Primrose sat on the bench, shaded by one of the campus’s trees with one of her bodyguards by her side. She sat with her back all the way into the bench, leaving her feet to dangle a few inches off the ground. It was after school and she was waiting for Charmant and Aerith.¹

Primrose pushed her side bangs away from her face as the still warm September breeze blew. She absentmindedly scrolled through her cellphone in order to pass the time but soon gave up when she found no entertainment in it. The phone was the newest high tech model and had a massive amount of data it could hold: games, internet, social media, navigation, notes, drawing apps, camera, contacts, texts, and much more but none of that really mattered at the moment. It was empty for the most part. She had gotten the phone a month ago but hadn’t really found much enjoyment from it. There were only a few contacts in it. Her mom, her dad, her butler, her bodyguards, and her brother’s bodyguards(her parents had decided that he was too young to have his own phone).

‘Which reminds me,’ she thought, ‘I need to ask Charmant and Aerith for their phone numbers.’

Primrose looked around for something to entertain herself with. Her eyes caught sight of something and eagerly she scooted herself forward until she far enough that she could get up on her own.

“Bruno?” she asked.

“Yes Ms. Fairfield?” replied the large, suited man.

“I’m going over there to look at the flowers.”

“You know what your mother said about flowers ,Ms. Fairfield.”

“I’ll take my inhaler just in case,” she replied, sticking out her hand.

The bodyguard removed his mistress’s backpack from his back and gave her her inhaler. “Would you like for me to accompany you?”

“It’s only a few yards away. I’ll stay in sight.”

The small girl turned from her escort and with quick, short steps she made her way to the flowers she had spotted. The blooms rested next to one of the campus’s many buildings. They were part of one of the small gardens maintained by the gardening club, but since the Gardening Club hadn’t yet started for the new school year, the groundskeepers were taking care of it.

Primrose cupped the flower of the nearest plant in her hand. It was a primrose, her namesake, in full bloom. She was careful to avoid the bush’s thorns as she leaned forward and breathed in its sweet scent. She took a moment to appreciate it before-

ACHOO!

-sneezing because of the pollen. She wiped her nose with her handkerchief and adjusted her bonnet. She stood contemplating the bush. Most of the flowers had blossomed but her eyes fell upon a late bloomer, a bud that, despite it being September, had yet to bloom. She gently placed her finger on it. If it didn’t bloom soon, the autumn chill would kill it before reached maturity.

With that thought in mind, she felt a sense of kinship with the bud.²

She crouched down before the flowers to get a better look at them. With her elbows on her knees to support her head, she gazed upon the flowers in pleasure. There were many different kinds. There were warm and happy marigolds, blushing peonies, gloriosa daisies that went up to her chest, circles of dahlias, tinkling bluebells, bright yarrow, magenta beardtongue, tiny oxalis, soft daylilies, and so many more!

Primrose watched as the bumblebees and butterflies flew about the flowers, wishing to be one of them, being completely enveloped in a world of flowering color. Just then, her eyes caught swift movement amongst the flowers. She leaned a bit forward before her eyes widened in delight.

A hummingbird!

It was her first time seeing one. The tiny green bird hovered two feet away from her. Fascinated and delighted, she watched as it sipped nectar from the beardtongue. She sat in silence, scared that she would scare it away if she spoke.

“Hachidori(hummingbird)…” said a quiet voice.

Primrose looked up. She was momentarily blinded by the sun shining down on both her and the person next to her. She pulled her bonnet further forward to shade her eyes. She hadn’t heard anyone approach her. She saw the person that stood next to her and could not take her eyes away.

Seeing him in this moment, at this angle, it was a beautiful scene to say the least.

Her eyes took him in, studying every fine feature. He stood above her, more than a foot taller than her minuscule stature. The wind blew, lightly lifting his long, platinum hair as it glinted in the sun’s light. His face was slim and well crafted. His skin was white and was blemishless aside from a small beauty mark underneath his eye. But Primrose didn’t view it as a fault for it worked as a wonderful accent for his eyes. His eyebrows and eyelashes matched his hair, giving his face a somewhat…angelic look.

He lowered his purple scarf, exposing his light pink lips. Primrose was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to touch him, but held back for she didn’t know him.

Didn’t know him? That wasn’t right. Coming out of her stupor, she realized that she recognized the boy. He was one of her classmates but he sat in the back of the class, making him harder for her to really notice. She hastily scrambled to remember his name. It was something in Japanese.

She suddenly felt eyes on her. She looked up again. Narrow blue eyes and grey lashes. Arctic icebergs under a platinum veil and accented by calligraphy’s black spot. ³His attention finally away from the flowers, his eyes fell on the small girl crouching by the flowers.

When their eyes met, she fell in love.⁴

………………..

“Mr. Choudry?”

“Yes, Ms. Brown?” said Chakir Choudry looking up from the paperwork on his desk at the woman who had entered his office.

“Is there a mermaid show currently scheduled for today?” asked the aquarium staff member.

“No, it’s Thursday. Mermaid shows are only on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays you know this,” he replied.

