly, she stood up and started running the opposite direction, into the jungle. Jean-Paul and Henry looked at each other and then just stood there. They made an effort to call out her name and took a couple steps forward, as if they were going to start running, but then ultimately decided that they would not follow her and that maybe she needed some time alone.

              “I did not think she was in the sand pit for very long,” said Henry to Jean-Paul, with a frustrated look on his face. He wanted to keep going. “It is just odd that ever since falling into the quicksand she has been so catatonic. I wonder what they did to her while she was gone. She’s been in shock for days.”

              “And, by the way she explained her experience with the Sonic Phi, she did not seem like she was injured or that they hurt her. All she said was that they ‘tried’ to pull her into the water. Who knows, maybe she was just hallucinating when she was suffocated by the sand.”

              “She does lie a lot,” replied Henry, getting irritated that they had carried her all this distance only to have her waste even more time. They were hungry and needed to find someone or something to assuage their fear that they had been pushed out of there village into the jungle, only to die because they could not support each other. The fact that Lucile, who was usually energetic and a knowledgeable planner, was showing signs that she would not be able to survive worried them. Henry, also, was starting to wonder if he should go on his own.

              Henry was fast and strong and started considering the possibility that he should have left Lucile in the quicksand. He started wondering if he even should have left his village in the first place. Yes, all the Dogs were missing and yes, the village seemed abandoned. But maybe it was just a new era for Canransoficus, one without Dogs. He started considering the possibility that everyone in the village was just hiding until the Sonic Phi left, and that the three of them were the only ones stupid enough to run away. Why had he followed Lucile and Jean-Paul? They may have been friends, but in handling emergencies together they were never very adept.

Considering how to handle Lucile’s running away, Henry remembered how she sometimes would lead them to awful choices in difficult situations. Once, there had been a flood from the sewers and Wonderland was partitioned by a wiry fence until the disgusting fluids were drained from the park. The silly friends that they were, however, they decided that they would go inside Wonderland, breaking through the wiry fence, to see what the damage was and to grab some belongings that they always hid away in the foliage of Wonderland. Lucile often hid the interesting and odd things she found in a knapsack so that Dog would not find them. Then, she hid the knapsack in Wonderland so she could play with them whenever she wanted. When they got inside, however, they searched for the knapsack in which the contraband was hidden and, when they located it under a pile of sewage, Lucile thought it would be best to take the stuff out of the bag, put it in her bag, and then leave the original knapsack in Wonderland. That way, if the authorities had already seen Lucile’s knapsack from far away, they would not notice anything different about the area. Henry was unsure about the plan but chose not to voice his opinion because he could not think of anything better and the night was getting darker. Jean-Paul was far from able to make any decisions because it was he who felt as though the knapsack should be left untouched until Wonderland was cleaned and the authorities had left. So, Lucile, getting no input from Henry and Jean-Paul, climbed over a bridge of branches near the perimeter of the park, found the knapsack, opened up her knapsack, took out the somewhat disgusting and wet belongings, and tried to hide them away as fast as she could. Then, she closed-up the knapsack, left it in the branches, and went back to join Henry and Jean-Paul to give each one third of her loot. This, ultimately, was a very bad idea because after escaping from the fence and heading back to their huts, they got extremely ill from the grotesque sewage that had mixed in with the original contents of the contraband. Henry remembered forcing himself to go to school the next day because Lucile and Jean-Paul called in sick, and he knew that it would seem like something bad had happened if all three of them did not show up following their breaking into Wonderland. That example was just one of many incidences where Henry had been let down by a group decision made by Jean-Paul and Lucile.

              Henry started reminiscing about all the other past examples he had of terrible outcomes caused by the group and he began mulling over his choice to escape with Jean-Paul and Lucile. It seemed like going off on his own to find Dog would have been a much better plan.

Jean-Paul, however, was concerned about Lucile and started to worry that she would continue running away for as long as she could. So long, Jean-Paul worried, that if they did not start to chase her immediately that they might not be able to find her.

              “Are we going to follow her?” asked Jean-Paul.

              “I do not think I want to anymore. Why should we?”

              Jean-Paul knew that Henry was anxious because of the situation. He attempted to reason with Henry’s logic, “Lucile was the one who found a way through the wall. I think that we should follow her because, maybe, she is heading in the right direction. I did not know where the wall was or that there was even a chance that we could run through it.”

              “I do not think we should have gone through the wall. I think we should have stayed behind and waited for other villagers before leaving,” Henry said sternly, making it seem like his position on not going after Lucile was thoroughly analyzed.

              “If I go after Lucile,” Jean-Paul noted, taking a few paces away from Henry, “then you should try not to leave. If I leave my satchel with you, will you please not leave? This spot is not difficult to find, but if you move then if I cannot get to Lucile, all three of us will have been separated.”

              “I can hold your stuff. Just promise,” Henry said, lowering his tone of voice, “that if you catch Lucile, tell her that I am waiting here. That way you will not have to spend time convincing her to turn around and return with you. She will come along with less of an argument if she knows that I am waiting for her. Tell her I said something kind and sweet. You can make something up to persuade her. Also, leave your satchel behind so you can run faster.” Then, he sat down and waited for Jean-Paul to throw his satchel. When he had both bags underneath him, he laid back, closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep while waiting until the situation finished.

              Jean-Paul ran off into the dark forest. As he looked around for Lucile, he noticed the birds in the trees. Their bodies were almost translucent, with big eyes that looked empty, except for when they seemed to see something far away, and they would turn bright blue. The feathers were much like plastic food wrap, crumpled up and shiny, which gave them a lovely sheen in the darkness. It was hard to tell if the feathers were actually clear, or just made out of a thick and reflective coating. Jean-Paul thought, for a second, that the skin and feathers, both, were totally translucent and that he might be able to see their organs if he went closer. Instead of stopping and looking, however, he decided to keep running and just peer at them sitting quietly in the tree tops. When he made a noise, the birds would all look in his direction, their eyes suddenly turning blue and bright, like there were lights inside of them. The birds were all the same size, about half a foot tall and probably only weighted a pound or two, but their eyes took up the largest portion of their bodies and were placed on a head that was at least three inches in diameter, if one could even consider a bird’s head a sphere. The rest of their body was a strange clear color and it was hard to tell their wingspan, because none of them flew away as Jean-Paul ran.

              Other than the birds, Jean-Paul did not notice any other animals and assumed that the other fauna did not enjoy the darkness, or that maybe the birds that he saw were the only animals that had night vision. Jean-Paul also did not see Lucile anywhere in sight and began worrying that he had already lost her. Lucile was not a fast runner; in fact, the other kids at school used to make-fun of her because when she ran, she would bend her elbows, holding her hands in front her body, and swaying her body left and right. She said that it was because she was clumsy and that having her hands out, ready to catch her if she tripped, made her more comfortable. When they ran their circles, Lucile would try to argue that it was an advantage that she was a slow runner because the supervisor would often assume that he miscounted her circles. That way, when Lucile did not run her circles and the averages were taken at the end of the week, the supervisor would often assume that he had made a mistake. When the scores came in, she would always pass, and the other students would get jealous that she could spend the day, hidden in Wonderland, while they had to do their laps, worried about getting caught for falling below.

              Lucile, however, had managed to run far into the woods and Jean-Paul, after making a circle around where Henry was waiting, decided to return to where he began from and just walk around to see if she was, possibly, sitting under a tree. As he walked, he tried to memorize all the different trees such that he could be certain that he looked everywhere. Looking from the ground to the tree tops, Jean-Paul checked everywhere, and unfortunately, could not find Lucile. As the day grew older and night darker, he decided to turn back as to get stranded in the jungle himself. He turned back and went back to where Henry was waiting. When he found Henry, he sat down and cried.

              “I bet if we just wait, Lucile will eventually find us,” Henry said.

              “What if she cannot figure out where we are? You know she can never figure out how to get anywhere when she is scared. Remember what happened when she ran away from that small pool when she thought she saw a mermaid in the water?” reminded Jean-Paul.

              “We had to find our bikes and ride around…”

              “And then she refused to sit by the pool for weeks,” Jean-Paul said, completing his thought and then, almost shouting, “Lucile is frustratingly naïve sometimes.”

              Henry looked over and realized that Jean-Paul could not understand the implicit emotions of Lucile when she was beautiful. Henry’s love for Lucile was because of her astounding denial of others’ immediate needs, especially in situations where adventure or necessity drove her from listening to another’s request. Her motivation to continually listen to the inner ideals within her often led her to complete incredibly difficult feats without noticing the wonderful final result. When she finished, Henry noticed that she would immediately forget that she had just done something amazing and look sad, as though she was internally empty. Henry thought that this type of anxiety about successful achievements was what he loved about Lucile. It was as though failing was, to her, the perfect result and the fact that she would constantly do good, and in some cases, outstanding, was what made her insane. Watching Lucile run into the woods and then, most likely, hide from Jean-Paul as he worried, made Henry, in a small way, calm and happy. He knew that she was probably sitting in a tree’s arms, hugging its body, and trying to console her sense of darkness by touching its living form. Or, she was doing a similarly Lucile-like act of environmental worship that one could appreciate only from Lucile’s perspective. Lucile loved to be around plants, animals were also friends, but she really mostly saw the quiet of aloneness as her best friend. Walking around and writing down all her feelings, sometimes a bit naïve and childish, was one of Lucile’s methods of finding motivation to be around other people. Some people thought that Lucile was odd, but Henry knew that she had just had a lot of time alone and honestly liked the solitude of the outside. One time, another student was saying how her favorite pastime was going out to Wonderland and pondering her inner self. This girl, whose name Lucile could not remember, started talking about the things she saw and how they all felt like expressions of her own identity. Other students had previously decided that this particular girl was interesting, so they listened and complimented her on the way she explained nature. Lucile was listening and chimed in about something she had done recently in Wonderland. The students looked at Lucile and then, simultaneously after Lucile finished her sentence, ended the conversation entirely and went back to silently exchanging glances and pretending to do their schoolwork. Then, after a minute of quiet, the girl who was originally telling the story looked over at Lucile and said, “You are very strange.” The group continued to sit in hostile silence.

Lucile did not talk a lot with that group after that, but she tried to see if she could mimic the way they told their stories in an effort to one day be friends and fit in like they did. Henry, who later heard from Lucile that the same girl had said she was strange when the two girls were chatting after class, realized how beautiful Lucile was when she misunderstood others personal attacks as efforts to improve. Lucile was so depressed after the girl said she was strange, especially after Lucile had tried opening up to her and her group of friends with stories about Wonderland. Furthermore, Lucile did not understand why, after name-calling, the group of friends all seemed to act so brutishly exclusive and make it so obviously clear that they did not want her talking to them. Events such as that were common occurrences in Lucile’s regular reality, which is likely the reason that she enjoyed being outside and spending time alone.

              Henry thought Jean-Paul mistook Lucile’s running as her trying to be run after. Really, however, she just needed some quiet. Being carried around for a few days may have given her body a rest, but the boys’ chatter probably made her head hurt. Furthermore, Henry knew that if she never returned, Lucile would be alright. There was no one else who could sit in the forest without ever being noticed that would love it as much. He assumed that she was probably thinking about the pros of living in the forest, alone, and needed some time to consider the possibility.

              As both Henry and Jean-Paul thought of opposing reasons for Lucile’s escape, the darkness was broken by a flash! Looking away from the direction where the brightness originated, the flash was so luminescent that the forest behind them was totally lit up and they could see a far distance through the trees, into what seemed to be more trees. The forest was much bigger than it had seemed when they were walking and for a moment it felt as though they were in a hole that was trees and some optical illusion where the distance seemed like it was both close and near, and was also immeasurable, like an infinite tunnel. The boys ducked for cover and hid behind a tree.

              Lucile, who was now sitting underneath the chipped-out region of a boulder, her arms hugging her knees, also saw the bright light. She assumed the Sonic Phi were dropping bombs and that soon the whole forest would be decimated. Thinking about Canransoficus and the lovely places she used to visit, Lucile imagined what the Sonic Phi would do to her home. Part of her was glad that she had escaped because she knew how evil the Sonic Phi treated the beings that they captured. Thinking about the brightness of the light, she assumed that the Sonic Phi were using the light technology to identify the beings they wanted obliterated, and then would drop another bomb to kill each human, individually. She also started to wonder about all the damage that might have already been done to her home and even if she was able to survive past the Sonic Phi attack, whether or not any of her effort would even be worth the trouble.

              Then there was another bright flash of light from above her head. She tried turning her body to be hidden by the boulder and put her backpack over her head as a disguise. Lucile started to feel as though an eminent death was near and that the Sonic Phi were already many steps ahead. The Sonic Phi had been waiting for the three of them to somehow get separated in order to wage this attack. In fact, they probably waited for Lucile to fall into the trap, knowing that Jean-Paul and Henry would save her, and even knew that Lucile would run away. Lucile was so stupid sometimes. She chastised herself for her constant need for attention, her disgusting ego, and total foolishness. There was a part of Lucile that had expected to live to old age, but now, she realized that dying might not be so bad after all. She spent most of her time alone and it seemed that most of things she did and said were always seen as strange outlier behavior that made the other students avoid her. Often, she wondered if the only reason that anyone was nice to her was because Henry liked spending time with her. Jean-Paul would always be a trusty friend, but he was quiet. If Lucile died, Jean-Paul would not mind so much, he would likely just find a new girl to ogle after. Henry might mind, although she also believed that he would be relieved to have one less person to entertain.

Dog would certainly mind, and sometimes Lucile would think about faking her own death to escape Dog because she believed that Dog cared much too much. Lucile’s Dog loved flowers, for example, and Lucile would often consider burying a few pillows underneath a flower bed and then running away. When Dog saw the lump in the flowers, Dog would assume it was a body and then immediately contact the authorities as to both maintain evidence and also to keep up the garden in case it was one of Lucile tricks. That would give Lucile enough time to leave. Reviewing those memories of her home and her fake plans to run away, Lucile put her hands over her head, holding hands with herself, and held her breath for twenty seconds. Then, she exhaled slowly for another twenty seconds and closed her eyes, trying to comfort herself.

It was getting dark and a bit cold and Lucile wondered if Henry or Jean-Paul even tried to look for her or if they abandoned her in the woods or if they were waiting at the exact same spot they were dropped off. She wondered if she should get up and look around to see if there was a fire. Instead, she decided to keep huddled over herself because she did not want to risk standing up and looking around, only to find that there was no fire in the distance.

As Lucile was falling asleep, Henry and Jean-Paul were standing under a tree in silence. It had been very quiet for the past few hours and even the bats were not making their regular cooing sounds. Henry wanted to ask Jean-Paul if he could identify a Fattest Battest again to shoot it for dinner, but the eerie silence kept him from speaking. He was hungry and evaluating the possibility that some of the beings in the forest were not edible. He remembered learning about a creature that had poisonous bones and started to wonder if it lived in the jungle and also the possibility of accidently ingesting such a being. Jean-Paul, on the other hand, was feeling disturbed by the quiet. For there to be no sounds from any creature, or even the brush of the wind against the trees, and also for Lucile to be suddenly scared and run off like she did made Jean-Paul extremely anxious. While it was true that Jean-Paul got frustrated with Lucile for her sudden temper, he also recognized that her spontaneous behavior could also be related to weird natural happenings or events in their town.

He sometimes liked to think of Lucile as one of those deer that would wonder in towns when the forest started running low on food. There was something about the way that Lucile empathized with everyone that allowed her behavior to be swayed by things that happened to others. It was like the feelings of those around her were contagious to Lucile. Jean-Paul also noted that sometimes the hunters and teachers would watch Lucile very closely. He never understood why, but sometimes he wondered if there was something special about the way she nonchalantly aligned with nature and was so close with the wild animals. Remembering this, he again worried that Lucile’s departure was some sort of sign of bad luck or forthcoming evil.

In the silence, Henry and Jean-Paul suddenly locked eyes. Then, a loud cracking sound came from the distance sounding like a big tree had been hit by lightning. Looking around to see where the cracking came from, there were a few more cracking sounds, and then the pace became so fast that they could not tell the origin of object making the impact. There was also light that lit up the entire forest like it was daytime blinking on and off, out of sync with the noise, that made it very difficult for Henry and Jean-Paul to keep their eyes open.

              Blinded by the bright flashing light, they both felt for each other in the darkness. Henry found Jean-Paul’s arm first and pulled him in the direction that he thought he remembered seeing a well-hidden bush. Feeling the surrounding area with his other hand, he quickly found the sharp and thin branches of the bush which he remembered seeing because it looked like it could hide some tasty game underneath the dense and uninviting exterior. Jean-Paul was at first startled because the twigs scratched his arm and were too hard to press against with any exertion of force. Opening his eyes for a few moments to see where Henry had shoved him, he realized that the thick cover of the brush was a good enough disguise and ducked underneath the giant thorns next to Henry. There they waited for seemed like an eternity, as the blinding electricity and booming sounds when on an on.

              Lucile, on the other hand, upon hearing the same noise, looked up, and then hid her face again after her eyes became irritated by the brightness of the light. She hugged her knees even harder and burst into tears, not caring how loud she was. Quickly, her sobs turned into loud exhales, which later turned in whimpering screams. She refused to look up, although periodically she would open her eyes as her forehead laid against her knees and she would watch the light go from day to night in non-syncopated paces that were like a metronome that went from very fast to slow to very fast again and then to something totally otherwise all of a sudden. After a long time of crying, she finally ran out of tears and felt very tired. Lucile was almost feeling as though she might fall asleep right then and there, even with all the commotion.

Sonic Phi Party

              As Lucile was feeling dizzy and tired, she heard the sound of footsteps cut through the crackling noise of electricity. At first, the sounds were far away but within seconds the barely recognizable audible signal of feet thumping against the ground turned intelligibly into the pairs of heavy weight smacking against the forest’s base. There were still no sounds of animals and Lucile figured that whomever was causing the disaster had scared away the jungle life a few hours before. If it were the Sonic Phi, for who else could it be, they must have been planning the attack from a safe location which meant that her fears were possibly coming true and they had taken ahold of her town, or at least some portion of the planet.

              The footsteps got closer to Lucile for a few moments and then started sounding more distant. “They must have changed directions,” Lucile thought.

              A sweet smell entered the air, “Why do men not wear purses,” it asked.

              “I think it is because everyone thinks that the phrase, ‘getting weird with Eldridge Cleaver’ has no counter-cultural context and could even, in fact, relate to the nuclear family sitcom,” Lucile remarked.

              “Have you read any philosophy?” it questioned.

              “Do you mean to ask, what if there was a movie of kids in Kindergarten but they talk about Kant while making things with Play-Doh. They are explaining the concepts of Kant, Husserl, Heideigger, Sartre, and then relating it all back to phenomenology?” Lucile questioned the question.

              “Have you ever thought about your subconscious?” it asked, again.

              “Sometimes. Sometimes when you go inside your subconscious, you may want to consider how the physical representation of this task would be. Imagine your fist being enveloped by some sort of a gelatinous wall. It is kind of gross. The gelatinous wall is external to your fist so you do not want to punch the wall but you need to break it somehow. Imagine, however, that the gelatinous wall is also you. In a sense, you are trying to hit yourself but the gelatinous wall between your senses and your self keeps evading you. This is because when you even bring up my subconscious, your conscious is going inside your subconscious like an Escher painting. It is like being in a parking lot with only five floors, but when you are driving down the somewhat claustrophobic driveway/tunnel with periodic exits to the VIP parking, floor level, 1^st level basement, 2^nd level basement, 3^rd level basement, so on and so forth, you find that the parking lot is very busy with some event and you even start to notice the centrifugal force of your car going in tight circles and even though you know there are at most six floors you still start to get uncomfortable.  Furthermore, to some extent, your conscious and subconscious are different elements of your being. However, they share the same mental space. It is like a banana going into itself. Sometimes I imagine it creates some sort of a void.”

“I want to extract from this, however,” it began commenting, ending the first phrase in an upturned pitch that suggested there would be another question, “that while metaphysically your gaze seems appealing, its physical representation is not pleasant. Imagine a squirrel turning inward. When you put it like that, dear, it just does not look pleasant,” it finished. 

“What if I analyze celebrities and famous philosophers from the perspective on an inanimate object?” Lucile responded suddenly, speaking in an unfamiliar, irascible way.

“I think that would be nice. Would you do something nice for me?” it mentioned, in a way that was equivocal about even needing any sort of answer.

“I postulate that the subconscious is an object but that we can never be animists anymore,” Lucile postulated, hoping for some sort of discussion and not the slow and meaningless fade that kept her a perpetual laggard.

“It would be nice if you allowed for a discourse from an object’s perspective. You need to do what you were just saying. You were right just then. But then again, that is all you ever think about. Take anything you want from me, but I am going to go free. Goodbye, little fairy.”

And there was a little rattle of leaves and Lucile felt like something had flown off her arm. It was something that she did not realize was there in the first place, so it startled her when she felt the equal yet opposite force of wind brush against her skin as something dashed off. Lucile clenched her teeth in a smile for second, trying to enjoy the sensation, but immediately went back to a pithy tirade against herself for being so foolhardy with everything she had ever done. She hated herself. She suddenly remembered her knees and resented her face for even being forced to lay against the disgusting joints that were unfortunately units of the legs she was forced to carry. She hated her personality for being so blandly unpleasant that people found her neither interesting nor noteworthy. Lucile felt small and worthless, like something needing to be smudged out or filled in.

Then, from the distance, there was shouting, and Lucile felt her stomach suddenly inflate with recognizing Jean-Paul high-pitched whaling. They had caught Jean-Paul. This was exactly the type of situation that she had been warned of in years before. An invader had come and it had found their way of life so diluted with idealism that the little utopia stood no chance against a force with weapons, cruelty, and wild heckling at its mercy.

              Back where Jean-Paul and Henry were hiding, Jean-Paul had been pulled out from underneath the shrubbery and Henry was running as fast as he could away from the intruders. Quickly, however, the giant Sonic Phi and their rage for finding whatever they came for in the first place caused their motivation to outpace Henry’s racing speed. Catching him, they put a cover over his head, bound up his feet, and carried him off. Then, a few laps around the area later, the Sonic Phi found Lucile, holding her breath and weeping in whispers. Lucile found a similar fate to Henry, who shared a fate with Jean-Paul, and the three of them were taken off, in separate kraftmobiles, with bags over their heads, through what felt a liquid portal. Lucile thought that the way that the exterior substance hit the outside of the kraftmobile sounded like liquid being pressed through a tiny hole and that the small taps she heard might be little, tiny bubbles bursting as they popped against the side of the vehicle.

              When they pulled off Lucile’s face mask, she saw that the Sonic Phi were about as scary as Lucile remembered. The Sonic Phi had taken her to their hide-out, a newly built mansion surrounded by trees and filled with fun activities. First she noticed that one Sonic Phi, sitting in the pool by himself, was playfully splashing the water in front of him. He was smaller than the others but he looked powerful because he was constantly staring at other Sonic Phi in the eye and then passive-aggressively gesturing with a splash of water for them to go do something. After a couple minutes peeping through in the bushes, as her captors had a discussion a few feet away, Lucile saw other Sonic Phi. Two of them were by a shed, guarding some metallic door. The doors were large and the locks were heavy, and when one of the Sonic Phi accidentally rocked into it, it made a loud knocking noise.

              There were also a few Sonic Phi scattered around with weapons. The weapons were giant swords as well as axes, clubs, and long barreled guns. Most had giant swords where the blades were not very long and the hand grips came up to their shoulders and it seemed, when you looked at the physics of the situation, that the Sonic Phi must have had a very lopsided way of using the swords in battle. These Sonic Phi were about 7 feet 5 inches tall and the giant swords were 6 feet tall. The swords were shiny and Lucile wondered if the reason for the shorter blade was because it was made out of some precious metal.

              Lucile then saw the weapons being held by the Sonic Phi guarding the shed’s doors. The guards had clubs sitting over hooks hanging from the door’s metal cage decoration. When the guards would toy with the clubs, Lucile saw the glass covering the ends of the weapons and how the convex ending to the club glistened in the bright light and reflected tiny flecks of red and gold all around. The glass was luminescent and changed color like a mood right when it glowed. It looked like a rose-colored type of glass that might grow in the shrubs of Canrancosifs and it was so lovely that its image even gave off a scent when you looked at it long enough.

It was true that some of the shrubs in Canrancosifs grew glass flowers. For a long time, the hunters assumed that these flowers were inedible because they were so hard and sharp. Maybe two hundred years ago, however, someone tried sucking on the petals, instead of chewing them, and found that they were not poisonous and that they melted in one’s mouth. Still, most people did not like the taste of this luminescent glass because it was extremely sour so they would just grab a few whole flowers, lick them a few times, and toss whatever was too flavorful to ingest on the ground. Supposedly, these glass shrubs in Canrancosifs were called Lumin Glass and the edible flowers that grew on them were called Glass Grass. The Lumin Glass shrubs then spread and sprouted because humans would eat them so often and many in the village felt as though it was the planet’s first example of a symbiotic relationship between themselves and the natural plant life. Most people would grab a couple flowers, munch and suck on their shards, making sure not to crush them in their teeth, and then spit out whatever was left when the flavor got too intense. In a sense, humans became pollinators of these pretty plants.

In any case, Lucile could not figure out how the Sonic Phi could have turned the Lumin Glass into parts of a weapon but she assumed that maybe they melted down the flowers and then poured the liquid version of the flowers over the end of their swords. Lucile also could not understand the utility of covering a sword with melted flowers so she questioned her assessment of the material. If the material really was made out of Lumin Glass, however, it meant that there was a big chance that the Sonic Phi had already made a lot of progress in destroying her village and pillaging resources. She got very upset for a moment, realizing that the Sonic Phi had already ransacked the shrubs and that her home might be in ruins. In particular, among the many different types of flora, she really liked those glass shrubs and an inner tiredness came over her body as she realized that the Sonic Phi probably could totally decimate many of Canransoficus’ species just by their flagrant disregard for Dog’s rules. Dog would never, ever allow the plants to be used as part of weapon.

Lucile, sitting quietly and looking at her captors, started to pay closer attention to the details of their insect-like bodies and mammal-like faces. When she stared at them longer, the anthropomorphism made the Sonic Phi start to look like the humans of Canronsoficus. Noticing that Lucile was showing some emotion and taking in her surroundings, the Sonic Phi pulled her along and began talking in a terrible accent with grammar that was almost un-intelligible.

Lucile then paraphrased to herself what had just been told to her by the Sonic Phi: “It would be best if she felt more comfortable and acted empathetic to the Sonic Phi’s mission as she walked out into the pool event. There was music and if she could not enjoy herself, she would be punished. Also, if she tried to sneak past the pool party and into the back house, guards would also punish her. The most common punishment was being forced into the shed.”

              Thinking about this, Lucile started looking around, considering her escape. She felt as though she should attempt to escape immediately, lest the Sonic Phi would only learn more about her behavior and potential defense tactics the longer she was in their presence. Noticing the texture of the wall that was supposedly part of the back house she was banned from entering, she wondered how the Sonic Phi had put together such a camp so quickly. She even wondered if she was still on Canrancosifs of if they had taken her to a different world. The wall she was staring at looked like it might be made of brick or some mud cement blocks but it had electricity capabilities which were evident from the two or three flood lights near the top edge where the wall met some sort of shaded ceiling.

              Now being physically held by the Sonic Phi and walked into the pool party, Lucile realized that she was now totally captured and that there was a chance that ultimately they would drown her and throw away her body, as legend said they sometimes did. Her choices were extremely limited by the physical size of the Sonic Phi. Thinking about a possible escape plan, Lucile tried to nonchalantly look around to see where she could break free and run. Lucile saw that the wall of the building might not be structurally sound, so she thought that if she did manage to escape the physical clutch of the Sonic Phi, she might try to run at full speed towards the area next to the window to see if she could push it through with her shoulder. It might allow her buy time to hide in the house and figure out if there were other prisoners that she might need to find to escape from the Sonic Phi. She even wondered if Jean-Paul and Henry had been taken inside the mansion in order to separated from her. She had not heard from either other of them, except for a distant scream that sounded like Jean-Paul’s voice right when she was getting captured, since she had run off in frustration.

              Feeling as though she had the advantage of surprise on her side by immediately trying to escape, she took twenty seconds to plot how she would try to run off. Then, tossing her wrist down as fast as she could and breaking the grasp of the Sonic Phi’s lazy grip, Lucile ran past the two other guards, who were walking as a pair in front of her, and passed the pool. As she turned the corner of the pool to dart into the wall, however, she slipped, fell on her bottom against the side of the pool, and then accidentally dunked backwards into the water. Coming up for air, Lucile saw that eight Sonic Phi were all standing around the pool unsure of how to deal with the fool. Her escape plan had been foiled and she was left astonished and feeling more alone than she had ever felt in her entire life.

Lucile almost wanted to laugh, like a naïve con artist who had fallen straight into a trap in the most astoundingly ironic way possible, even confused her captors as to whether or not she might be a comedic performer. The Sonic Phi took a moment to calculate what had just happened and muttered a few words to each other. Then, the Sonic Phi who was standing nearest to Lucile jumped into the water, landing right next to her and immediately put a bag over her head. He put her over his large, wide shoulder, and carried her wet, limp body out of the pool. In the darkness created by the bag covering her senses, he put her feet down to the ground but held her wrists together tightly, dragging her forward. With the bag over her head, she tripped on something on the ground, but was held up by the force being exerted forward by the tug on her arms. Then, a brush of air blew past, making her shiver in her soaking clothing, and she felt her feet walk through something thick and slimy. When the short walk was over and she was stopped – and after the jingle of some keys that could be heard even through the bag that was sitting over her eyes and ears – she heard a creaky door open quickly and she was shoved forward again, this time from behind. At first, the surprise of being pushed forward made her feel as though she had been pushed off some ledge and she was falling, but a split second later her reflexes caught her step and she guessed that she had been pushed inside a locked building where the floor was below the level of the outside walkway. Then, the sound of a door closing shut confirmed that she was inside some room, and she tried to turn her head up and down and side to side to see if she could see through the bag covering her head. Unfortunately, it was totally opaque. Even if the room was as well-lit as the pool event outside, the thickness of either the color or the material of the bag made everything so dark that even with her eyes open all she was saw was total pitch-blackness. She concluded that not only was the bag covering her eyes opaque, but also that the room she was being held was totally dark.

              Feeling steady in her balance, she knelt down and took a seat on the ground. Feeling around, something to her left was in the shape of a cube made out of thorny grass and something to her left felt like paper. Then, feeling courageous, she took to the task of untying the bag from her head. Her hands were not bound and hearing no dissent from anyone potentially guarding her, she knelt her head forward and used her hands to loosen the bag from the back her neck. She pulled the satchel of her head and looked around, but she had been right about the darkness of the room and the whole space was so dark that she was still unable to see anything.

              Lucile’s eyes not quite adjusting to the darkness of the room despite her jotting them around in all directions, she slowly bent down, putting her hands out to search for objects near her that she might be able use to make light. Finding none, she crouched down and put her bottom on the floor and hugged her knees. Once her eyeball sockets found her knee bones, she burst into tears. Trying to keep her whimpers quiet, she started thinking of Dog and how much she missed her home and her village. She also thought about her own needs, but they were sparsely intertwined with tears about her old soil and how she was had wasted so many beautiful sunsets when she had the opportunity to still see the sky.

              Then, there was a loud knock on the door.

              “Stop crying! You are bothering the host!” Lucile heard some Sonic Phi shout from outside.

              Lucile tried to take a huge breath inwards to muffle the sounds of her cries, but she immediately started laughing and even gulped down some air accidentally. There was another knocking, “Did you hear me? Stop shouting!”

Trying to make her cries inaudible and making every effort to control her tears, Lucile resorted to holding her breath. The Sonic Phi loudly pounded on the door, “I won’t have to shout at you if you stop making so much noise!”

              Lucile was able to comfort herself and eventually fell asleep. She woke up to a still very, very dark attic, but with the lit outline of what looked like a barely boarded up window. A silhouette of light showed at least three 90-degree angles, coupled with some straight-lined frames, suggesting there might be a window from which the morning was bursting through.

              Lucile wondered in which habitat the Sonic Phi and she were hiding. The darkness suggested they were either in the ocean area or the jungle zone of the planet, if still on the plant at all. She thought that they might be in a brick cabin that the Sonic Phi had quickly built slightly inland of the coast in the water sector of her planet. Because it was quiet but there was a lot of fog, Lucile thought that the precipitation in the air could be caused by a close and large body of water. Lucile remembered learning that the water habitat of her planet had majestic sea animals that could live on both the land and in the water but chose to live within the deep blue of the ocean because it was rumored that they had a secret civilization hidden right underneath the shallow water. There were also islands sparsely distributed out along the ocean and she thought that she and Sonic Phi might be on one of those islands. It would very easy to access an island in the middle of the ocean with the Sonic Phi’s kraftmobiles.

Lucile wondered if she could call out to the sea creatures and have them carry a message or help her escape. One of the textbooks she had read in class told the story of one adventurer, named Adamo, who went on expedition during the short period of history when travel to other parts of the planets was not banned for environmental reasons. Adamo went deep into the ocean looking for a marine civilization and found nothing. It was a totally failed mission. Some years later a few other explorers attempted to find the sea life but even if they replicated the antecedent researchers’ directions and maps, they only found some sea flora who suggested that they go a few miles deeper in the water. According to the records that Lucile remembered, these later expeditions used a submarine to go deeper and found that there were incredible marine civilizations in the abyss.

The explorers wrote that the color of the water would slightly change to signal information about seasons. The changes were almost imperceptible to the explorers but the water creatures seemed to use this measurement as a methodology by which to make decisions. The water’s clarity would also change sometimes would be so clear that the explorers would have to blow bubbles out of their breathing tubes just to make sure they were still underwater and not floating in some heavenly expanse of sky. One explorer died because he thought that he was above the water and removed his breathing tube but was actually just disoriented by the perfect translucence and stillness of the water.

With the thick fog Lucile had seen earlier and the interesting architecture of the building, Lucile thought that the Sonic Phi had stolen resources from the ocean and built the lovely mansion in which they were hiding. They were big and strong and if they had brought some of the materials from their planet, Hazer, it would not have taken them long to set up a full camp. As the most technologically advanced civilization in the solar system, they could easily manufacture pools, sheds, and buildings.

              On the other hand, Lucile thought that her kidnapping had only resulted in her being moved deeper into the jungle. The jungle would also have fog and a lot of resources to build the camp. If this were the case, then the Sonic Phi were probably picking off humans, one by one, as they crept closer to the Sonic Phi’s hiding space. The jungle was largely unexplored and unknown, but it was known as an incredible place with animals beyond anyone’s imagination. The Sonic Phi indubitably had enough power to clear off all the trees and animals so as to pick apart the trunks, bones, branches, and leaves for resources and partition off a big plot of land, create their camp out, and still be hidden from sight from the rest of the jungle. This was a bit tragic to think about because citizens of Canronsoficus would often smile at the thought that on their simple, little planet, lived some of the most beautiful and sweet creatures in the entire solar systems. It was a proud point of many people in Lucile’s village to discuss how little was known about the jungle because it reminded everyone about their ability to leave things as they were and not to be nosy or intrusive into the lives of advanced and kind beings.

The students were sometimes asked to come up with drawings of the plants and animals in the other sectors of the planet. While they could not see them in real life, it was important for the humans of Canronsoficus to understand that they got to share a living space with incredible creatures. Lucile loved to sit with Henry and pretend she had just seen a creature from the jungle. Henry, of course, knew that she could never have seen an animal from the jungle, no matter how incredible Lucile’s credible stories could be, but he still liked to go along with her made-up plotlines and pretend with her and listen to her suggestions about what was going on in the most off-limits part of the planet. She would make up stories about animals that could eat only a leaf and be full for years, allowing the jungle to only grow thicker and healthier. Lucile liked to pretend that everything that went on in the jungle benefited her little part of the planet and would often “update” Henry with what had happened in the jungle and how her excellent score in class or exceptional ranking in running circles was directly correlated with some strange fact about how the animals in the jungle had just invented some new way to enjoy the natural world to the benefit of all the animals on the planet. One time, when Lucile was making up a story for Henry about the jungle, Lucile had decided that a walking flower from the jungle had gotten separated from its tribe and found Lucile to ask for directions.

Sitting on the floor of that tiny, pitch black room, she wished that some tiny creature would somehow get lost and wander into the little room in which she was being held. She tried focusing on all the wonderful memories that might cheer her up. She tried thinking of the fun and careless adventures she used to go on in the peaceful village that she shared with Dogs. Feeling listless and tired, however, she could not think of anything to take her mind off her current circumstances. Still alone in the dark shed, she laid down and went to sleep.

An Audacious Daisy

Lucile was awakened by a loud knock on the door. Turning her body away from the door and curling up into a tiny ball, Lucile tried to ignore the sound and go back to sleep. After some more sounds and the creaking of a lock being unlatched, the bright light from outside burst into the dark cabin from the opening door.

“Get up! We have some things to do today!” said the now recognizable voice of a Sonic Phi entering into the shed.

Lucile kept very quiet, wondering if there was any possibility that she was somehow blending into the ground and could not be seen. Unfortunately, she was the only body in a small shed with a few newspapers, dust scattered everywhere, and only about nine square feet of space. Lucile was clearly unhidden.

“If you do not get up yourself, I am going to have to pick you up,” the Sonic Phi threatened.

Still not moving and seeing no benefit to appeasing her captures, Lucile held her knees close to her body and tried to get as difficult to lift as possible. This was no use against the Sonic Phi’s guard who quickly grabbed her arm off its clasp with her other hand and lifted her awkwardly off the floor. Lucile was forced to use her legs to stand up so the Sonic Phi would not disconnect her arm from the socket which connected it to her body. Dragged out of the room and into the pool area, she saw that there was still a party going on. There were more Sonic Phi than the night before and most were sitting around enjoying food served on giant, plasticky leaves. She identified the leaves as being from the jungle’s big trees; the ones she remembered dripping with sap, that she could not help but find amazing. Frustrated that the Sonic Phi would use nature’s artwork as a food service supply, Lucile wanted to collapse to the ground. With her own eyes, she was seeing the demise of her beautiful planet. It was evident that these invaders had no care for the plants or animals and were already taking more than they needed. While sometimes her teachers would mention things that could go wrong on Canransoficus, Lucile never worried much. Watching the Sonic Phi’s outrageous behavior, however, made her feel like she no longer wanted to fight because to create a conflict with a species that cannot differentiate art and furniture would be utterly useless. The Sonic Phi’s way of life was inherently wasteful and within a very little time – maybe within ten or twenty years, Lucile estimated – her once thriving planet would be nothing more than a barren landscape.

The Sonic Phi who were guiding her across the yard looked back at Lucile to see her expression. She was near crying but only one tear had dripped down her cheeks because she forced her welled up eyes to keep from blinking. The Sonic Phi started laughing and then jokingly asked, “Are we too jovial for you? Sit down and enjoy some food while you wait.” Lucile wanted to reply with a question, to find out what she would be waiting for, but decided it was best not to talk and therefore deny the Sonic Phi any enjoyment from seeing her suffer.

The Sonic Phi started bringing out platter after platter of food. She even saw one plate of fattestbattest, but instead of being made into jerky, the Sonic Phi had prepared the meat raw using some sort of cooking contraption that was hidden inside the giant mansion next to the pool. The Sonic Phi must have prepared it somehow, using some advanced cooking technology most likely, because there was no way the fattestbattest could be eaten totally raw, even if it had just been caught an hour ago, due to the odd molecular make-up of their muscles making it extremely rubbery and inedible. Lucile also noticed that the big flood lights were still on, even though it was day time, so everything looked very bright and healthy. She looked at the food with hunger and guilt, both hoping to be offered a bite but also feeling disgusted that most of the excess would be thrown away. No offense to the fattestbattest or the cooking technology of the Sonic Phi, but no one could eat more than half of that bird and still want to continue because the meat was bland and had a strange texture.

A guard sat Lucile on a chair near the side of the pool and locked her arm to the arm rest. She had one arm free to use as she pleased and so the guard walked over to the buffet, filled a plate with a pile of food, and brought it to her. He placed the food on her lap and then brought over some strange utensils for her to use. The utensils were like tiny ladders and looking around she saw the other Sonic Phi using them in a scooping motion to eat their food. They would also use the ends of the ladder, two pointed sticks, to pick up pieces of solid food, like a fork with only two prongs. Lucile ate her food quietly and tried to think about the possible upsides to being kidnapped. Firstly, she would not have to go to school anymore. While she liked school, she was often made fun of and hard time making friends so she considered that maybe she might get along better with the Sonic Phi. Secondly, she had never been to the jungle before so wondered if the Sonic Phi would take her to other sectors of the planet. Thirdly, she posited that this was just another epoch in Canransoficus’s history and that if the planet was really meant to survive then it inherently would, as it did long before Lucile even existed.

Hidden Passenger

Sitting quietly and eating, she heard a rustle in the trees next to her. Looking over, she saw nothing. Then, she heard a tiny horn make a very high pitched “beep beep” sound. Lucile turned to look at all the Sonic Phi, including the one guarding her, and saw that none of them noticed. In fact, her guard from the night before was now laying out on an outdoor blanket and seemed to be dozing off with a giant piece of food still being chewed in his mouth. Looking back over the shrubs, she saw a tiny car drive out from under the greenery and then make a u-turn back into the shadows. Lucile waited quietly, trying not to pay too much attention to the strange occurrence, hoping that if it were there to benefit her that she would not ruin her chances of escape for the third time. Hearing the “beep beep” once again, Lucile looked over to a see the little car drive over to her chair and park underneath. Then, looking down at her chair’s bottom half, she saw that the stand right next to her left foot was being climbed by a tiny daisy. She had seen the little daisies in her section of Canrancosifs, they were very cute and mischievous, and were always bothering the other, bigger flowers. They never bothered the humans, but sometimes Lucile saw would see the daisies climbing up a vine and then swinging off its leaves until the vine would chastise them, “I am a vine but now not so fine!” or something like, “You are making this vine not so fine.” The vines were always offended by everything and thought that there were particularly important for guarding the trees. Lucile often took the side of the daisies because they really did not harm to either the vine or the trees, except for maybe pulling on their leaves and tickling them as they climbed.

The little daisy was now working to undo the contraption that was binding Lucile to her chair. Lucile tried to act relaxed and would periodically eat some of the food off her dish in order to make it seem as through nothing notable was going on. The little daisy was taking the little leaves it had as hands, making them into very littler pieces, and turning them inside the lock to undo the combination. Eventually, the binding came loose and Lucile’s hand was free. The little daisy looked up at her and put its thin, stringy branch over its face, making a shushing sound. Then, it crawled down into its car and sped off into the shrub. A few moments later, one of the Sonic Phi jumped into the pool and the whole crowd started cheering. Lucile, at first, thought that the loud cry was the result of the Sonic Phi screaming at her, but seeing one of the Sonic Phi in the water reminded Lucile that this was the perfect diversion. Seeing no better time to slip away, Lucile checked her ankles to quickly make sure there were not tied up, so when she got up she would trip and make noise, and then tried to collect her thoughts and not seem suspicious.

Quickly, she stood up and grabbed the light chair that she was just sitting on to scurry off into the shrubs where the daisy had run off into. She wanted to take the chair out of the way so that the Sonic Phi would not noticed that there was an empty place where Lucile once was. She was able to run into the shrubs without getting caught on any of the sharp branches, and quietly moved away from the Sonic Phi. After walking for a few feet, she put down her chair and looked around for the daisy. There was no little car and the chair was making a lot of noise being pushed through the brush so she abandoned the chair and kept walking. Eventually, she popped out the other side of the shrubbery into the jungle.

Standing alone, not sure what to do, she noticed that there was a little path in the distance that looked like a vehicle had driven over it. She remembered one time, when she was with Henry in Wonderland, she saw a similar road. The reason she remembered the road was because the Smilicus Grasicus had recently told her to watch out for “wandering flower power.” Lucile had recently been complaining to the Smilicus Grasicus about her gross knees and what she could do to make more friends and the Smilicus Grasicus told her that only way was to break free of whatever made her feel ugly. It told her she was fine but that she should also not feel too fine or she might become a victim of flower power. Lucile did not know what that meant but the next school day she had seen divots in the road with crushed flower petals that looked like some sort of vehicle had driven over a train of flowers.

 Free from the Sonic Phi, Lucile took a moment to look at the tracks along the ground to see if there were any petals buried underneath. There were very few vehicles on Canransoficus because usually the hunters only road on animals and the humans just walked around. Sometimes, however, someone would build something that was fast and ran on wheels and drive it around, but there was little available material to power such a contraption for long. Trying to remember if the daisy had mentioned anything else after freeing her from the clutches of the Sonic Phi, she noticed the pristine condition of the environment. It was early in the morning, Lucile could tell because the rainbow-colored sky was still a very pale pastel shade of colors, but the jungle’s air smelled like it was in the middle of the night and everything was asleep and totally at peace. She also noted that she was still in the jungle, so there was a chance that if she ran for long enough she might eventually end up finding Henry, Jean-Paul, or at least seeing the Wall once again.

Walking through the mockingly loud jungle, with animals making raspy mating calls and the wind playing with the leaves, Lucile started thinking about how huge the jungle might be. The distance from Wonderland to her cottage was far, but she could the whole path back and forth maybe three times without getting tired. The jungle, however, looked like it was possible to wander for hours, maybe the length of ten trips from Wonderland to her cottage, without ending up the same place. She also starting thinking about how the curve of the planet was effecting her route and how often she could go in a large circle without seeming like she ever made any sort of turn off of a straight path forward. As Lucile angrily mumbled to herself about the potential hazards of surviving in the jungle for more than a few nights without the warmth of a knapsack or her tools to prepare food, a vehicle started coming towards her. For the first time, Lucile felt like her luck had changed. Something on this planet wanted her to live.

It moved very quietly and Lucile could only see it because its wheels swirled up some dust as it drove. Then, the vehicle pulled up next to her. In the driver’s seat, a beautiful flower casually sat, holding the wheel with its leaves. It was the strangest thing she had ever seen and Lucile paused to pretend she was fastening her shoe. Dumbfounded by the situation, she knelt down to retie her shoelaces. As she was fiddling with her shoe as a distraction, she looked up for a moment and saw the droopy smile of the Smilicus Grasicus with his classic sunglasses. She had never seen the Smilicus Grasicus in the form of a flower, only as a face that shown through a patch of grass.

              Very quietly, she could hear the Smilicus Grasicus hum, “is Lucile a banker with a motorcar?”

              Lucile nervously giggled and shock her head, trying to continue tying her already perfect shoelaces. She was amazed that someone, or in this case, some “thing,” actually came back to save her.

              “Anyway?” said the Smilicus Grasicus, suggesting that it was both asking a question and trying to leave at the same time. For an enigmatic land plant, the Smilicus Grasicus sure did have a way of turning its funny accent into a lyrical device fit for almost every situation.

              Lucile burst out in tears, not because she was distraught but because after so many days of being away from the cottage, she finally felt something that reminded her that her home once existed. And, in many ways, that the hostile attack on the cognitive tranquility of her utopian village was not impossible to manage. Then, she wiped her tears and thanked herself for so calmly handling her recent escape. This was the best possible outcome she could have imagined. There was almost no other creature that she would have rather bumped into than the Smilicus Grasicus. Sometimes, in fact, the Smilicus Grasicus was such a close friend that she forgot that it was just an element of nature. She shuck her head again – just to relax her neck and keep from getting too excited – re-tied her shoes, and whispered, trying to build her confidence before conversing with her new found friend, “How did you find me?”

As the flower-driven car stopped its motor, the Smilicus Grasicus rolled side window all the way down and then replied, as though it had not heard what Lucile had just muttered, “If you are going to escape, you need to hurry. Immediately. As in, right now.”

Lucile went up to the window and, peeping at the driver, looking still a bit groggy from sleeping on the floor of the Sonic Phi’s shed floor, asked, “was driving this funny vehicle around all by yourself a pretty terrible use of your recent hours?”

“No,” said the Smilicus Grassicus calmly, “but it was also not not terrible at all. If you come inside it would be even less terrible than whatever has been happening in between.”

              “Is that an invitation?” asked Lucile in her best pretend perplexed manner. Relieved that it was the Smilicus Grassicus who was taking her to safety, she decided not to make too dramatic of a scene and before the Smilicus Grassicus had time to respond, she tried to open the door.

              “No,” replied the flower with a completely straight and cold face just a second after Lucile started playing with the vehicle-door’s handle.

And finding that the door was locked, she Lucile impulsively tried to make a joke, still inwardly convincing herself that the Smilicu Grassicus was actually there and this savior was not just a delusional oasis she was actively creating in her mind. Because humor is not the best friend of illusion, Lucile’s quick instinctual response led her to make light of the situation. “That is fine. I come closer and closer to being a perfect misanthrope every day.” Then, brushing her hair off her shoulders and scooping it away from the back of her neck she put one hand down on the side of her hip and looked around, as if waiting for someone to pull around the corner.

“Anyway, sorry for bothering you,” and, flipping a misplaced lock of hair into place using her little fingers, starting speaking softly, as if almost only to herself, “it is just that I need a ride…”

The Smilicus Grassicus interrupted, “If you had let me finish,” it said, clearing its throat, “I was going to say, I am not inviting you to anything in particular but you are welcome to join me for a ride for as long as you want to go the same direction as I am. And, if you want to join you need to do so immediately.”

“What will I have to pay you?” asked Lucile, trying to play along with the awkward tension of whatever was meant by immediately entering a locked car.

“You have to make up a new name to call me.”

“Why?”

“We might be driving for a while and if we get stopped, you need to call me by a disguised name.”

Lucile thought for a moment. “I think I can come up with a name before I leave.”

Pressing a button from inside the vehicle, the flower popped open the passenger door and Lucile climbed inside. The car was much smaller in proportion to Lucile’s body versus the flower’s measurements in proportion to the car. In the form of a flower, the Smilicus Grassicus looked very large. Then, before the flower had a chance to suggest a new topic of conversation, Lucile blurted out, “Can I call you ‘Flora’?”

“As a name? You want to name me Flora? What is the etymology?” said the Smilicus Grassicus.

“Yes, as a name,” replied Lucile, hoping that she would not offend her partner with her lack of knowledge about her proposed answer.

“What sort of naming game have you gotten yourself into this time my dear?” it spoke.

“A game where there the name is Lucile Ultimately Loses. Oh dear, all I can remember are the dark details. Are you upset that I cannot remember the transition that gets us to the end of your terrifically tale?” Lucile said, as she took a toke.

“My accent gets everyone baffled at the end. If you were really literate and could make a limerick up in your head, you would know that the ending is hard to read because for it to make sense you must re-enact a redundant riddle.” It jested, making a joke.

“I thought I already did that.”

“That is right!” and, without any folk musical accompaniment, it began a singsongy melody that clearly attempting to seem Baroque, “I am asking you to do what you already did. Just as you already did it! A redundant riddle for the rudimentary reader…”

Lucile, removing the dumbfounded silence she sometimes used as an emotional cloak, then balked, “So Flora was a good name to choose?” and just as she felt her confidence unyoke, her confusion broke and she suddenly woke.

“Thank you. It is perfect.”

The pair then sat in silence for what seemed like the shortest eternity that Lucile had ever experienced. Just seeing a non-moving creature maneuver a vehicle was incredible enough to watch for an eternity and yet the silence made her constantly want to leave. It was clear that “Flora” was not used to conversating, it was perfectly comfortable with the lack of sound.

              Three hours later, Lucile could no longer hold her words. Thinking about what she would do when she finally got back home to Dog, she wanted to let Flora know all about her regular life.

“I decided to dye that one sweater I keep wanting to change that I talk about all the time. The one with all the puffs on it. Have you seen anyone in those sweaters recently? They are thick and good in the winter, but they have these little puff balls sown onto the outside. I bought the sweater I’m talking about right now a few months ago but the white puff balls made me think that if I just dyed it a new color it would look brand new. I do not know if you now but those sweatera are still very fashionable these days, even though they came out last season.”

Casually, Flora asked, “Cool. What color did you dye it?”

“Blue,” Lucile said, but before she could complete her thought something caught her eye in the back seat.

“Yeah, do you remember that time that crafts were…” Flora started to say before Lucile interrupted her. Lucile, gesticulating with her hands, cut off Flora by gesturing her to stop talking and look in the back seat. From what seemed like a blanket came some motion, and then the head of tiny and adorable little animal. Looking from outside the blanket, it made eye contact with Lucile and let out a little noise. Flora gasped, stared at Lucile as though she had been the one to put it here, and slammed on the breaks. At the end of the street, at a sign, Flora quickly pulled over. Lucile and Flora then both took off their safety gear and turned towards the creature, who was staring at them with the most trustworthy and cute eyes in existence. Staring at each in awe, Lucile started to coo in a sound that she was trying to make mimic the creature’s sigh.

Then, out of nowhere, the animal used its little animal hands to wipe its eyes with the nub of its writs, yawned, and then started talking.

“What am I doing here?” the animal said clearly.

Both Flora and Lucile gasped.

Being the first to collect her senses and reply, Lucile tried to nonchalantly reply, “Who are you?”

“How!” gruffed the animal, getting excited and crawled out from the blanket to expose its tiny little body and walking in a little circle.

Attempting to match the attitude of the creature, Lucile used similar language to the animal, “How.”

The animal seemed to agree with Lucile’s approach to the conversation and said, “Sorry, I slept in here last night.”

Flora, who was now slightly less surprised by the situation, tried to insert itself into the conversation with the question, “How did I not notice you!?”

Lucile, trying to seem as though she was comfortable, and not to worry the little animal, who had clearly been totally aware of its situation until that exact moment, added, “So weird dude. I cannot believe you slept in here.”

Catching up to Lucile’s attitude, Flora suggested further, “So weird, right?” looking to Lucile to get some approval.

Giggling at the entire situation, Lucile tried to act as though she knew what was going on. Looking over at Flora, but speaking to the animal, Lucile blurted out, “So weird.” Then, seeing that there was an awkward silence, she looked at the beautiful little thing and asked, “How did you get into the car?”

The animal, seeming like there was no potential for getting in trouble, honestly said, “You left the trunk open and so I climbed in and then closed the door.”

Flora scrunches its pedals together, like it was getting dark, and shook its body, like it was cold. “I cannot believe I left the car door open again.”

Not believing situation, Lucile tried to grow the conversation into something that would clarify whether or not Flora and this little animal were working together as con artists or if she had just found herself in another one of those non-sensical situations to which the Smilicus Grasicus often led her. “Do you live in the park? I just went camping in that park.”

Lifting the blanket with its nose and then flopping on its back and to look at its little feet, the animal coughed and then whispered, seeming dramatic, “Animals do not live in parks anymore. I was on a fishing trip. Animals are only allowed into the parks if they are going fishing. Otherwise, we are banned.”

The little animal was actually very adorable. It had four legs and pink skin but was totally hairless. One of its eyes was very droopy and it had long ears that laid across its back almost the distance of its whole body. Its little feet had pads on all the toes and it looked like it would be good at climbing. The animal, however, was still very small so its feet little wear and tear and almost matched the pink color of its flesh. It was also a chubby, little creature, and its meaty limbs all folded together in an delightful ball of youthful folds.

Flora, seeming to understand the animal’s predicament perfectly, “I heard about that. That is one of the recent changes being made by the Sonic Phi. All the animals have to work the park if they want to go to the park. No free-range animals allowed. I have to ask, however, why did you not you bring any equipment if you were planning on going fishing? I thought you would get in trouble if you went fishing without tools? Or, are you hiding something under the blanket?”

The little animal, looking down, “I slept in your car because I do not have any equipment yet. Why would I sleep in your car if I had all my things? I need to find some fishing tools because I want to go the park and be near the other animals. If I had tools and equipment, I would be with the other animals and I would be happy. Instead, I have to hide in some weird flower’s car to escape trouble.” Then, giggling, the animal went on, “I found this blanket in your car! I am not hiding anything in it! Are you hiding something in the blanket?”

Seeing a beautiful tree that she thought she had seen a few days before when being carried by Jean-Paul through the jungle, Lucile tapped on the glass to get the animal’s attention.  “I guess you are right. In any case, try not to worry. You are here with us now and my name is Lucile and I know a lot about plants. Did you see that tree we just drove past? Did you think it was wonderful?” Looking out of her window she continued, “Can you see the outside or do you want me to put something underneath you so you can see the outside better?”

Then, looking at the clock, Lucile realized she had been in the car for almost four hours. She wished that she had noticed earlier that there was some little body under the blanket in the back seat of the car, but she also knew that even if it the little creature was hungry and they had no food, they had to keep going. She told Flora, “Let us keep driving. At least we found company.”

              The giant flower with the Smilicus Grassicus’s face then turned on the vehicle’s air conditioning and continued driving. Lucile reached into the back seat and picked up the little creature inside its blanket and put it on her lap. Looking into its little eyes, she wondered how nature could ever leave such a lovely being alone. She thought about how lucky Dog must have been to create all the creatures and to know their names and attributes. It was a truly splendid experience to be able to hold such a timid and adorable little being. After being kidnapped and the terrible night she had in the shed the evening before, she could think of nothing she wanted more than to pet the little creature on its fuzzy head and listen to it try to tell stories through its sleepy consciousness.

              “You know I am very fast. The fastest” the animal said, followed by a purr and then trying to hide its face under the blanket.

              “I’m sure you are. You seem like you could run faster than this vehicle,” responded Lucile.

              “Faster than anything.”

              As the three of them were sitting and watching the road, the little animal fell asleep and Lucile began to doze off. She wondered where Flora was taking them. She wanted to ask questions about if Flora knew where her friends were, if it had found any Dogs, or how it had stayed hidden for so long. On the other hand, Lucile did not want to, agitate anyone because she was so grateful to have been freed. She also wondered about the daisy that had saved her and if it were hidden somewhere in the vehicle as well. Beginning to dream, Lucile tried to keep her head upright in order to make it not too obvious that she was falling asleep. She wanted the Smilicus Grassicus to think that she was at least helping by looking out the window.

              Then, suddenly, the vehicle came to an abrupt halt. Looking over at Flora, who was trying to press the gas and turn the wheel, Lucile wondered if something had gone wrong with the mechanics.

              “What is going on?” the little animal asked.

              “I do not know,” said Lucile.

              “I think we are floating,” said Flora.

              “What?” asked Lucile.

              “Look out the window.”

              Peering out her window, she saw that the vehicle was a foot or two off the ground. The wheels were spinning but there was no traction from the dirt or grass to propel the vehicle forward. Everyone stayed very quiet while Flora anxiously checked all the different gears to see what was wrong. Lucile started looking around outside, checking if some external factor was affecting the vehicle’s power. Looking behind her, however, she saw why Flora was so nervous.

From the back-window Lucile saw a group of Sonic Phi running towards them. She hugged the little animal, who was now napping, and started crying. Flora put one of its leaves over her back and hung its flower head low, wilting. Lucile could feel the optimistic vibrancy of their situation suddenly start fading away.

In less than a minute, the Sonic Phi caught up to the stalled vehicle. From the mirror Lucile saw four Sonic Phi standing behind the vehicle, meeting her eyes. When the Sonic Phi saw her staring back at them through the mirror, they waved, as though delighted that their prey saw them coming nearer. Flora tried to roll up its window, in order to barricade the passengers inside the car from the oncoming threat. The Sonic Phi, however, were too fast and as Flora’s driver side window was closing, one quickly put its axe into the window, lodging it open. Then, they forced the window all the way down and looking only at Flora, asked, “Who is your passenger?”

              Flora tried to reach her leaf out the door to push away the Sonic Phi but it grabbed the leaf and tore it off. Holding one of Flora’s appendages in its hand, the Sonic Phi responded, “You can drive with one leaf. I am sure,” and then dropped the Smilicus Grassicus’ pseudo arm to the ground. That Sonic Phi then gave Lucile a blank stare, as though showing it had no empathy or emotions and would gladly tear each of them apart itself.

Another Sonic Phi came around to the passenger side where Lucile was sitting and petting the little animal she had found earlier. Lucile looked over at the Sonic Phi through the glass window with an empty look in her eyes. Then, very quickly, the Sonic Phi tore off the door of the vehicle, causing the creature to fall out of Lucile’s lap and onto the ground. Lucile started screaming but the Sonic Phi grabbed her by the shoulder, pulled her out of the vehicle, and put another bag over her head as they had done previously. Lucile refused to stop screaming, so the Sonic Phi removed the bag, shoved it partially in her mouth, and then said, very quietly, “You make too much noise. I also heard you talk too much.” Then, another Sonic Phi walked over and, pulling a bag from his pocket, placed it over her head even though they had already gagged her mouth from speaking. She could barely breath and her tears made her feel as though she was suffocating.

              They forced her to walk for a few minutes and then got her to step into some sort of apparatus. She was sitting upright and then she heard a door close. It was very quiet, except for the sound of her muffled whimpers. After a few minutes, she forced herself to stop crying so that she could breathe better, and then immediately fell asleep. The situation was too intense for her body to stay awake. She was in a warm space and she was not sure if she was moving or they had just put her in a temporary shed. Seated with some sort of hard surface next to her, she fell asleep with her head rested to its side. She woke up on her own, only to find that her mouth was still gagged and the bag was still over her head. It made her dizzy to keep her eyes open so she closed them and waited. Finally, they took the bag off her head and she found that she was sitting alone, in one of the Sonic Phi’s orbs, which had just been opened by one of the Sonic Phi. Getting pulled out of the orb, she was able to see where she had landed. Unfortunately, she was back at the pool party, which she noticed because of the shape of the giant building peering out from over the trees and because she could hear the noise coming from beyond the shrubbery.

              Once the Sonic Phi opened the orb in which she was transported, they pulled the bag out of her mouth and then bound her wrists together. She did not scream, too tired and weak to fight. They walked her through the shrubbery and back into the pool party where only a few Sonic Phi were waiting. They had cleaned up from the day before and the space was almost empty, except for a few ropes made out of leaves. The Sonic Phi made Lucile sit down and they proceeded to tie her feet together with the freshly made rope and then made her bend over to tie her hands to her ankles. Lucile started sobbing, not knowing what they were going to do to her. All she had done was try to escape and now she was scared that they were going to tear her apart like they had torn the arm right off the Smilicus Grassicus’ body.

              Then, one of the Sonic Phi picked her up. She could not see which one it was but she started screaming and convulsing to tear the rope free. As she was squealing, the Sonic Phi threw her into the pool and suddenly the only sound that could be heard was the background of a party and some mute bellows from the pool. Only a few seconds later, Lucile’s cries were gone and so was she. The Sonic Phi then went inside their building and locked the door behind them.

Exploring The Bird Place

              Jean-Paul and Henry woke up from their nap. They were feeling messier and filthier than they were used to because their knapsacks had not been washed for a week. Every morning they would wake up and realize that Lucile was gone and they were still trapped outside their village. Then, picking up their items and eating a few pieces of Fattestbattest jerky – the species had turned out to be relatively easy to hunt – they would try to build a fire. Henry and Jean-Paul assumed that wherever it was in the jungle that they were hidden, it was well-hidden enough to keep the Sonic Phi from encroaching. That particular day, after picking up all their things and putting the garbage back into their backpacks, Jean-Paul and Henry felt like talking about Dog and how they wished it would just come back so the Sonic Phi would leave. They also brainstormed ideas about where the best place to escape would be if Lucile did not return.

Over and over again they would go back to the idea of traveling to the beach. If they were the only survivors, they could at least live on the beach, which was previously against the environment restrictions of Canransoficus. Henry and Jean-Paul had seen pictures of the ocean sector of the planet and always talked about how amazing the sea creatures were. They remembered learning about the depths of the ocean, submarines, and the mysterious coastal life that no adventurers had ever survived to explore. When they thought about how to travel, however, they could not solve how to remove the possibility of wandering around in circles. They had no tools to measure where they were going and they also risked getting lost in a less hospitable terrain. The jungle was also, as they remembered, one of the larger sectors of the planet, so there were many smaller environments within it. This made the possibility of escaping to the ocean through the jungle almost impossible.

              For example, they recently almost got lost in one of the jungle’s strange ecosystems after finding an ecosystem within the jungle that had flighted creatures. Getting lost was horrible but being separated from their belongings was even more stressful. Unfortunately, that day there was a failure in their intuition and a misjudgment of how well they knew the jungle’s features. Trekking around to better understand where they were hiding, Henry said that he, “Felt like there was an available source of wood to be used for fire very close to where they were they were located.” He said that there was a spot where all the trees were extremely old and rotting. Jean-Paul asked if Henry actually knew how to get there or if he just often wandered there. Henry assured Jean-Paul that he actually knew where they were going and that morning Jean-Paul agreed to leave all their stuff behind and follow Henry. If they left all their stuff behind they would be able to carry a lot of stuff back with their empty arms.

After walking around – and ultimately getting lost because Henry was less sure of the path than he had originally let on – the pair accidentally wandered into a place with many different types of birds. It was nothing like the rotting grove of trees for which Henry was initially looking. There were birds of almost every size imaginable but mostly thousands of small birds flying back and forth, up and down branches, and jumping from the leaves to the ground to find sticks, worms, and seeds. The few larger birds were sitting on higher branches and singing lovely songs to which it looked like the other birds performed dances. There were even some giant birds that could barely be made out from the background because they were nestled within the trunks of the trees, but their longs beaks poked out suggesting the size of a big body.

At first, Henry was frustrated that he went the wrong way and that Jean-Paul had to follow him into the forest without their belongings. Jean-Paul, however, could see that Henry was not trying to win some sort of passive-aggressive competition or got lost on purpose, so he was the first to make an encouraging remark about their new situation.

“I know that the small birds usually are only out in the morning. Do you think that there is a possibility that those larger birds come out of their nests in the late afternoon? I am optimistic that if we caught one we would no longer have to rely of Fattest-battest meat to subsist.” Said Jean-Paul, trying to make Henry feel better and also seeing the value in this new food supply. The fattestbattest, while easy to catch, was not particularly delicious and he had been hoping for a new source of meat for the past week.

Henry was about to call the whole hike a failure and turn back, but hearing Jean-Paul’s optimism he felt like they should at least make the most of this incredible sighting. That morning, they spent time observing the hundreds of birds. This little avian ecosystem was amazing because almost all the birds were unique. For example, some had very fast beating wings, others had extremely long beaks, and others still had feathers with different colored streaks. Overall, however, they were lazy birds, sitting around and jumping from branch to branch canoodling and cooing at each other. Eventually, the boys got adventurous and trying to catch the birds with their hands. When Henry tried to grab one, however, it quickly flew into the tree for safety. Then, when Henry tried to put his hand inside the tree to see if the hold was not too big to grab the bird against the side of the bark, a sap burned his hand. Screaming, he shouted, “This sap is poisonous! It burned my hand.” After this incident, Henry decided that because the small ones were too difficult to catch and it seemed possible that there would be large birds later in the day, that he wait before trying again. Maybe in a few days they would go back.

              Jean-Paul agreed that they might eventually try to come to this little avain paradise another day, except with hunting equipment. A part of him wanted to join in Henry’s defeat and go back to their belongings, but another part of him wondered if they would even be able to find this place ever again. And, if they would not be able to, then he would much rather like to spend some time looking around. One group of birds were like owls but with faces that looked like bunnies. There were also owls with very small heads that could turn very quickly with eyes that shined in the sun.

After making two rounds through what they now referred to as the “Bird Place” they decided to try to find their way back to their camp. Also, although it was easy to find the Bird Place earlier in the day, because they had not ended up where they were supposed to be both Jean-Paul and Henry felt compelled to leave before the sun started to set. After discussing the best way to get back, Jean-Paul and Henry tried to mark the area around the Bird Place as best as they could so that they might be able to find it if they tried to go back.

As they walked through the forest, each of them thought about their own reasons for why it was important to fight away the Sonic Phi and find Dog. Henry, although stern on the outside, was secretly one of the most sentimental of children and so he thought about how he would never be happy again if Dog was gone. Each person in Canransoficus had a Dog that lived in their cottage and protected them. All Dogs were slightly different, but they all shared the same history and were all loyal and loving. Dogs were known to love to cook and clean, so they were excellent hosts in the cottage. Henry’s Dog always cleaned the cottage thoroughly, so Henry was very used to orderly spaces. Sometimes he thought of blaming Dog for having a tantrum if there was a hole in his socks or an out of place mark on his paper, but overall he enjoyed Dog’s attention to detail. In the messy and bewildered state Henry was in, he ached to see Dog and get back to the happy life they lived in Canransoficus. Thoughts that Dog was dead or might not ever be seen again made him keep trying to make it through jungle regardless of how agitated he was getting.

Jean-Paul, on the other hand, was way beyond worrying about Dog. Jean-Paul was much more concerned about his own life and hoping that he would not die anytime soon. He was such a young man! Even if he had to live in the jungle for the next ten years, he did not want to be kidnapped and possibly murdered or be thrown into slave labor by the Sonic Phi. Every interaction had been horrible, and Jean-Paul worried that the Sonic Phi were worse invaders than even a plague or meteors. Walking around the Bird Place, however, made Jean-Paul slightly less worried about the possible fates he might encounter. The Bird Place reminded him of Canransoficus. Although it was buried in the jungle, and not near any civilization, the Bird Place seemed a bit like Wonderland and of its own ecosystemical kind. The species were totally different, the way the light hit the moisture on the plants was making him dizzy and tired, and the carnivorous plants were so common that he sometimes felt like he was walking through mud, even though the ground was relatively dress and the grass short.

Wonderland was a place totally different from Canransoficus so it made the small community seem much bigger. Jean-Paul, Henry, and Lucile would pass many hours at Wonderland, thinking about what they would do in the future or review their lessons for some secret error. Jean-Paul knew, however, that Dog would never allow them to enter Wonderland because of its dangerous creatures. Dog did not like when anyone’s life was not stuck to some pre-imposed plan. In any case, Jean-Paul felt that the perfect analogy would be the Bird Place to the jungle was just like Wonderland to Canransoficus. Jean-Paul thought about what kind of skills he would learn if he and Henry were stuck in this Bird Place for a year. He figured within a year, if they did not get captured, eventually one of the Dogs or some other citizen of Canransoficus would find them… as long as they were not the only survivors. Trying to see the upside of leaving the Bird Place and making a more concerted effort to find Lucile, Jean-Paul tried to shake off his headache and walk faster.

Jean-Paul and Henry were each deep in thought and almost did not notice the other one’s presence. It the first time they had felt totally alone in the jungle. Then, they looked at one another and in unison sat down. Even though there were antsy about leaving the Bird Place they wanted to take a break, make some effort to problem-solve, and then retrace their steps to the place where they got lost. Ultimately, they moved some logs and rocks in obvious places and then, after eating a little bit of jerky and having some good conversation, headed back the way they came.  

              Almost immediately after leaving, however, things started going wrong. First, after walking for about an hour, they ended up back at the Bird Place in a spot where they had laid some large leaves under a rock to mark the location. Getting more agitated but trying to remain as positive as possible, Henry decided that they should take a quick break to try and add some leaves or foliage to the perimeter. Jean-Paul sensed that Henry was getting unusually upset so he stayed quiet and hoped that after a few minutes they would be able to go back. He even helped Henry grab some leaves from the base of a big tree to create a more noticeable entrance to the Bird Place. Not getting too comfortable, they ate more Fattestbattest, swept the area, and headed out into the jungle.

              The jungle was as complicated as ever, especially because they were heading back from a location that they did not intentionally try to find. Wandering around, Jean-Paul worried that Henry was getting sick from anxiety. Although he did not like to show it, it was clear that Henry was very fond of Lucile and was very close to her. The two did spend a lot of time together and the separation from one of his closest friends coupled with being very far from home was getting him unpleasantly agitated. Jean-Paul could see that Henry sometimes wanted to talk about something, probably to make a joke or comment about Lucile, but then would just shiver or rub his forehead. Being able to see Henry in a different light – that he was vulnerable too – made Jean-Paul try much harder to find there way home. Usually, Jean-Paul would just trail behind Henry’s authoritarian personality and get let into all sorts of fun and adventure. To be fair, Lucile was often there as well, but there were still times that Jean-Paul and Henry spent time outside alone. In this instance, however, Jean-Paul realized that relying on Henry just because he was tall, masculine, and had an air of nostalgic knowledge about the universe was a strange burden that Henry carried. Then, even though there was no Lucile to watch him lead, Jean-Paul decided to try his hardest to get them back to their camp so they would not have to spend the night cold and outside without any equipment.

              Surprisingly, after Jean-Paul started leading their hike they were back at their camp within less than an hour. Seeing their satchel in the distance, Jean-Paul turned around to make sure that Henry was still following him, and upon gazing into Henry’s darkened eyes was filled with an immediate sense of excitement that he was able to help reduce their immediate misfortune. Then, when Henry saw that Jean-Paul had found their camp, he let out a big sigh of relief and slept soundly that night.

              The next day, instead of re-trying Henry’s old idea, they decided to go to the bird place again, but this time with their satchels. Finding that Bird Place was very easy, especially with all the rocks, leaves, and branches that they had left the day before. When they got to the Bird Place, the first thing they did was try to tie their equipment to some big fauna so that the wind would not brush away their knapsacks as they were exploring. Jean-Paul had made a few very strong ropes by weaving young branches into one another and then bending the twigs to make them flexible enough to tie. The ropes had been useful enough to keep their knapsacks from blowing away at their last camp, so Jean-Paul was happy that at least one of his attempts at creating a tool had been successful. In fact, Jean-Paul was feeling as though he was finally figuring out how to do things right. Using one of these ropes, Jean-Paul looked around for some shrubs to tie the rope around its base and attach his knapsack. Seeing a very big shrub with bright yellow leaves, he tried to attach the rope to its bottom branches only to find that these types of shrubs would immediately wilt if any material touched them. The physical reaction between his body and the plant was odd and like nothing he had experienced before.

It was both amazing, because of the way that the leaves of the plant interacted with the life around it, and frustrating, with no other foliage to tie down their tools. Jean-Paul called over Henry to look at the vivacious plant and try to see if Henry could tie the rope properly. Henry, as well, had no luck against the quickness of the shrub but was dually amazed by this incredible plant. Feeling optimistic about making a decision and successfully making it to the new camp, the two of them, not really wanting to start their day, stayed to play with the shrub for a while.

At first, they realized that the rope would be too heavy to be supported by the branches because once they got the rope fastened, the branches would turn very thin, almost as though they were reverse aging back into vines and be too limp to support the weight of the rope. The heavy rope would then become unfastened to the tree and slide off onto the ground. Jean-Paul then tried to touch the plant, to see what caused it to retract as it did. When Jean-Paul reached out to touch on the leaves on a sturdy branch, it quickly cracked, bent, and split into two; too quick to even touch! Then, growing eager to at least feel the texture of the plant, Jean-Paul tried to make his hand motions faster, to see if he could beat the speed of the plants evolutions by waving his arms quickly around the whole shrub itself. The plant was not too quick for this, so Jean-Paul was able to touch the plant and felt its bark was similar to any other. Henry thought it would be interesting if they could put the rope on the plant, get it to reverse evolve, and then touch the plant to see what happened. Was the plants new figure just an illusion or would the texture of the tiny, green twig be just like that of a new branch trying to grow from the trunk of a tree? Jean-Paul wanted to try first. After a few unsuccessful attempts, Jean-Paul could not figure out how to get the plant to reverse age and then use his hand fast enough to touch the strange greenery it would turn into for a few moments, but neither could Henry, so it did not make him too upset. It only really upset Jean-Paul when he could not do something that Henry could do without even trying. It was one of the difficulties of being friends with Henry, that in some things he did not try and did not do very well, but in everything else he was a natural. Especially because Jean-Paul prided himself on his keen sense of adventure and his ability to understand most natural phenomenon, it would be very annoying when Henry would be able to catch a frog, or coo over a little chicken, or climb a very tall tree right after Jean-Paul tried and failed.

What was worse was that in the classes where Jean-Paul and Henry would learn about how to interact with nature, Henry would not do as well as Jean-Paul which, in an existential sense, made Jean-Paul question the point of an education. Even though Jean-Paul knew that Henry was, in their physical world of exploring and adventure, a better friend with nature, in the classroom Jean-Paul would often do much better, and then could only conclude that he supposedly had a better understanding of natural phenomenon.

With the existential reasons for being upset with Henry buried deep into his subconscious opinions about education and authority, Jean-Paul usually just got red in the face and agitated when Henry found solutions to a problem that was supposedly exactly what Jean-Paul was supposed to be great at. In this instance, however, Henry was also unable to figure out how to grab the plant’s limbs after it had turned into a green, spidery vine so the boys went on to find some sticks to use instead. This also signaled to Jean-Paul that their day would be wonderful because he did not have to deal with any extra emotional agitation and that he was growing up into an interesting person.

That afternoon, Jean-Paul and Henry decided that this Bird Place might be a good place to stay for a night or two. They then climbed a few tree and looked out over their camping area to make sure no large game or Sonic Phi were native to this new campsite. They waited for a few hours, ingesting some Exectemium along with a few pieces of Fattestbattest jerky and a couple pieces of the unicorn jerky they still had saved from their original batch of belongings from home. Jean-Paul then blurted out that he missed Lucile and that he would feel broken if they were to find her dead, or not at all.

Henry, although instinctually wanting to change the subject, decided to gossip a bit and share some of his memories with Lucile. They passed the next hours talking about Lucile, about how they wished she were here with her Melancholia Metricus because “it did not seem right to eat unicorn jerky without the spice” and because if she were with them she would have already climbed some tree and be pointing out every possible unusual occurrence and helping everyone feel like they had sometimes funny to say. She was a little too much like a spice sometimes, totally unnoticeable when she was there, but creating an unpleasant blandness when she was not. They noticed that their observations were a bit boring without having Lucile chime in with something outrageous and they mentioned that if they ended up finding her that they were going try to appreciate her conversational contributions with compliments.

There was a part of them that knew if Lucile was there they would probably be off in some pretend story of adventure and that catching the birds would really be some silly task that was meant to expand their minds and add to her fantastical understanding of the world. Without Lucile, however, the task of watching the campground and looking out for large birds felt serious and survivalist; it was hard to enjoy.

That evening, getting down from the trees and feeling safe enough to sleep in the Bird Place overnight, they unpacked their knapsacks, ate again, and tried to go to sleep early. They wanted to wake up early the next morning to start their hunting as quickly as possible, even before dawn. When they tried to sleep, however, the sound from all the birds made it difficult to be tired. There were loud sounds coming from a nearby tree and the rustle of leaves, squeaks, and flapping wings that made sound seem like it was moving around them. Jean-Paul kept opening his eyes because he was sure that the rustling sound he heard was from a group of small birds moving from one tree to the next, over his head. Every time he tried to watch for this sound to come to actualization, however, there would no birds in the sky and, in fact, no movement at all. The echo was just some sort of illusion made by the thousands of birds that must have been hidden within the shrubs and trees. Henry, on the other hand, could not sleep because every time he would move positions, he would feel as though he was crushing some tiny bird. Then, he would get up, look over at his leg or whatever part of his body that he thought squished some living thing, and find that there was nothing there. It was very annoying because he would hear a little repetitive squeak from very close, and when she moved he would feel something crack under his weight and the sound would go away. There was clearly nothing there so he assumed that there was probably some bird near them that just stopped making noise every time he moved and that the proximity of the bird was just an illusion.

The next morning, on very little sleep, Jean-Paul and Henry woke up, took out their weapons, hid their knapsacks by tying them to each other, and started walking around. The bigger birds were higher up in the trees, so they kept their gaze upwards. Some of the trees were very tall, so it was impossible to see into the darkness of the shadow that was created by the height and the foliage. A few times, they saw a big, black bird with almost no beak fly out from one big tree into the distance. Its face was smushed and it the beak was only noticeable when it squawked. There were also some big yellow birds with giant bellies and tiny wings that would fly from one tree to the next. The yellow birds seemed easiest to catch because not only did their flight look anything but aerodynamic, but they also seemed like they did not fly from very far away and that there might be many of them waiting inside the trees.

Jean-Paul asked Henry if he thought that the yellow birds were the species they should focus on catching that day because they looked like they had a lot of meat and were not too fast in the air. Henry said he had come to that conclusion as well and that they should probably stop wandered and set up their hunting gear. Waiting by a tree that recently had two big, yellow birds fly out of it, they crouched down quietly near a medium sized shrub that was about the size of their bodies when they were kneeling over and did a good job of hiding them. After only a few minutes, one of the yellow birds flew out from the tree and Jean-Paul stood up with his laser gun and tried to shoot it down. He almost hit the bird, clipping its wing, and the bird made an awful squawk, scaring the Jean-Paul, and then escaped into the nearby tree. Trying to see if he could locate the injured bird in its new hiding place, Jean-Paul stood up and looked carefully into where the bird had flown. Looking at this other tree, however, he realized its branches were very tangled and that finding the little bird within the tree would be nearly impossible. Not being able to find the yellow bird he had tried to catch, he looked down at Henry, who was still crouched behind the shrub.

“It is okay. I will try to catch the next one,” said Henry.

“Do you remember which tree we were looking at before?” asked Jean-Paul.

“What do you mean? The one that the bird flew out from? It was definitely that one,” Henry replied, pointing at some tree in the distance.

Jean-Paul looked at it and did not recognize it all. In fact, the other tree that Jean-Paul had been staring at looked more like what he recognized as the tree from whose branches they were hunting. In fact, all the trees starting looking exactly the same. Sitting down and feeling somewhat disoriented, Jean-Paul starting looking around for other landmarks that would remind him of the way back to their campground. Attempting not to look sick and scare Henry, Jean-Paul realized that the light had somehow changed and that everything looked a different color. It was not like a shadow had been cast over the terrain, like that of the Sonic Phi flying overhead, it was as though the light had changed directions, moving the shadows and altering the reflection of the color in his eyes. The leaves seemed to be bent in a concave direction, looking like spoons, and the shadows of the trees seemed to conflict with one another. One shadow would show a light coming from the east and another shadow would seem to suggest a light coming from the west. Jean-Paul tried to hold back his anxiety and waited until another bird would appear. He hoped that once Henry caught, or attempted to catch another bird, the setting would go back to its normal form. There they waited, until another big, yellow bird appeared onto the ledge of the one of the branches, looking as though it was about to take flight. It wobbled its belly, as though trying to find its center of gravity, and then jumped into the air, at first falling a few feet and then opening its wings to move forward. Henry then aimed the mini-bomb launcher that he had been holding for Lucile while helping carry her through the forest and tried to hit the bird in midflight. The bomb totally missed the bird, instead flying through the air and exploding on some area of ground in the distance. First the yellow bird squawked, sped up, and landed on a branch, quickly moving into the hidden area near the trunk. Then, about a second later, Henry heard the bomb land on the ground, making a distant exploding sound.

Looking over at Jean-Paul, Henry said, “Do you think that we should continue to try to catch these birds? This is not going very well.”

Jean-Paul, still seeming confused, said, “I think we should go back.”

“What about the place where the mini-bomb fell? Do you think there is a chance that it might have landed in some shrub and injured some other bird?”

“No and I do not think we would be able to find it,” Jean-Paul murmured, realizing that his stomach was getting upset and that he should try to use his words sparingly.

“I think I can follow the trajectory and find it. It is definitely not very far away and I even heard it land. You can follow me,” and then Henry stood up, lending his hand out to Jean-Paul.

Jean-Paul, unsure of what to do, took Henry’s hand, a deep breath, and collected himself. He and Henry put back on their knapsacks and he followed Henry deeper into the Bird Place. Looking up, it seemed as though the birds kept trading places. He would stare into a tree and see some very distinct red and black bird, only to blink and see another very distinct blue and orange bird in the exact same place. Then, a second later, he would look into another tree and see the red and black bird waiting patiently, as if it had been there the whole time. Jean-Paul considered the possibility that these birds changed colors to camouflage themselves from predators. It was difficult to understand how the birds could also change shape and morph into different forms right in front of his eyes and Jean-Paul starting feel even physically sick watching the jungle evolve. Considering the other incredible plants, however, Jean-Paul decided that the best possible way to control his growing anxiety would be not to bother Henry and hope that it was only some amazing characteristic of the jungle.

Henry, on the other hand, seemed to at least be enjoying himself, looking up at the trees in astonishment of their beautiful colors and amazed at the way that the birds seemed to jump as well as fly. Finally, he spotted a shrub that looked like it had been hit by his last attempt with the mini-bomb launcher.

Getting closer, he pushed away some of the remaining, broken twigs only to find a few small birds that had been killed. Henry picked up the tiny birds, examined them, and showed them to Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul took one of the birds and looked at it very closely, trying to see if he could corroborate his theory about the changing colors and shapes of the birds. Looking at the small creature, who was yellow, blue, and had two lighter blue stripes that went down each of its wings, he thought the animal was dead. Henry then lifted some of the feathers to check to be sure that the bird was not moving and as the bird lied there he made a huge grin. Then, looking underneath and finding that there was nothing irregular or sick about the body of the bird, he decided that he had caught dinner. Picking up the bird to measure its approximate weight, Henry was ecstatic that they had caught something other than Fattestbattest and, taking it back to Jean-Paul, went back into the shrub to see if there were other birds that he had caught. There were two birds on the ground along with the two birds that Henry was already holding in his hands. The birds were very light, probably only three ounces each, and likely would not be very tasty to eat, but Jean-Paul was glad that they had caught something rather than nothing.

Henry then took out a big leaf that he had kept from another part of the jungle, and put the four birds inside, folded the leaf, and tucked the contraption into his backpack. He asked Jean-Paul if he could hold one of his socks, because there was not enough space in the bag to accommodate the new addition. Also, Henry took out all of the padding that they had previously used to line their knapsacks so that the birds would be able to fit. While this would make the walk less comfortable, Henry noticed that Jean-Paul did not look well and decided that it was more important to get moving quickly, before it became dark, than to try to find the coziest way to carry his bag.

As the two started walking back, Jean-Paul saw nothing familiar denoting where they were supposed to be going. The trees that he tried to remember as landmarks were in unusual places that did not match his memory, and there were also shrubs and rocks that seemed totally out of place. Henry, although pretty sure that he was following the right path, also felt as though they were taking an alternative route. They walked for a few hours and as the light started getting dark, they noticed that not had the bird population decreased, but it was uncertain whether or not they were even still in the Bird Place. Even Jean-Paul noticed that the sounds of the birds chirping had decreased and that the trees were much shorter than they were before.

“Do you know where we are?” asked Jean-Paul, the first words he had said since leaving the Bird Place.

“I am not sure. It looks like it could be a desert, or maybe some sort of dry section of the jungle. Did you notice how there was almost no mud as we were walking? The ground looks dry and the trees are much smaller. I wonder where we are. I do not think we could have wandered too far from our campsite,” responded Henry.

Jean-Paul, who was still feeling disoriented, decided not to try to figure out where they were or where they were going. He just started looking around for a possible warm spot to sit and make a fire because he needed to take a break. Along with feeling lost, both internally and physically, Jean-Paul was also getting tired and wanted to sit and eat. Henry did not seem like he was ready for a break and still having some sense of pride and competitiveness did not try to check on Jean-Paul to make sure he was following behind. Jean-Paul continued walking but start falling behind while telling himself that they were still in the jungle and that the trees just looked different because of the strange colors displayed by the birds that he had seen earlier.

Trying to reconfigure the trees into shapes that would help him identify them and also trying to convince himself that they were not lost in some new ecosystem, Jean-Paul attempted to look underneath the trees to see if his and Henry’s knapsacks were lying nearby. For being so lost, Jean-Paul was strangely optimistic that his knapsack was close by, even commenting to Henry, “I think my satchel is right around here.”

Turning around, Henry saw that Jean-Paul was significantly far behind him and it seemed that Jean-Paul needed to take a break. Then, not letting Jean-Paul’s suggestion pass by in vain, he looked at some close-by trees to see if there was any chance that they had somehow wandered back in a circle to their equipment. This location looked totally different from their camp-spot of origin but seeing Jean-Paul’s condition he thought it might make Jean-Paul feel better if he listened to one of his ideas.

Underneath one of the small trees, which were only five feet tall and had big, umbrella-like leaf covers, he noticed something glistening. Getting closer, he called for Henry to stop. Jean-Paul got closer to the tree and onto his hand and knees to peer underneath the umbrella of leaves. When he crawled under, and the leaves scooted him inward, as though a hand was beckoning him into safety.

There Henry and Jean-Paul sat, awkwardly, being hugged by a tree. They were usually jovial boys and had a great relationship with the creatures of their village. Even though Lucile was loved by even the rarest plants – and neither of them could doubt why – Henry and Jean-Paul were still kind and responsible about their treatment of the planet and so they enjoyed their time outside. Sitting quietly and wondering about the different ways to get up and leave the clutches of this tree, or if the tree was going to do a trick or let them climb it, they noticed that there was something above them in the tree. It looked like it was some sort of luggage tied with yard. Immediately, they got excited but tried not to pester the branches of the tree, which were now slowly reforming into long lateral posts with leaves growing inwards from the outside. Jean-Paul had better eyes so he tapped Henry on the shoulder to get him to move over an make space for him to stick his head through a few branches and closer to the luggage up above. Jean-Paul was a little concerned that one of the morphing branches would cut his head off, but the luggage looked large and like something from his old village.

The Little Tree That Could

              Jean-Paul, turning to Henry to see if he would react to his head peering through the moving branches, saw that Jean-Paul did not notice any danger so he asked, “Should I climb to see if I can grab that bag?”

              “Do you think you will be able to make it through the changing branches? What if you get high up and one of the branches you are standing on for support falls from under you?” replied Henry.

              “It looks like the branches change very slowly.” Said Jean-Paul, feeling somewhat irreverent about climbing the strange plant. “I bet I would be able to find another to step on once I fell something from under me start slipping away. Plus, I am just planning on pushing the bag off the tree, not carry it down.” While Jean-Paul was not sure if it was a good use of time to climb the tree and try to grab something that might just be an illusion, risking also falling from the tree and injuring himself, he decided that there was not much holding him back and that the story would be an incredible tale to tell Lucile when they found her.

              “Can I step on your shoulder?” asked Jean-Paul to Henry.

              “Sure. I will be waiting down here and paying attention to your feet. I will let you know if it looks like you are going to slip.”

              Jean-Paul then stepped on a higher branch, used his hands to pull him upwards, and then stepped on Henry’s shoulder. Instinctively, Henry knew to stand up using his knees and got Jean-Paul to a tree branch that was near a much higher point of the trunk. From there, Jean-Paul continued to climb, noticing that the luggage was actually much closer than it appeared and the morphing branches were not moving fast enough to impeded his movements. When he got up to the luggage, he saw that there was a small rope that had fastened it to a branch as well as the trunk of the tree. Then, he shouted to Henry, “Make sure that the branches that I am standing on do not break!”

              Reaching up, he tried to see if he could untie the rope using his current position. Unfortunately, he was not tall enough and had to move to a higher position. Not seeing any easy branches to reach, he tried grabbing onto one of the branches slightly above his head and pulling himself using his arm strength. Then, however, the branch which he was holding onto began to spin and pulling his hands under and his wrists forward he could no longer support the weight of his body and he fell, landing in a seated position on a log a few feet below him. This was fine, but then he lost his balance and hit his head against the branch in front of him. While the pain was immediately obvious, his reflexes allowed him to grab the branch that had punched him in the face and use it for stability.

              Sitting on the logs coming out of the tree was a different feeling than standing on them because one could feel the slow evolution that allowed them to change forms. From what he could feel from his thighs, the texture of the bark changed along with the length of the branches creating a corkscrew motion to the plant. Trying to be fast in getting up, he used the branch that was in front of him to allow him to stand up straight on the branch he had landed and then, brushing off the dirt from his pants, he noticed that he had a cut on the side of his leg that had ripped his pants and caused him to bleed. He was amazed that he did not feel the cut when he fell but seeing that there was a bit of blood, he knew that he really needed to grab the luggage in order to have any chance at surviving. There would be too many possible threats and when he looked out from his high point on the tree, he saw that the likelihood of him and Henry finding the location that they had left their original belongings would be unreasonable, at least for a few days or weeks. They were certainly lost in the jungle and this was the only civilized item that they had found since losing Lucile weeks ago.

              Trying to close the rip in his jeans by using his hands to cover one flap over the other, he saw that this anxious tick was not useful and that he either had to start climbing or try to come down. Feeling the grip of his feet starting to slip as the branch below him shifted, he climbed back to the branch from which he had tried to pull himself up and, with his hands in a different holding position, grabbed either side of the branch and walked his feet up the trunk of the tree until he was dangling on all fours from the limb of the tree. This tree branch was particularly shaky and was continually making a corkscrew shape with its form. Finally, Jean-Paul was able to pull his body over on-top of the branch and hugging the trunk of the tree, stood up and grabbed a branch over his head.

              The branch below him was turning and he had to make small steps just to keep standing up. Getting a feel for the speed of the changes in the branch, he found some stability and climbed to one higher of a branch where he was facing the luggage. The branch that he was currently standing on was much less loose so he began quickly untying the rope and trying to shift the luggage off its supporting branch. He wondered how the luggage had stayed on tightly as the trunk and tree limbs changed or if the tree had tied the rope onto the luggage to keep it in place or the possibility of the luggage falling down and hitting Henry on the head. “Watch out below!” shouted Jean-Paul, as he realized he had finished untying the first knot.

              Henry, who had been watching Jean-Paul the whole time, was already out of the way of the luggage and shouted back, “I am fine. Just get the luggage loose and get down from up there!” Henry did not want Jean-Paul to fall out of the tree just for this strange luggage, although he was excited to look inside and see what bounty was inside. If there was food or weapons or even some clue from their home he would feel much less concerned about being lost.

              As Jean-Paul untied the second rope, which was attached to the trunk of the tree, he got startled as the tree’s trunk began to expand, creating less room for him to untie the knot. Eventually, he was picking at the double tied knot with almost no room to pull any other string through. Losing his focus and getting extremely frustrated, he screamed and started pulling on the knot weakly. It seemed like there was no way of getting the luggage down from the tree. He screamed again and tried to push the luggage down from the tree, but it just shook and held its place. Looking down at Henry, whose energy had increased and seemed somewhat enthusiastic about the possibility of finding something, he wanted to say something optimistic, like “close to getting this unfastened” or “just another five minutes and I will be down” but with the tree’s trunk enlarged it was not possible to untie the knot. He fidgeted with the rope a bit longer and just tried pushing the luggage. It would not move.

              Looking over the expanse of the jungle, he put his elbows on the branch supporting the luggage and peered over the top of the other trees. The jungle was dense and, unfortunately, not very beautiful, just very green. There were no houses, no parks, no lovely pastures with creatures grazing, there was just a sea of trees. The sky was still rainbow colored, so thoughts of being transported to some other planet were not possible, but the blandness of his new environment was saddening. Being lost in this jungle, away from Dog and the other villagers, separated from his favorite comrade Lucile, and seeing that this luggage situation was not going to work out, he thought about whether or not jumping from the tree and getting a broken leg would improve or unimprove his situation. As he exhaled and tried to take a breath in, he realized that he was being silly and that a broken leg and no bounty would obviously not benefit the outcome of his current life scenario.

              Breaking Jean-Paul’s concentration, Henry shouted, “Are you making progress? Is the luggage anywhere near coming down.”

              Just as he was about to say no and stare out into the space like the dramatic, melancholy guy that Henry, and everyone else, always thought he was, Jean-Paul re-eximined the knot that he was trying to get undone. Surprisingly, the trunk had gotten smaller and it looked like someone had carved something into the tree. Speedily trying to undo the knot before the trunk got bigger again, he looked at the carving in the tree. It said, “Lucile” and it looked like there was something below it that had already disappeared along with the evolution of the bark. Not being the type of person to talk to trees, but in a mood that was much beyond the scope of being rational, Jean-Paul whispered, “Do you know Lucile? Where is she?”

              He felt something brush up against his back and checking behind him there were some tiny leaves stitching up his pants. The bark of the tree then melted away to show the greenish white inside of the plant and within this space it wrote, “Lucile is your friend. Lucile is my friend.” Jean-Paul continued to try to untie the knot and read the changing carvings as the same time.

              The carving then was pushed away like time moving backwards and new writing showed in its place. “Find the flower. The flower will take you to our friend. Follow the flower to friend.” And then, just as Jean-Paul untied the luggage fully and heard it break a few branches on its way to the ground, finally landing far away from Henry to make both boys satisfied about their safety, the tree began to shake and Jean-Paul again screamed.

              As the tree shook, pieces of bark started coming loose and pulled into folds near close branches, exposing an almost whitish creature with black writing all over it reading, “Follow the flower to friend. Follow the flower to friend.” As Jean-Paul escaped as fast as he could down the tree fearing that the tree was about to suddenly set fire to itself, he say that Henry had already pulled the luggage away from the tree and was staring back at it, amazed. Once he got down, he ran to Henry and looked at the tree in both fear and incredulity. It had turned an incredible shade of white, with some green and blue elements to its shading. Even the leaves were an icy sort of white. The black writing all over the tree looked like it had been written by a person, using black ink, who had been possessed by some demon. No other tree in the whole area looked anything like the tree and Henry, extremely appalled, asked Jean-Paul if he knew what it mean.

              “The tree said it knew Lucile and that it considered her a friend. I bet that these trees know of Lucile because she is always escaping to Wonderland to play with all the little plants and creatures. It said that Lucile was a friend and that there would be a flower that showed us where she was hidden. I guess if we follow the flower we will find our friend.” Jean-Paul replied.

              “Did the tree talk?” asked Henry.

              “No. At first, when I thought I was not going to be able to get the luggage unfastened I looked away for a minute and when I was staring back at the trunk of the tree there was writing. Once I got the luggage out of the branches of the tree it started changing into this white amazing being that we see here now.” Laughing, Jean-Paul continued, “I have never seen a tree like that before in my whole life. Do you think it is going to change back?”

              “I hope not! I just wish that it had written something about us!” Henry said, as he tapped the luggage with his foot.

              “I cannot believe I got this down from those branches.”

              Henry added, “I thought you were going to fall. Are you going to open it?”

              “I guess I should.”

              Then, for a few moments, Henry and Jean-Paul stared at the luggage, worried that something horrible might come out of it. Henry thought that there was no way it could be a Sonic Phi because it could never fit inside the luggage’s apparatus. The Sonic Phis’ body were too large and their exoskeletons’ were too unmalleable to squish down to the 3’ x 3’ x 2’ box. Jean-Paul was somewhat concerned that there might be a larger prey, or some creature that protected the trees, within the luggage. Or, rather, that there was some trap inside the luggage that would accidentally grab them and pull them into another climate like the quicksand had done to Lucile. Ever since Lucile had been pulled into that strange underground tunnel and then fished out by Henry, she was almost too traumatized to move onward. Jean-Paul hoped that there was no way he would accidentally get pulled down some hole into a survival scenario with the Sonic Phi.

              Getting closer to the luggage, Jean-Paul kicked it with his foot to see if he could hear what was inside. Only hearing that the inside of the box was densely filled, he decided to unhinge the laches and see what items were being held inside. It was strange to find luggage reminiscent of his village in the middle of the jungle, but he was happy to see some reminder of his home and even his head felt better from his early dizzy spell. Looking at the luggage, he decided that even if there was nothing valuable inside, he would still keep the shell as a note that something civilized was out in the jungle and he was not alone.

              Jean-Paul finally got the courage to tilt the luggage upwards and use his hands to unbuckle it. The metal notches felt cold against his hands, a strange sensation because of the warm and wet climate. Feeling the leather, it was also strangely dry, like somehow it had not been touched by the moisture in the air or anyone’s oily hands. There looked as though there was some wear and tear but from where and from what liquid’s tear was unascertainable. Jean-Paul imagined some sort of aspartame chemical coating its outside to keep it safe from even the movements of the moving tree from which he had freed it. Fiddling with the metal buckled and noting that they were unlocked, he snapped off one, and then the other. Turning the luggage on its side, he then unhinged the lateral sides that had small hooks keeping a faux-grasp of the two leather lips from becoming disjointed and, hearing the pop of the leathers becoming separated he opened the luggage.

              At first it looked like there was a body being hidden within some black blanket. The blanket was lumpy but looked like it was covering the outside of something or wrapping something up. Whatever it was covering looked like it had corners and parts that, when looking more carefully, was obviously not a body but rather some equipment. Although, if one were to be dramatic, one could say that maybe a few skinny skeletons had been shoved together and then wrapped in a black blanket. In any case, Jean-Paul took a deep breath and tried to smell what was inside the blanket, if it might be rotten food or herbs. He got a range of scents and, taking in another deep breath audible enough to be heard by Henry, Jean-Paul announced, “I think I am glad I got this thing down from up there. Does it not smell kind of like our old village?”

              Henry, still trying to stay serious about the whole matter and not get too excited, responded, “Do you think anything is broken? When we take off the blanket do you think we should try to carefully lift it out first or should we just pull it?”

              Jean-Paul replied, “I do not know. I think we should try to tilt the luggage over to pour the items out. I already turned it on its side when I was unhooking all the latches so I do not think it would break anything that was not broken. That way, if anything is still attached to the blanket then we can see where the broken piece comes from.”

              “Sounds good,” and Henry stood back, waiting for Jean-Paul to empty the luggage. There was a part of Henry that suddenly hoped that there would be nothing inside the luggage. Usually Henry was the one who would solve their adventurous conundrums and to see Jean-Paul go from totally sick to dizzying nervous to looking at some bounty that he had found with own intuition and no help from Henry at all made Henry feel like the only possible outcome to the situation would be some decrepit body stuffed within the blanket or just some old decomposing sticks covered in dust and dirt. Very rarely was Jean-Paul able to solve some survival of the fittest issue on his own and, in fact, it was what made him an affable companion. Many of the other boys in schools tried to compete with Henry and because Henry would almost always win a physical competition or, with help from Lucile, get the top score on every group project, they would say that Henry was a bully or that he cheated by being friends with Lucile. Jean-Paul, on the other hand, was not particularly worried about being the best hunter or being very fast and because he appreciated Lucile’s intellectual prowess for what it was – as overwhelming as her contributions could be – he would always side with Henry on most matters. Also, he sided with Henry because Henry was not awkward with the girls in school and was an easy hero to be associated with in times of social activities. Although he was no un-liked by anyone in school, he rarely got chosen to pair up with any of the prettiest girls who always fawned over Henry disregard of their feelings and boorish physical treatment of them when frustrated. Henry would often bluntly say that he wanted a girl to go away and if she did not, he would take her wrist and lead her a few feet away and go back to sitting where he originally requested to be left alone. The girls would almost always take Henry’s aggressive behavior as a compliment and even after gossiping viciously with their friends – and Jean-Paul, who was always happy to put in a distance crude comment about Henry when Henry was not around – these girls would only moments later attempt to make conversation with Henry and try to repair the social damage of whatever unfortunate tick made Henry uncomfortable enough to get the girl away from him. Jean-Paul could never figure out if Henry knew that he was usually making mean comments about Henry’s behavior but he never said anything about it and neither did Henry. At the same time, Henry did not seem to notice that Lucile loved him and never brought up her flirtatious behavior so it made Jean-Paul feel comfortable talking freely with girls who had just had a chance encounter with a wild animal, aka: Henry when upset. Jean-Paul was sometimes able to capitalize on this tension and when a girl wanted to talk about Henry, he would be able to get in some light smooches in the off chance that her ego was so bruised that she needed to be consoled physically by someone whose social standing was close enough to Henry’s that it made her feel as though she was worth being paid attention. Henry, with an unwavering access to girls’ attention and access to the sort of authoritarian grace often only accorded to stellar historical figures from textbooks, was usually seated in the middle of the class where everyone could watch him watch the teacher explain things. Also, his seating made it strategic for teachers to use physics and trigonometry to calculate where to stand when the teacher needed the full attention of the class based on a prior social event or an upcoming festival. Lucile always complained about this to Jean-Paul and Henry, saying that it was conspiracy that she was always seated in the front where she was not allowed to watch anyone else do anything. It was so the teacher could always check-in for an answer when they had not done the class preparation, or so she always ranted. In a sense, a lot of students watched Lucile as much as Henry, although it was more likely to be because she talked a lot in class and always had the right answer to every question rather than that the students just liked looking at her. Henry did not like it when Lucile brought up the seating plans because it made him feel as though the teachers just used him for his great hair and daunting ability to ignore mean advances. Still, with Lucile by his side since a child, there was something about being a dominant player in a somewhat weak pond that gave him solace even when he did not feel like he belonged. Lucile, while probably one of the most talented people in school, enjoyed being second string and did not mind that the other students would not choose to spend time with her if given the option.

              In this situation, however, Henry strangely felt like the passive friend in a pair. Henry could never figure out why everyone liked him so much, especially in comparison with Lucile who was generally associated with being annoying or too energetic or craving attention. It seemed that people should be liked for their merits and with girls who gossiped and then kissed other boys and then ran around spouting false information from their classes and then getting agitated when getting low grades for practicing constant stupidity he could not see the point of standing too close to enforcing the common appreciation of such types of people. While he preferred spending time with Lucile and enjoying the spoils of her intellectual labor on his grades, her insistence on being free from the restraint of other people’s needs made him wonder if he would be happier if he did worse in his subjects and got less attention. Lucile’s total abandon of emotional attachment to others opinions of her made her almost more strong than he and sometimes Henry thought that maybe decreasing his skills and obvious physical abilities would make him weaker and therefore less likely to be picked on by the other students. Watching Jean-Paul fiddle with the luggage made Henry feel as though he was sitting in the side row of a class, not paying attention to the teacher, and watching some incredible student solve a puzzle along with the gaze of other students not paying attention to the teacher. His gaze only blending with that of the students and pointing towards some other terrific intellectual feat made Henry feel as though he was small, a feeling that he almost enjoyed.

              The stress of being away from civilization and the attention of everyone at school was eating away at Henry’s ego. At first, he was angry and he agreed that maybe it was his windingly understanding of himself as separate from a civilization of identical life forms that made him dismiss Lucile’s needs enough that she ran away. Now, however, Henry starting to like the idea of not being the strongest and even getting to watch someone who did not consider superior accomplish a task that was neither necessary or expected. Instead of feeling the need to compete, to try to open the luggage and tell Jean-Paul the best way to go about uncovering whatever was inside, Henry just waited and inwardly thought about how hilarious it would be if there was nothing inside. He felt a sense of detachment from Jean-Paul ability to solve the problem and liked that there was probably nothing he could do himself to improve their chances of survival. Whatever was in the luggage was pre-determined and Jean-Paul would be satisfied with himself because of his courage and challenging climbing success regardless of whether it was worth pursing this challenge.

              Finally able to empty out the luggage, but the blanket still caught around the bounty, Jean-Paul kneeled over and patted the items to see if they were sharp or dull, hard or soft. Unfortunately, when feeling through the blanket he was unable to make out what the objects were to instead of being careful and reaching his hand underneath the blanket to slowly pull things out he pulled the blanket off the top of the items and much to his surprise he found that all his and Henry’s belongings that they had left behind were underneath. Jean-Paul felt like a magician pulling off the blanket and revealing a bounty of things he already had. At first he could not believe what he had found so he began going through the objects one by one and touching them to make sure they were real. His unicorn jerky, some Melancholia Metriculus, the rocket launcher Henry had been carrying for Lucile before she got kidnapped, their blankets, and their bundled-up pillows were all there. Even the hat that Jean-Paul thought he had lost was in the pile of items.

              Henry then took his turn going through the bounty. All his stuff was there, too.

              “I think the jungle is changing,” said Henry. “I think there is some element of Canransoficus’ environment that we never knew about. That tree, you know the one that you climbed to pull down the luggage, did it not use its branch to pull us in? Do you think there is a system of branches that morphs into cables to transport items around?”

              “All I know is that I just looked up and saw the luggage. It was the first civilized thing I had seen since leaving our village,” and Jean-Paul looked down, not wanting to meet Henry’s gaze. “The tree was evolving, certainly, but I do not know if the whole jungle is like that. Before we were pulled in by the tree – I do actually remember that, too – I was dizzy. It looked like the trees were changing forms and twisting into different figures. I originally thought it was just my mind paying tricks on me, but I think we might be in the oasis of the jungle.”

              “Did you think we had lost our stuff forever?” asked Henry.

              “I thought we had lost Lucile, all of our stuff, and we were on our way to losing ourselves,” responded Jean-Paul.

              Henry went up to Jean-Paul and gave him a hug. He was not one to give affection easily or often and sometimes even complained that others were bothering him when they put an arm around his shoulders or scratched his arm flirtatiously, but in this situation Henry held Jean-Paul for a long time. Jean-Paul kept his arms by his sides, unsure how to respond, but then started crying. The current series of events was almost too much to handle and now that he knew he was going to survive, Jean-Paul wept out of confusion. Yes, the boys had found their belongings but they were in the jungle all alone, with still no sign of civilization, and a life that might likely be led hunting birds and wandering around before dying of come illness contracted from undercooking the meat or tripping on a hole in the group and accidently falling unconscious while the other was off running an errand. In the case where one of them fell unconscious, the other would be left walking for days, alone and scared that they were being hunted by the Sonic Phi, and then eventually wander far away from his friend’s body that there was no chance of either having a friend for the rest of them solemn existence.

              Henry wanted to cry, but because he had agitated tears out of Jean-Paul, felt as though it would be more helpful to pretend that he was happy about finding the belongings. Henry decided to also pretend that Jean-Paul was crying out of happiness, although he knew from years of friendship that Jean-Paul would have had much more energy and not be crying if he was actually excited about an event. In fact, Henry had a feeling that Jean-Paul felt equally as ambivalent about finding their old belongings as he did. Neither of them wanted to admit it, but they were tired of walking around in circles and pretending that the other villagers were around some corner, or that Dog was powerful enough to save them. They had a lot of belief in Dog, that really all they had to do was survive long enough in the jungle and then Dog would peak out behind some tree’s shadow and quickly sneak them into safety. Dog was supposed to be that powerful.

              On the other hand, Henry also thought about the possibility that his planet was going to end like Earth. Dog was supposedly so sad when the humans of Earth tore about the planet and abused the living things that after watching the humans mutilate their hearts so poisonously Dog died along with all the life on the planet. It was said that Earth is just a star out in the middle of some other galaxy and is just covered in dust without an ozone or any sort of topography. All the defining characteristics of the planet were demolished by the humans and then, as they saw that they had misbalanced Earth’s natural peace, they starting hating themselves and slowly demolished each other. Dog watched the civilization slowly cave in on itself, like a heart that slowly starts beating because it is defective.

              When Dog finally awoke, he created the new system of planets that the citizens of Canransocifus learned about. Now, however, Henry wondered if something had gone wrong and that civilization again was going to be defeated by own selfishness. Henry started thinking about Lucile, how although she was the kindest, smartest, and the most peaceful of any of her classmates everyone seemed to hate her. It was not as though the students could really take it out on Lucile with the teachers, who really like Lucile, watching over her and often applauding her excellent work ethic, but they were able to call her names and make up stories about her. Sometimes, at lunch, Lucile would go up to a group of people that had been nice to her in class and stand on the side of the circle they created with their bodies, trying to fit in. Then, Lucile would not be able to hold her tongue with something interesting or funny that she had thought up and she would say something to the person standing near her. On more than just one occasion, everyone would stop talking, look at her, wait for her to finish speaking, and then walk away, without even acknowledging her presence.

              Some of the things that were said to Lucile were even strangely hurtful. Henry knew that he was not always nice to Lucile, something he decided was fine because he was her only friend, but the way that other’s treated Lucile could be particularly awe-inspiringly evil. There were girls who would give her compliments and then tell her to go away when she tried to hang out with them, boys who would tell her she was ugly to her face and the best way to adjust the way she looked so she would be less appalling unattractive, and there was even one time when she had no one to have lunch with for two months because Henry was involved in an activity for which he needed to devote his spare time. For two months Lucile walked around from group to group, to see anyone wanted to invite her to be her friend, and found quickly that the best place to go was the library where she could sit unnoticed and not have teachers stare confused at her lack of social skills. After this, anytime that Henry and Jean-Paul were busy, she always knew to go to the library because she would be safe and not get picked on by the other kids.

              As he silently re-packed the bounty into his satchel to get ready to leave, he thought about the possibility that maybe the type of treatment that Lucile received from the others was some sort of cause for the destruction of their civilization. He realized that the others in the village were not bad, per se, but every time they were cruel to Lucile or told Jean-Paul not to venture past the borders of the village, he got suspicious as to whether or not the town he always thought was an utopia compared to the civilizations in his history textbooks was actually just slowly becoming more and more cruel. It was difficult to explain because Lucile was also extremely close with the plants and creatures in Canrancosifs; for example, the Smilicus Grassicus who had helped them cross the wall into the jungle was a creature that was known to talk to no one. Therefore, thinking about how the hunters who created the social rules that the students followed were so serious about not allowing anyone to venture past the border and then how every one of the villagers obliged this order started making Henry worry that the Sonic Phi might be there to help save them. Or, that Dog had again been unable to save the people from ruining their environment, in this case, ignoring their curiosity and staying strongly opposed to ever venturing past the wall, that again Dog’s civilization was crumbling. Henry wondered why he had always trusted Dog to come up with rules and ideas and function as an authority for all the other creatures. In this scenario, he started thinking about Dog as more of a selfish companion to the villagers who wanted all of their attention but also was not particularly worried about expanding their minds. Freedom was not something that Dog really spoke about and, in fact, it was Lucile who was often throwing the word around saying that “freedom is free” and “we should be allowed to freely roam like any other animal” and “if a hunter takes the freedom from a creature by killing it, how does it give the hunter MORE freedom than everyone else?” Henry even remembered an instance when Lucile had been blabbering on about freedom and one of the students casually mentioned that they had never heard the word before. Lucile was confused, saying that she knew that “freedom” was a real word but then a few other classmates joined in saying that Lucile must not be pronouncing the word she meant to say correctly. Ultimately, Lucile got very red in the face from trying to argue an obvious word was actually a real vocabulary word, waited for the bell to ring, and left the class, after which she went into the bathroom and cried for two minutes until her next class started. After school, she asked Henry if he knew what the definition of “freedom” they talked about it for hours. Henry and Lucile were known to have deep conversations and Henry assumed that the reason that other girls in class did not like her was because she was so close with Henry. Now, however, Henry started wondering if there was some other reason that she was disliked, some issue in their civilization, that kept the other kids from connecting with her. Maybe she was too honest. Maybe she was too kind. Either way, it was hard to see how such adjectives could be bad in an individual.

              Henry finished packing up his belongings and gave Jean-Paul a pat on the back before siting a few feet away under a tree. He looked at the tree to make sure it was not morphing too quickly to sit next to and seeing that it was a plain tree he rested his head and tried to fall asleep. Jean-Paul, now a bit more enthusiastic that he had been the one to find all his lost stuff, had carefully laid out everything he found in order to go through it and put it in his satchel in some ideal order. He was already wearing the hat that he thought he had lost and was considering whether or not to change his clothing into something in the pile of stuff. They had been washing their underwear every two days, one day turning it inside out and the next rinsing it in some running stream of water, letting it dry on a tree branch, and wearing another pair in the meantime, but being lost for some confusing amount of time meant that he had not changed his underwear for possibly a fortnight. He did not want to look at his underwear, for fear that its condition would be much worse that he could bear, so he decided to just continue packing up his satchel in the perfect order and then he would join Henry under the tree to decide what they would do next.

              After he packed all his things, he looked at the blanket again and shook it out, thinking that there was some possibility that Lucile’s stuff would be buried inside. He hoped that maybe there would be some old belonging of hers or some herb with her signature stickers that might remind him of her. Shaking the blanket, Jean-Paul found nothing and the physical motion of waving the heavy blanket up and down made him suddenly feel tired and depressed. He tried to imagine what Lucile would be doing if she was here and how she would be amazing at getting them to be eager to continue marching through the forest. Instead, without her around, he just felt more tired. Then, he looked over at the tree from which he had pulled the luggage in case there was some tiny possibility that she was up there. Looking the tree up and down, he found no trace of Lucile, although he did notice that the black and white print that had told him to continue looking for her was now gone. He did not think it was very fair that the luggage would have no clue of her whereabouts coming from a tree that wanted him to go looking for her. Jean-Paul did not know where to start looking for Lucile. She was obviously somewhere far away, although she was probably still incredibly lovely and treating all the plants and creatures with respect. He also knew that the tree would want to say hi to Lucile even if she could not be reached, so Jean-Paul respected that the tree had left a little legible note for them to read. In case he were to ever find Lucile, he would let her know that some beautiful tree had written her a note after helping find all their lost belongings. With Lucile, no one could expect the types of secrets that the plants and creatures help keep for her, or what she did with nature when no one was around. She spent a lot of time alone in Paradise away from the reach of other villagers and over time she gained the love of some of Paradise’s most mysterious creatures. Once, when Jean-Paul and Lucile were on a walk through Paradise, a small creature with a shell, four long legs, and what looked like a bright red main that had been braided came out from behind a tree and went up to Lucile. The creature got a big hug from Lucile and started to skip around like it was being ridden by its own shell in a rodeo. Lucile started screaming and clapping. “Your braid makes you so quick! You jump so elegantly with your hair tied out of your face!” Then the creature went up to Jean-Paul and licked his hand. Jean-Paul pet its shell, which was hard and rough, and then rubbed its fur which was extremely soft. The creature followed them around for the rest of their walk and Lucile did not even seem to notice that it was trailing behind her. Only when this braided, long-legged, shell-laden animal would get tired of following behind such slow creatures would it run in front of Lucile and try to get her attention. She usually just started giggling and applauding its valiant display of cuteness and Jean-Paul watched awkwardly until they left Paradise and got far away from the animal’s habitat that he could be comfortable having a conversation about it outside of its hearing range. He had never seen such a creature before and even wondered if it could hear him when he spoke to Lucile.

              “You braided its hair? How did you get so close to it?” asked Jean-Paul, trying to act as though occasions to play with animals happened every day.

              “You know, I have no idea. I was sitting and reading and I looked up and its face was right in front of mine. I looked at it for a bit and then it sat down next to me and put its head in my lap. At first I thought it was hurt so I started petting it. When it did not get up, I thought the best idea would be to continue petting it and so I braided its main. Then, as I was braiding its main, I started explaining all the elements of braids that improved the life of a creature. Braids were cleaner, kept the hair from getting tangled in a tree, and also made it easier to jump around. In any case, when the thing stood up, it started running around me in circles and looked so happy. Its been a few months since that happened but every time I see the creature I re-braid its hair and tell it that it is lovely.”

              Jean-Paul, knowing that were lots of stories that Lucile told about her relationship with plants and animals that know one believes, was suddenly struck with a feeling of being hurt by his other classmates. If he had only believed her stories he could have been experiencing some terrific adventures instead of gossiping with the others. The magical thing to Lucile was that she was honest about most things but that everyone always said she was lying and exaggerating her stories. This only made Lucile more of an outcast. However, seeing this remarkable tree make an effort to pull him and Henry under its leaves, find their belongings, and safely get Jean-Paul up and down from its heights just to let them know that it thought Lucile was wonderful and that they should continue trying to find her made Jean-Paul realize that maybe Lucile was special. Also, it made Jean-Paul want to continue going forward to find her so that they could save Canransoficus. With Henry’s strength, Lucile’s kindness, and his growing strategic skills, he felt that they might just have a chance to find Dog and defeat the Sonic Phi. Lucile was never the weakest part of any team, but seeing the tree vouch for her abilities made him believe that she was worth fighting for.

              Looking over at the tree again, he asked Henry, “did you see how the tree changed colors? Did I tell you what it etched in its bark before letting me untie the luggage?”

              “No, what did it say?” replied Henry.

              “It said, ‘follow the flower to friend.’ It was talking about Lucile. I know it was talking about Lucile. Have you seen any flowers near here?” said Jean-Paul.

              “How do you know it was talking about Lucile? ‘Follow the flower to friend’ could mean anything. Why do you think it was talking about Lucile?” Henry responded.

              “Well,” said Jean-Paul, “I do not need to follow a flower to find you and our only missing friend is Lucile. Also, Lucile talks to trees and although I always doubted that trees could talk back I would not be surprised if this instance was one of those strange occurrences where nature would try to help Lucile.”

              “I guess,” said Henry, unsure of Jean-Paul’s logic but also coming to the same conclusion. It was true, all of their textbooks said that creatures never spoke to humans as their own or that plants could not converse, but he had evidence of seeing Lucile communicating with nature so it was not surprising that a tree would trade their belongings for her well-being. It was odd to see the animals of Canransoficus play with Lucile while their teachers said that such behavior was not real and to see Lucile coax small little flowers to smile at her while the textbooks said that people did not have the ability to communicate with plants. He started thinking about what it must be like to be Lucile: doing excellent in her classes, getting almost perfect scores on every test, and then have a life that conflicted with that of the answers she staunchly supported with her test scores. To be the person who knew both the academic answer and the true answer might be the reason she had no friends other than Henry. In any case, when Henry looked over at the tree and saw that it had gone from a black and white cartoon demarcated with writing and back to just another living creature blended in with the rest of the jungle, he felt a strange sense of optimism that they might survive.

              As Henry was thinking about how the tree might be able to change itself so drastically, Jean-Paul sat down next to him. Jean-Paul had finished packing and was now ready to go.

              “Do you want to leave?” Jean-Paul asked Henry, continuing, “I bet if we walk for long enough we will find some flowers. I bet we can ask the flowers what to do next.”

              “As horrible as our situation is, I am happy to consider finding a flower and asking it what to do,” and Henry chuckled as though there was nothing else that could be the next step.

              Together, they stood up and started walking. They had no direction to where they were heading but with their items back in their possession they felt as though it did not matter where they ended up. They looked at the huge jungle trees, decorated with leaves, bugs, snakes, and amphibians. There was one bug that was exactly the same shape of a giant tree leaf, except much smaller and a different color. When Jean-Paul went up to the bug, which he thought was an unusually colored leaf, he looked carefully and it actually made a noise, split itself almost in half, and flew away. After seeing that, Jean-Paul started looking around for other similar leaves and saw that these little bugs came in many different colors but never the same color green as a leaf. He started seeing them everywhere and wanted to grab one to take with him. Knowing that this would not be in line with kind treatment of animals, however, Jean-Paul fought the urge to pick one off the tree and smush it into history between the pages of a book in his satchel.

Going For A Swim

              When they went a bit further, Henry saw a stream up ahead with running water. Excited to be able to change their clothes and wash the items that they had pulled from the luggage, the boys ran over to the water. First, they drank some of it to be sure that it was not some mirage of liquid posing as water. It was delicious, pure, and tasted like it might even flow through some fruit bearing tree because it had a slight sweet taste to it. After they were done drinking, they started washing their clothes. Sitting around the stream like little boys with only their underwear, surrounded by an incredible jungle view of creatures, and the sounds of dew dripping from the leaves made them feel like they were back in Canrancosifs. There is something safe about sitting with a friend in ones underwear. It is as though you are safe from bullies and crude remarks by the nature of being so overly exposed but also you are almost insured to have a friend who be there for a long time. After you see someone in their underwear it is hard to go about never speaking to them again. Although, in their current circumstance, Jean-Paul and Henry had already gone swimming together and had been on camping trips with one another so it was not so much a bonding activity but more of a way to feel as though they were back in what they would consider a civilization. To have control over their environment but using only the smallest amount of water and also to show they were different from the other living creatures around them in only a small cloth wrapped around their waists reminded them of their village. For all the things they did not like about their village, the safety it brought was one of Dogs greatest accomplishments. This safety, even at the tiniest level of their own relationship with the other parts of the environment, meant that the citizens could felt content by the most simple days. In fact, simplicity and safety were the qualities of the village that Jean-Paul felt most proud. He liked that he used to not be scared to complain about the rules and that their village’s way of life depended on causing as little harm as possible to the planet. Jean-Paul used to think it was terrific that even if he did not become a hunter or doing any wonderful, he could always be simply kind to other people and be a fine contributor to the village.

              Once their clothes dried the boys started talking about what they would do to find the flower that was mentioned by the luggage bearing tree. It was odd because they noticed that there were fewer flowers than they had imagined would be in a jungle. In the textbooks, there were flowers in all the trees, growing in vines, and all around the ground. It was actually what stood out in the pictures of the jungle, along with the strange animals and the historical fiction about past adventures. They considered going back to the Bird Place where they might find a more abundant supply of flowers. They also considered packing in their quest for the day and going to sleep. From being totally lost to having their belongings delivered to them via some sort of tree mail, neither Henry nor Jean-Paul was sure what to do. It was as though having a smaller problem solved made all their larger problems obsolete. The satisfaction of at least feeling at home with the items that they had packed before leaving the village made them less hunger for action and ready, almost, to give up trying to find the others.

              “I feel like I could live here,” said Henry.

              “I know. It is so nice, there is water, the trees are beautiful, and we have all our hunting gear. I bet there are creatures crawling all over those trees,” Jean-Paul responded, pointing to some taller, older trees in the distance. Then he continued, “I am actually really hungry. Do you want to finish off the last of my unicorn jerky or do you have enough energy to try to hunt some food? I am actually too tired to try to find food.”

              Henry stood up and walked towards the river to put on his now dry pants. He did not say anything back to Jean-Paul because he suddenly felt like crying. Henry would never cry in front of anyone else so he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

              Just as Henry was holding his breath and holding back his tears, Lucile, who was far deeper in the jungle still at the Sonic Phi’s camp, was also holding her breath and closing her eyes tightly. She had been tossed in the pool again for bad behavior. As she floated to the bottom of the pool, this time with her arms restrained behind her neck, she used her legs to push her head back up to the top to catch a quick breath before sinking. She wondered, drearily, if this would be the instance where she was allowed to drown. Sometimes, when the Sonic Phi would throw her in the pool, right before she landed inside the water she would consider tilting her head downward just in case there was a chance that she might hit her head against the cement at the bottom.

              For the past few weeks, ever since being taken from Flora’s car by the Sonic Phi, they had been helping her clean up by throwing her into the pool of water. The first time they did it, she assumed she was going to drown. They had tied her hands to her ankles. When she fell into the water, she was, for a moment, relieved that her arduous adventure was about to be over. Falling through the quicksand, being exhausted, and watching Flora’s arm get ripped off was enough to make her give up. However, although she no longer wanted to fight, as she drifted downwards through the clear pool she suddenly remembered that she had hidden some herbs behind a false tooth she had in the back of her mouth. Lucile did not often tell anyone about the trick tooth, but it was somewhat like a retainer that held two large molars that she was able to pop in and out when she wanted. She always thought it was odd that her teeth were not just allowed to spread out naturally, but over time she got used to the false teeth and even shaved down the bottom, where the fake tooth touched the gums, so that she could hide tasty herbs underneath. For example, if she knew that lunch was going to be a plain orange, before leaving for classes she would find some Sacred Sweetener, put it into a capsule, and hide it underneath one of her fake teeth. Then, when lunch time came around and everyone was required to eat the bland food, she would grin to herself, play with the inside of her mouth using her tongue, and then pull the capsule out and consume it before taking a big bite of the orange. The Sacred Sweetener made most fruits particularly tasty and she got in a habit of hiding delicious herbs to make her lunch time more tolerable. Because she did not have many friends, sometimes the feeling that at least her lunch tasted better than everyone else’s made her feel better when attending classes later that day. Everyone may have been able to understand everyone else very well, but Lucile was able to understand the peculiarities of good taste. Sometimes she liked to think that she was an outcaste because everyone wanted her recipes for how to combine herbs and foods, or herbs and activities, or which herbs could even be consumed raw. Lucile was one of the few students who not only had a perfect grasp of textbook concepts, but also did experiments in her own time to understand the non-approved topics that she saw during her nature walks. Not being well-liked by any of her peers, except Henry and Jean-Paul of course, meant that she was able to spend a lot of her free time in Paradise and Wonderland looking at the plants and trying to communicate with the creatures. She learned about which herbs the creatures would consume and then started thinking about how she could add them into her own diet. She also liked looking at the all the different flowers which would never get touched by any of the creatures and think about what characteristics made them obvious to nature as not being friendly.

              A curious girl, Lucile enjoyed learning and excelling in her classes because it made her adventures seem much more tangible. She often would tell her teachers about the incredible things she was experimenting with and sometimes the teachers would allow her to explain a recent project in front of the class. The teacher than introduced her to Henry, Ms. Hucklebee, once allowed to explain a project to the class and Lucile remembered that she was so nervous to have a friend in the class listening to her presentation. Although she was young, Lucile had noticed that she had not made any friends, while her peers had mostly all formed groups. Ms. Hucklebee as Lucile to give an explanation of an experiment that she had completed about how Leenomree, a drink popular in Canrancosifs, could be created without any Leenoms and taste almost the same. Lucile had taken some herbs from Dog’s garden and tried to create the taste of Leenomree herself. She got quite close but only Ms. Hucklebee got to appreciate the interesting taste because the drink itself looked bright purple and had flecks of yellow that fell to the bottom and would whirl all around when stirred. Unfortunately, from the outside it did not look very edible but Lucile was allowed to explain her trial and error system for matching the flavors. She was very inventive.

              Her inventive skills, however, were not often very useful. However, when the Sonic Phi first threw her restrained body in the pool, after pulling her out of Flora’s car and taking her back to their hiding place, her inventive abilities might have saved her life. Floating downwards, she realized that she would not be able to pull her hands from her feet and swim upwards. Also, by the trajectory by which she was sinking, it was likely that she would land on her side with no way of pushing herself upwards. She remembered, however, that she had her retainer in the mouth. There was possibly some Exectemium hidden underneath and she decided, immediately, if this was her only chance of survival that it was a perfect time to use the Exitmenium. She first flipped out her fake teeth and pulled the herb in her mouth, trying her best not to pull in any water from outside her head. Then, realizing that her head was close to her hands and her feet, she thought that she might use the retainer as a small knife to cut off the ropes. She worried, however, that it would not be possible to float the retainer over to her hands because she had never tried to see how the weight and aerodynamic qualities of the retainer worked in liquid.

              Suddenly, however, as she was thinking about what other resources she had available to at least free one of her hands, she heard a big splash in the pool and saw a small robot walk towards her. It had no eyes and in fact, it had not head at all, but was only made up of hands, a body, and legs. One of the hands shot out from the arm and grabbed onto Lucile’s leg. Then, a big bubble came out of the place where its head was supposed to be and it lifted itself, as well as Lucile to the surface of the water. From there, one of the Sonic Phi grabbed the robot, and pulled it, and her, out of the pool. Lucile started coughing and did not even notice that the robot had turned its hand into a cuff to latch around her leg.

              There she laid and coughed until she could catch her breath. The robots other hand then reached over and cut apart the rope that was attaching her hands to her feet. Then, one of the Sonic Phi lifted her limp body and put her in a chair, with the Sonic Phi’s cuff still attached to her leg. She was given some food and no mention was made as to why she was saved from the pool. As she ate, she said nothing, just looked around to see if there was any way she might be able to escape later that night.

              This pool-tossing had occurred weeks ago and since then she had been kept in the same dark shed, fed food, and left to herself. The only times the Sonic Phi would come out and free her from the dark shed was when she was being fed food or when they would throw her in the pool. Lucile was unsure what benefit the Sonic Phi got from restraining her in strange ways and then throwing her in the pool, only to pull her out using some robot and putting her back in the shed. It was possible that they just wanted to annoy her, or were doing a science experience to see which of the ways a person could fall into water and save themselves, or need to be saved by someone else. She assumed that maybe the other villagers were in the ocean climate and that the Sonic Phi were planning on getting rid of her civilization by a big drowning effort. Whatever the reason was, Lucile was often so exhausted by being thrown in the water that she rarely had the energy to figure out how to escape. Sometimes, she would try and run when the Sonic Phi took her out of the shed to be thrown in the water, but they would always catch her. Also, she never saw any of the little daisies who saved her life last time again. It was possible that Sonic Phi had already eliminated them.

              Lucile came to learn that the Sonic Phi were a very advanced civilization that did not like nature. In fact, their insect-like bodies were accommodated with metallic shields that might be covering some odd system of wires and cords that gave them intellectual advantages. It was impossible to know what the Sonic Phi would look like without all their body armor and weapons, although Lucile always thought that they would probably be small and weak and could easily get smushed by a falling tree without all the protective gear. The textbooks of Canrancosifs wrote that because of their attachment to technology, the Sonic Phi often made small, headless robots complete their most minor tasks. The reliance they had on technology meant that they liked to have robots and artificial technology present in their daily lives to complete their communal learning research. They had many different types of machines. For example, the robots would adjust their canes into swords, or turn stools into ladders that they would step on to reach something above them, or even change chains to morph into the cuffs that were used Lucile restrained. Along with little robots that helped them complete chores, the Sonic Phi’s weapons were advanced but seemed like they necessitated resources from Canrancosifs. Although their weapons could be very powerful, they often did not stay fully operable without the use of water, wood, plants, or other minerals from the planet.

Oddly, Lucile noticed that almost none of their other needs – if one did not include the weapon power – were met using plants or creatures from Canrancosifs. It seemed liked the Sonic Phi had planned that only their weapons needed resources to be farmed from the planet’s living flora and fauna. To be fair, however, the weapons were extremely creative in how they used the resources, albeit they needed a lot of rare minerals for some of the seemingly decorative piece of weaponry. Some of the weapons were headpieces. There was one Sonic Phi who had a hat with a long cord coming from the top of it. The Sonic Phi would swing his head around and the cord would sometimes catch something on a table and pull it towards him. The end had sharp nails about one forth on the way to the end of the cord. It was a bit like a whip that caught a faraway object when the sharp nails stabbed into whatever it was harming and also incorporated the snap force of the string-like shape. The nails had been created from the thorns of a Canrancosifs plant that Lucile recognized from being inside the jungle and being of a family of plants that were solicited by tiny red bugs that liked its long leaves for their nectar. She did not know the plants name, or the tiny red bugs name too, but Lucile did remember seeing similar thorns on a plant that she explained some information about to Henry and Jean-Paul. The thorns, beyond just being sturdy, were also very sharp and had microscopic mini-thorns all over them making them attract skin and clothing. Lucile recalled noticing the thorns because of a conversations with Henry and Jean-Paul that arose after one of the thorns poked her dress. She had a difficult time removing the thorns because their sharp edges refused to untangle.

Making the nails that were worn on the Sonic Phi’s helmet weapon cord out of these thorns would be an advanced task because one would have to somehow intertwine the thorns into each other in order to form one larger thorn. It was possible that maybe one of the robots was completing the task of forming them into nails but, regardless, it looked very painful to be hit with the cord. The Sonic Phi did not look like their hands had the dexterity to weave the thorns into nails. These nails were like yard and outdoors nails that were used to hang pictures on the wall. Lucile could not tell what the end of the cord was made of or how it was able to coil around itself to draw in objects from far away.

Another weapon that relied on resources from Canrancosifs was the bejeweled dagger that had a handle that was decorated with pebbles that were shined and then coated with a matte glaze probably made of tree sap. She once saw the Sonic Phi, however, use the dagger to first injure a small animal by stabbing it while the little thing was hiding in a close-by bush. Then, they stabbed it again and kept it on the dagger while the animal was over the fire. The second stabbing killed the little creature and the dagger was made of resources that caused it not to disintegrate when tossed into the oven.

Just from being allowed out of the shed for pool exercises and the incidental feast, Lucile was able to see an assortment of weapons that the Sonic Phi had been able to create out of the plants of Canransoficus and Lucile wondered why they needed so many. She also wondered why they never used the resources to make anything else – the chairs, the pool cement, the building, their vehicles had barely any parts that were made of materials that Lucile recognized from her planet. There were not many villagers in Canrancosifs so with the sheer strength and technology that the Sonic Phi already had, it would not be difficult to get rid of everyone on the planet. However, Lucile wondered if they needed to eliminate all the people on the planet. Maybe they would just enslave the citizens of Canrancosifs because they needed less unique materials for their race to survive.

What the Sonic Phi really needed was to find all the villagers, put them to work, and then leave with as much bounty as possibly. After forcing the villagers to make them interesting weaponry, the Sonic Phi would keep the villagers isolated as they took their pillages back to their home planet, Hazer. Lucile thought that the chances of her dying and being enslaved were about the same. She already felt like she was being tortured every time she was forced out of her shed and made to do a horrible act of friendship that she never wanted to. Thrown in the pool, forced to eat, and chained to a chair were Lucile’s only interactions with the Sonic Phi.

Lucile felt like with her two options being death or slavery, she should try to at least get away from the Sonic Phi before either outcome became possible. If the Sonic Phi were just making weapons on Canrancosifs, they might be on their way to another planet to continue pillaging. It was impossible to know if they were escaping Hazer or taking minerals back to it.  All the uncertainties upset Lucile tremendously because it made her feel as though she was a tiny, negligible pawn who had to watch her planet get destroyed while being destroyed along with it. It was possible that get tossed around was a horrible way to be a slave, but it was also possible that an even worse literal manifestation of slavery included being forced to do things that caused her to collude against her own people. Lucile wondered if throwing her in the pool was a Sonic Phi experiment that they would later use on others of her kind. She also sometimes wondered if Jean-Paul and Henry had been wrong about checking all the other huts and that maybe they had misinterpreted what was happening and accidently had followed the Sonic Phi into their lair. Where had all the other people in Canrancosifs been taken and were they going to be okay?

              The citizens of Canransoficus were not well prepared for an alien disaster that forced them to use their ability to survive such foreign conditions. The people were not even supposed to go into the Candle Forest and especially not allowed to passed the wall and into the other environments! Necessitating the use of land that was outside their area of understanding was an unfair disadvantage for a group of citizens that had been told by their leader that they were never allowed to explore areas outside just their living quarters. Dog had not prepared them to survive a scenario where they needed access to the other three environments. Now that Lucile was confused and either isolated in some secret location in the jungle or deeply hidden into the unexplored areas of the ocean area, she was at a severe shortcoming in knowledge about plants and minerals. It did not seem fair that an invader would immediately kidnap her in a place she knew barely anything about.

Lucile, in her exhausted state, started coming up with crazy theories about how the Sonic Phi had been able to take control of her life. She even theorized that the Sonic Phi had always lived on Canrancosifs and decided that Dog had been lying to her about the occupants of her planet. Or maybe, Lucile conjectured, Jean-Paul and Henry had misunderstood some emergency alert and accidently ran away from the village even though everyone was still safe in their cottages and Dog was not missing at all. Lucile imagined how terrible her life would be from now on being that every morning she would have to wake up thinking about whether she was going to get fed and left alone in the dark, or fed and then tossed into the pool and then left alone in the dark by the Sonic Phi. Living forever in and out of the Sonic Phi’s shed was not the ideal cup of tea for Lucile.

              Usually a happy and gregarious girl, even in situations where she was not particularly well-liked, Lucile was beginning to lose all of her Lucile-ness.

              “You are quite an other these days.” It said, with a staunchly observant tone.

              “The others did not like me very much. Now I do not like being me very much. So yes, I am a bit more like the others than usual these days.” Lucile replied, blandly whispering.

              “Well there is no one else who can ever be Lucile Melach. I will not allow it.”

              Lucile turned over in the shed and accidentally bumped her head on the wall behind her. She broke into tears. Staring at the ceiling that she could barely make out in the darkness she felt ashamed that she could not break out of the shed by herself. She was always able to do everything on her own and now, when she needed herself to be the incredible being that she always believed she was, all Lucile could do was fall in and out of sleep. Lucile was about to go back to sleep when a Sonic Phi opened up the door and marched in. She was too tired to scream so she let the Sonic Phi pull her up to a standing position and walk her out to the pool. There, the Sonic Phi immediately threw her into the water before she had a chance to see what was going on. She fell in and although she did not really want to move her arms her instincts made her start moving awkwardly in the water. It was hard to swim because she had just woken up and was not totally ready to start moving about. Plus, when the Sonic Phi walked her out of the shed she was allowing her eyelids to slouch so she was having trouble figuring out which way was towards the air. After a longer amount of time than usual, she still could not find the surface of the water and started struggling to find a bodily sense of calm so that she might just float to the surface. Before she could figure out how to relax without breathing in any water, one of the robots jumped in, grabbed her leg and pulled her out of the water. This time, she had swallowed a bit of water and was coughing intensely.

              At the same time, Henry coughed as well, letting out the air that he had been holding in his lungs to keep from crying. Feeling as though he was no longer going to cry, Henry rinsed his face in the stream and stared at the ground. The soil was somewhat similar to that of the village but he could not figure out if he would be able to grow anything in the ground. He bent over and started playing with the soil to see how much water it had within it and if it was nutrient rich or not.

              “Ouch!” he heard something say.

              Looking around, he did not see any creatures and the cry had not come from Jean-Paul. Going back to playing with he soil he felt something move below the ground and another shout of, “Ouch! Ouch!”

              Quickly pulling his hand away and staring at the little hole in the ground that he had created with his hands, he saw a root being pulled away from the hole and disappear. Then, right in front of him, between his body and the stream, started emerging a vine, then on the vine some leaves, and on the leaves some a big purple flower. Its petals were wilted but an incredible purple color, almost as though the flower was meant to have a hazy, lazy way about it.

              “Are you the one pulling on my roots?” asked the flower.

              Not used to speaking with plants, Henry still tried to replied, “Um, sorry, yes. I think it was me. I did not realize your roots were in the hole I was digging.”

              “You dig? That is fine. I will just move over here and get out of your way,” and the flower started fading away in a reverse fashion as it had come out of the dirt in the first place.

              “Wait! Where are you going?” asked Henry. “Jean-Paul, I found a flower! I found a flower to follow.”

              “Is that your friend?” asked the flower. “Are you two looking for a girl?”

              Jean-Paul immediately got up and walked over. Henry answered the flowers questions, “Yes, that is my friend. He said that if we need to follow a flower to find our friend.” And then Henry blurted out, “Why do you even care about Lucile?”

              “That girl is good luck. From what I have been told about the current situation with the alien invaders, she might be the only one who needs to be saved to get them all to go away. Many of your people are hiding in a camp in the frozen zone. They created underground igloos and are hiding there. The legend that has been spread all through this jungle is that there is a girl who is fighting the Sonic Phi all by herself. We have a plan, but we want to be kind to Lucile. The plants will take care of the Sonic Phi, but we will not move forward unless that girl is saved” and the plant started expanding its leaves and petals, growing stronger and looking as though it was ready to have a conversation.

              “Do you know where the other villagers are? They are in the frozen zone?” asked Henry.

              “Yes, they are all there. I have a friend who is a fish who says that he does not like being bothered by all the new inhabitants. In any case, they are fine. Many of the Dogs did not make it, however, because the journey was very long and some of them were too scared and too old to make the walk.” Answered the flower.

              “How far away is Lucile?” Henry asked, not sure if he wanted to see the villagers or find his missing friend. If the villagers had all left together, why did they not alert the three of them? Henry tried not to think about it.

              “I cannot tell you where she is. I am actually surprised that I was the one to find you. All the jungle plants decided that we are going to slowly remove our roots from underneath the Sonic Phi. Then once we save this girl, Lucile, we will start to grow some beautiful mushrooms around the edge of their hiding place. When they try to pull them, however, they will find that their roots go deep into a series of latches, which, when pulled, with cause the ground to cave in and millions of spores to enter the air and knock them unconscious. This will give the spiders time to crawl out from under the trees and feast on their bodies. According to the spiders, their bodies look delicious!” the flower said back to Henry, with an honest look.

              Jean-Paul started to ask more questions, “If we save Lucile, the plants get rid of the Sonic Phi. If we do not save Lucile and try to find the others from our village, then will the plants let the Sonic Phi live?”

              “The girl is good luck for us. It is a long story,” then the flower shook off some dew from its leaves, “You can have a couple days to decide. I can bring a few of my flower friends and we can convene with a meeting and discuss how you will save her.”

              Jean-Paul started answering, “Yes, I think we need some time to…”

              Henry cut him off, “No, wait. Are you saying that Lucile has been fighting the Sonic Phi this entire time? That she had been fighting the Sonic Phi by herself with no help from anyone else?”

              The flower then hung its head and said nothing.

              “So Lucile is the one fighting the Sonic Phi by herself and she is also alone and, in a sense, she is protecting all the other villagers because there have been no casualties but some older Dogs,” Henry started saying, as if trying to explain the situation to himself. When he saw the flowers cold response to his last question, he realized that the Sonic Phi had probably not been looking for other people because Lucile was so profoundly interesting that they probably forgot that they needed to capture more people. Coming from an advanced planet, they probably enjoyed Lucile’s company more than the others in the village did. She probably always had wonderful answers to their questions and was constantly trying to escape, thereby allowing them to practice their defensive methods on her.

              Henry and Jean-Paul then started talking at the same time. Seeing that they had interrupted each other, they paused, and Henry decided to start talking first. “I think that we should sleep here tonight and then go find her tomorrow. I do not think this can wait.”

              The flower quickly responded, “You are right. I will be back tomorrow morning. I will tell the plants to put our plan into action. We only need a few hours to prepare. We will show you where she is and you will save her. We will take care of the Sonic Phi ourselves,” and before Jean-Paul had a chance to say anything, the flower melted into the ground and disappeared.

              “I do not know if we will be ready to go by tomorrow,” said Jean-Paul.

              “We just found all of our belongings, we are all clean, and we were tasked with following a flower. What else should we do? This is the perfect time. We might even save the whole planet!” retorted Henry with an optimistic tone.

              Not sure how to respond given the ideal circumstances, Jean-Paul just shook his head and walked off. He did not want to listen to Henry tell him what to do especially after being the one to find the luggage and be correct about many adventurous concepts. In fact, he was feeling so empowered that he did not think that Henry should be the one making any of their decisions, at least for a while, until it was proven that he was not the one leading their group the entire time. To Jean-Paul, it seemed like he should have been the one to communicate with the flower and make the decision about what to do with the information.

              With the flower now gone, it made no sense to complain. Henry had made the decision. Jean-Paul was able to come to senses over night and realized that there was nothing he would have added to the conversation. When they woke up, they were excited to see how their adventure would proceed. Would the flower be waiting for them? How were they going to save Lucile? They were also getting hungry but did know if they would have time to do a little hunting or if they should try to wait for the flower to find them. They waited for about an hour and seeing no flower, they decided that they would try to hunt from where they were waiting.

              There were small little bugs circling a hive in a tree so Henry took out his sling-shooter and shot it down. They waiting for a few minutes for any mean creatures who would want to share to show up just to make sure that they would not be in any direct competition with any large, meddlesome animals that might want to eat them after this appetizer. Seeing no animals approach the hive, they walked over and started eating the bugs. The bugs tasted good and inside the hive was some sweet goo that they would be able to eat next.

              “I am amazed at how quickly we found that flower,” said Jean-Paul, no longer annoyed that he was the one to be able to make plans to save Lucile and find the other villagers.

              “Yeah, I was just digging in the soil and I saw something move. At first I thought it was some type of snake pulling its way underneath the dirt, but then I saw the flower grow out in front of me. I bet that flower was related to the luggage bearing tree. Remember how that tree kept changing? Actually, there are a lot of trees like that in this jungle. I wonder why none of the plants in our village ever did that,” Henry said as he ate.

              The two had a short discussion about what they would do if the flower turned out to be part of some plot by the Sonic Phi to capture them. Most of the situation made sense and neither was surprised that the other citizens of Canransoficus had hidden in the frozen environment of the planet. They had also considered hiding them and when the flower corroborated that the others had created underground igloos, just as they too had thought would be the best possible way to hide, it made sense to Jean-Paul and Henry that they were alive and safe and that the flower had not been lying. That being said, they still wanted to consider an alternative plan of action in case the flower was on the side of the Sonic Phi. Henry decided that he would keep a few of his sharp weapons in his pockets and Jean-Paul wrapped a rope around his waste like a belt. These weapons would probably also be useful when saving Lucile.

              A far-away purring sound started coming closing, and Jean-Paul and Henry at first were startled into thinking that it was the Sonic Phi driving towards them. However, it was just a small vehicle, the same one that Flora had used to find and try to save Lucile, that was approaching them. The vehicle pulled in front of them and in the front seat was yesterday’s purple flower on the driver’s side and Flora, to whom they had not been introduced, in the passenger side. The purple flower stopped the car and Flora walked out, with her arm covered in a cast that was protecting some sort of nub.

              Flora began, “Hello, my name is Flora. I tried to save Lucile a few weeks ago and it did not work. The Sonic Phi tore off my arm and ate an adorable, little creature living in the back seat of my car right in front of my eyes,” and then, without asking any sort of question that would illicit a response from either Jean-Paul or Henry, Flora undid her passenger side seat, pulling it down and forward to make way into the back seat.

              “Come inside,” said the purple flower. “We can talk more on the way.”

              Surprised that they were going to be taken by way of vehicle and not hike, Jean-Paul and Henry gladly entered the back seat. They had never been driven around by a flower, let alone entered into a vehicle with a driver that they had only known for a day, so they excitement energized them to brainstorm for a few hours. After Flora explained the layout of the Sonic Phi’s camp and where they were keeping Lucile, Jean-Paul and Henry thought about all the different ways they might be able to take her without being noticed. The purple flower noted once again that it was important to not notify any of the Sonic Phi of Lucile’s disappearance because if the spiders were to be able to eat all the Sonic Phi and clear them from the planet, the Sonic Phi would need to be waiting in one place. With the mushrooms already getting ready to break through the soil, it was decided that from the time they arrived at the camp to the time they got Lucile out, they could only be on the premises for less than five minutes.

To Conclude: A Conclusion

              Jean-Paul and Henry were let out about a mile away from the bush that created an enclosure for the Sonic Phi’s camp. The plan was that Flora would walk them to the camp but then leave back to the car until they found Lucile. Once they did, they were to bring Lucile out into the jungle and continue walking away until the vehicle found them. With Lucile intact, they would drive to another flower campout and let them know to proceed with the plan to demolish the Sonic Phi. Jean-Paul was worried about how the vehicle would find them once they left the campground with Lucile and why there was no pre-determined meeting location. The flowers responded with a plethora of reasons, one of which included that if they were accidentally followed out of the camp by the Sonic Phi, being far away would give the flowers some time to come up with a way to drive the vehicle strategically enough to get them away safely.

              When the car stopped, Jean-Paul and Henry looked at each while still sitting in the back seat. They shook hands and then almost started laughing until each realized that it was important not to make any sound before trying to save Lucile. They were somewhat scared about possibly being captured, but they found solace in the fact that their original plan had been to try to find the other villagers and save the planet from the Sonic Phi. Also, they were glad that the others were hiding in the frozen place and were excited to join them.

              Flora, in the passenger side, got out of the car first and pulled her seat out of the way to let Jean-Paul and Henry out. When the three of them were far away from the vehicle, the purple flower drove the car away and they were left walking towards a giant bush where they could hear music and chatter. Henry and Jean-Paul decided that they were going to split up. Henry was going to be the one to save Lucile and Jean-Paul would make sure that in case Henry was noticed, there would be someone fast to create a distraction. When Flora left, Jean-Paul was standing on the rear of the camp, facing the pool and the mansion, in a straight line, and peeking into the campground to watch the Sonic Phi. Jean-Paul was also to emerge from the bush for a few seconds, on the site of the Sonic Phi to give Henry a message with his hands as to whether Lucile was inside the shed or outside in the pool area. Henry, on the other hand, was supposed to searching around the perimeter of the camp and looking periodically threw he bushes to see if he was near the shed. Both boys saw the same scene. Because it was early in the morning, most of the Sonic Phi were asleep inside the mansion. There were a few Sonic Phi sleeping and snoring on some lawn chairs near the pool and one Sonic Phi standing in front of the shed. The Sonic Phi standing in front of the shed looked awake, although not like he had been able to sleep enough to be totally alert at that early morning hour.

              When Henry was in his position behind the shed, Jean-Paul popped his hand out threw the bush and hoping that the one awake Sonic Phi would not notice, flashed a signal that Lucile was not outside in the pool area but, if the flowers were correct, in the shed. Jean-Paul then moved a bit away from where he was originally posted and started stringing out his rope forward into the visible area of the campground. Once he was able to maneuver the rope as far forward as being into the water of the pool, he used his other hand to make a noise of crunching leaves and started pulling the rope slowly back towards him. Jean-Paul thought that if he made the rope look like a snake slithering out of the water that it might make the Sonic Phi who was guarding the door of the shed concerned enough to investigate. Jean-Paul was right and as he was pulling the rope slowly backwards and trying to make subtle noises of crunching leaves the awake Sonic Phi looked over and eventually seeing that rope moving across the floor back into the bush started walking over the investigate. Seeing the Sonic Phi coming towards him, Jean-Paul quickly pulled all the rope back into his position and ran off, hiding behind a large tree.

              Henry, seeing that there was still about four minutes for him to get Lucile out of the shed ran out of the bushes and went straight for the front door. The front door was latched shut and Henry decided it would be a back idea to make noise by trying to unlatch it. Then, he looked around the shed and saw a small window with sliding glass that only opened from the outside. Sliding it open, he used his arms to pull his head into view of the inside of the shed and looked inside, seeing a girl with Lucile’s body and a bag over her head laying on the ground. At first, Henry lost his balance and dropped down, albeit quietly, when he thought that the girl was dead. Then, he grabbed a nearby rock and tossed it inside the shed, making some noise. He did not check to see if the Sonic Phi noticed or not but climbed inside the shed threw the window and went up to the girl to see if it was Lucile. The girl had woken up and was sitting upright. He came up from behind, closed her mouth with his hand, and whispered into where an ear would probably be hiding if there was no bag covering it and said, “Lucile, it is Henry. Do not make a sound. I think the Sonic Phi is going to come inside the shed and check on you. I will be hiding in the back shadows. Do not say that I am in here.”

              With that, Henry also lifted the girls hand to inspect it in the small amount of sunlight let in by the window. Yes, it was Lucile. Henry always like Lucile’s hands and although he rarely gave her compliments because he felt that she was good enough to not necessitate a lot of positive commentary, he did sometimes tell her that she had nice hands. Feeling them in his own, he noticed how soft and pretty they were. Trying not to get distracted by his sudden excitement of seeing Lucile – the two had barely been separate for this long since becoming friends as children – Henry pushed over some items that were next to Lucile and then back away into the corner of the shed where he was only being hidden by darkness. About a minute later, the guard, who Henry thought had completed investigating Jean-Paul’s rope illusion still had not opened up the door to check on Lucile. Henry estimated that the Sonic Phi was either right outside the shed or walking towards the shed, but with only two minutes remaining to get Lucile out of the shed, find Jean-Paul, and get far away from the campground, Henry decided to get Lucile ready instead of planning the sneakiest getaway tactic. Going up to the awkward creature that was sitting upright with her legs straight out in front of her and her arms resting neatly to her sides, supporting her shoulders, Henry untied the bag from her head to expose his lovely friend’s face. Lucile stared at him, not saying a word or even giving him a hug.

              Henry helped her up and pointed at the window. Lucile gestured back that it was closed. Henry decided that this was no place to have a pointless argument so he put his hands on the edge of the window and pull his body outwards. Lucile, who was weak, somehow did the same thing and emerged out of the shed looked tossed up but alive. She was incredible like that: in such intense circumstances where it would have been easier for someone to help her do something, she almost never complained and always found a way of completing the task herself. Amazed that she was now outside the shed and out of the sight of the Sonic Phi, she looked upwards to help her eyes adjust. The sky was still rainbow colored so she knew that it was not a dream. Henry looked upwards too but then quickly grabbed Lucile’s hand to pull her away from the shed and into the bushed in the distance.

              Jean-Paul, who had been able to create an excellent diversion by sneaking to another side of the pool and pulling the same trick on the Sonic Phi guard was now a reasonable distance away from the camp ground waiting to be picked up by the flowers. By chance, however, the flowers were closer to the side from which Henry and Lucile emerged from and although they were only a few yards away from the bush, the vehicle sped up behind them and they jumped inside. Lucile and Henry had both climbed into the front seat, with Flora waiting in the back, and Lucile began grinning. She knew that Flora would be back. She absolutely knew that the plants would not have let her die in that awful camp all alone. Lucile, realizing that Jean-Paul was missing, decided to continue being optimistic and climbed into the back seat, hoping that Henry would follow suit and climb in next to her. That way, if Jean-Paul was still alive enough to be on this rescue mission, he could ride in the front passenger seat and all five of them would comfortably fit in the vehicle. Such matters of order were important to Lucile, even when they were not particularly imperative to the situation.

              However, Henry did not move into the back seat. Not sure whether it the right time to ask about Jean-Paul whereabouts or if beginning to talk right away would count as one of those behaviors that would not be helpful in a high stress situation, Lucile decided to try to stay quiet. While sitting alone in the shed, she promised to herself that if she were ever to escape and find Dog and the other citizens of Canransoficus, she would try to do more of the social things that the others appreciated and less of the things that they constantly complained about, such as talking too much. She was aware that it could be because she was always talking that she had less friends than she thought she deserved and although it was unfair to try to get someone to change something so innate to their character just to fit in, Lucile decided that if she were to have another chance to live her life, she would try harder to act the way that others liked and put less importance in always needed to fully explain herself. Not talking would be a skill that she would work on, or at least that she had been working on while sitting in the shed.

              In any case, as she sat silently, fighting the urge to ask about Jean-Paul’s whereabouts, the pulled around a corner and saw him standing near a tree.

              “I think the timer has run out. Have you alerted the plants to begin pulling the trap?” asked Henry.

              “What trap?” asked Lucile. And then, instinctively she also asked, “Is that Jean-Paul over there?”

              Flora was the first respond, “We have been able to take down the Sonic Phi for a few weeks now. Their campground is going to cave in on itself and then millions of spiders are going to come out from the top of the cave and eat the Sonic Phi, decimating their camp and any trace of their activity on Canransoficus.”

              “But, my darling, we did not want anything to happen to you?” it spoke.

              “You waited to save me?” Lucile asked.

              “Of course! You are an easily tricked Russian who loves everyone and everything. A creature like you is too sweet to be a casualty of intergalactic war.” It said.

              “Is this the end of the story?” Lucile questioned.

              “It is. Do you think it was a nice one?” It posited.

              “I think it was fine. I think I just forget how extreme everything can be to everything else. How being tricked is a nice way of feeling better about tough things. I liked that you tricked me in the end. I did not think I was going to ever leave that shed” Lucile replied.

              “We were told that the plants would never agree to rid Canransoficus of the Sonic Phi if we did not find you first,” Henry explained. “In fact, there was a tree who found our luggage and then told Jean-Paul that…”

              Lucile looked around, confused for a moment, and then feeling the car stop and seeing Jean-Paul open the door and climb in next to Henry, she passed out. Being trapped in the shed, thrown in the water for experiments and eating all the strange food had been intense for Lucile and she could no longer keep herself awake.

              The purple flower was the first to notice, from its mirror, that Lucile had fallen asleep. It did not say anything to Henry, who was still chatting about all the reasons that the plants had wanted Lucile to stay alive and why all the creatures would be ecstatic to see her again, especially as a hero. Driving towards the flower hideout, the purple flower checked out the rear mirror again and seeing no Sonic Phi following them, grew another leaf, pulled it off, and tied it onto the side view mirror of the vehicle as a sign of safe passage through the jungle. Getting to a tree with a ladder, the car stopped and everyone got out, except for Lucile, who was permitted to sleep in the back seat. Jean-Paul asked if the flowers had any food that they could take for the journey to give to Lucile when she woke up, and they obliged with bags of powder which, supposedly, was a flower delicacy.

              Henry and Jean-Paul climbed up the ladder after Flora and the purple flower into a tree house. From the inside of the tree house, there was a tunnel that was not noticeable from the outside which the four of them then crawled into to get to another huge treehouse that sat on top of no branches but was suspended by vines between two large trees. Looking out, they could see the Sonic Phi’s camp. A flower wearing a leaf as a hat pulled a lever and then crawled down near the ground. Following the leaf-hat-flower lead, Henry and Jean-Paul also crouched down and looked out the window. A few seconds later, the camp ground fell out of site into the ground below where only a side of dirt could be seen. It was very quiet.

              Henry asked, “Why did that not make any sound?”

              Another flower with so many petals that its face could not be seen responded, “When we removed the base of the soil under their campout we created a system of small plants that would cushion the fall. Ideally, some of the Sonic Phi are still asleep inside their mansion and have not even noticed that they are now about one hundred feet below the ground level. Wait, look, here come the spiders.”

              Then, like a wave of blackness with speckles of white and red, a liquid like splash of spiders came flooding in from all sides of the giant hole. That caused a lot of noise, mostly the sound of metal clinging against metal, but nothing could be seen.

              “So they are gone?” asked Henry.

              “With about a billion spiders on the planet and most of them very upset about the way that the Sonic Phi were using the resources, I do not think that even the water or bricks have a chance of existing for another ten minutes,” replied Flora. “They would have been truly awful dictators. They tore off my arm and you should have seen how cute the little creature was that they ate alive. Any species that cannot be friendly with that little creature is no friend of mine.”

              Now strangely with nothing to do, Henry and Jean-Paul looked over at each other once again. They assumed that their next task would be to get Lucile some food and find the other villagers in their new camp in the frozen environment, but a part of them wanted to stay in the jungle. Wandering around between beautiful greenery and incredible trees, even discovering plants that could grow and un-grow their branches, was more knowledge than they could imagined seeing in their whole lives. A part of them wanted to wait in the jungle for a few more weeks looking at the plants and studying the creatures. However, another part of them wanted to go back to village and be greeted as heroes. Ultimately, they decided to wait until Lucile woke up and ask her what she wanted to do.

              A big flower with roots that came out of its bottom like thick coils then crawled through the tunnel holding Lucile. She was awake and had her arms around the flowers stem.

              “The flowers say that you bartered some food for me? What did you get?” asked Lucile to Henry and Jean-Paul.

              “We have this powder. Actually, how do we eat this? Do you just eat it raw?” Henry said, looking over to the flowers for advice.

              “Well,” the flower whose face was hidden by petals said, “we usually just rest our roots inside the powder and that is how we eat. We have friends who are creatures, however, and they mix it with water and drink it. It has a lot of nutritional components. You will not need to eat very much of it.”

              “Do you have water?” Lucile asked, sounding oddly cheery with her old impish tone.

              “We do, darling!” some flowers said at the same time, running to another room and grabbing some bottles of water and mixing straws.

              There Lucile, Jean-Paul, and Henry sat and drank the powder drink which was actually rather delicious. It kept changing flavors and made them feel as thought they were drinking multiple drinks. Jean-Paul and Henry then started asking Lucile what had happened to her while she had been taken captive by the Sonic Phi. She said that she did not want to talk about it until she could think about a bit longer. Her plan was that once they got back to the other villagers, she would talk about what happened with her teachers, and hopefully they would let her give a presentation about what she learned. Jean-Paul and Henry started laughing hysterically because there was not one person on the whole planet who would ever want to give a professional presentation on their experiences of heroism other than Lucile. Jean-Paul and Henry were planning on having a party and wearing ribbons and telling their stories over and over again until they would be remembered as the grand saviors of their people. When they started talking about this plan, the flowers looked over at them suspiciously, as though they knew that they had not really been that integral in taking down the Sonic Phi. Jean-Paul and Henry did not really care for they knew that even if the flowers decided to tell their side of the story, it would only make Jean-Paul and Henry seem kind and like those types of people who are so adept at being nice to plants that they should also be remembered for their compassion.

              Lucile, meanwhile, liked that her friends were up to their competitive antics once again. Watching them argue about who did what in keeping them alive while they were lost in the jungle and about how their contributions to the planet would be remembered forever as perfect.

Then, Henry looked at Lucile, who was exhausted but watching him banter with Jean-Paul and asked, “Really, you are kind of the most important hero of the story.”

“Do you think that’s true?”

“I think that even your knees look nice today! They go very well with your heroic personality and contributions to the safety of the planet. Also, I think that they also make me think that…” and then Henry stopped talking, walked over to Lucile, and give her a big kiss on the lips. “They make me think you are really nice. That is all I wanted to say.”

Lucile did not know what to do so she reached over and grabbed Henry’s giant hand. They sat next to each other, now chatting about all the things that their civilization would do now that it was in the frozen environment. Lucile’s started imagining what the igloos would look like, what they were made out of, where school would be help. She said she hoped that now that they were situated underground that maybe she would no longer have to run those circles.

Jean-Paul then sat next to Henry and started explaining what he was going to do with all the new information that he had learned from this adventure. Jean-Paul even confessed that he never thought he would ever put himself through such a strenuous series of events and that he wondered what he looked like and if jungle life had changed him at all. He then informed Henry and Lucile that while they were busy kissing, he had asked the flowers about the best mode of transportation to the frozen environment where the other villagers were hiding. It turns out that almost all the flowers in the jungles have access to vehicles and maps of jungle roadways and that someone would be able to drive them through the jungle and to the frozen place. They would be given a driver and vehicle that could go through snow and take then right to the front stop of the newly built igloos. If they wanted, they could even take a detour through the ocean environment.

 

Thinking about how everything had been resolved, that even though they had not necessarily been the ones to take down the Sonic Phi they had been able to contribute to at least saving one of their own, they fell asleep leaning against the wall of the treehouse. That night they slept like they had already lived forever.

The end.