“There must be a mistake then, there seems to be a mermaid performing in the Mediterranean tanks.”

Mr. Choudry’s eyebrow raised. “How could that be? Both of our mermaids-” Mr. Choudry stopped mid-sentence. He quickly got up from his chair and pushed pass the worker. “You said the Mediterranean tanks, correct?”

The worker nodded. Mr. Choudry rushed out of his office and hurried down the dark and dimly lit hallways of the aquarium. He strode past large tanks full of brightly colored fish and coral, large sharks, sea turtles, crustaceans, amphibians, and other creatures. He strode past signs and posters that explained about the tanks and gave directions until finally he came to the Mediterranean tanks.

“Mommy! Mommy! Look at the mermaid!” exclaimed a child.

There was a large crowd of people, unusual for that day of the week, gathered tightly around one of the tanks containing fish indigenous to the Mediterranean Sea and its surrounding areas.

Mr. Choudry grimaced and made his way towards the crowd. As he pushed his way to the front of the crowd, he peered around the adults with their children on their shoulders caught glimpses of blue flicking about the tank. His frown deepened as his suspicions were confirmed as he stood near the very front of the crowd, just behind a line of children.

There were many beautiful fish in the tank. There were rainbow wraisses, painted combers, parrotfish, tentacled blennies, dusky grouper, and pufferfish!…..Yet it wasn’t the fish that the crowd was taken with.

A shadow passed above Mr. Choudry and he tilted his head upward.

Swimming near the top of the tank was a creature out of myth and legend. Her bronze skin tinted blue by the aquarium water and flecked with shining scales, her dark hair rippling in waves as her supple body twisted in complete graced within the environment, and finally her strong, Persian blue tail with scales that shimmered in the light.

In the tank swam a mermaid, smiling as the crowd ooed and awed at the sight of her.

Drawn by their gazes, the mermaid swam deeper in the water and closer to the glass. She pressed her hand to the glass. A little girl near the front pressed her hand on the other side. The mermaid’s rounded lips pulled back in a smile and her large, dark blue eyes sparkled in delight. The child delighted, began to jump up and down excitedly.

“Mommy! Mommy look, the mermaid smiled at me!”

“Calm down, it’s just a girl in a costume it’s not a real mermaid,” responded the child’s cynical older brother despite the glares of the surrounding parents.

‘Oh but if only they knew,’ thought Mr. Choudry, caught up the wonder of such a majestic creature swimming right in front of him. ‘If only they knew that she was real…And they’re not supposed to know that she’s real! They’re not even supposed to see her!’

Mr. Choudry came back to his senses and knocked on the glass. The mermaid swam over to him and gestured to the sign on the glass that warned against it being tapped.

Mr. Choudry glared and the mermaid jumped back as she realized who it was. She smiled sheepishly and swam away from the glass, much to the disappointment of the guests. She swam behind a wall of coral and out of sight.

Mr. Choudry went to meet her on the other side. Mr. Choudry entered the staff only area and climbed up the metal stairs to the top of the tanks and crossed the metal walkway to where Mesi was pulling herself out of the water.

“What did I say about climbing in the tanks without permission?” he asked impatiently.

“Bad?” she replied, flicking her tail.

“Yes, and you know when you ARE allowed in the tanks and which ones, yes?”

“Yes,” she said with a nod.

“Good.” Mr. Choudry paused for a moment. “However, since you seem to like the tanks so much and the crowd seems to like you, I’ve decided to put you to work”

Mesi tilted her head to the side.

“Since you didn’t listen, your weekends are now mine. Starting tomorrow, you’re doing the mermaid show with Ariella and Jesse. Understand?”

Mesi gave him a perplexed look before slowly nodding.

“Good now get up, you have homework to do,” he said, with a jerk of his head.

He turned to walk away, but stopped when he realized that Mesi wasn’t following behind him. He turned back around to see her flapping her tail just above the water.

“Dhil baladay alrutub(My tail is wet)” she said.⁵

Mr. Choudry sighed. “I’ll get you a towel.”

………………..

“Hm….”

Kol changed his position on the couch.

“Hmm….”

Kol rolled onto his stomach.

“Hmmm….”

Kol moved his body so that his legs hung over the back of the couch and his head hung over the edge of the seat.

Elodie giggled in the armchair next to the couch.”Are you having fun?” she asked, temporarily putting down the book she had been reading.

Kol smiled and turned himself right side up in the seat. “Just trying to figure out this “cell phone” as Dinari called it,” he replied.

“Oh, that,” said Elodie as she pulled her own silvery white cellular device out of her dress pocket. She pressed the home button and watched as the screen activated and filled first with a blank white background before filling with a few all ready installed apps.

“Dinari said that there was a way to put a password on it to protect our privacy. If only we knew how to add it,” she said.

“Well, it’s not like anyone else is going to have our phones so we should be fine until we find out” replied Kol as he swiped his finger across the screen of his dark brown phone. “We could always ask one of our classmates, at least one of them should know how to work this thing.”

“True,” Elodie said as she turned the phone in her hand. Dinari had told them that it was completely waterproof and indestructible and that it could take and make calls from anywhere. She opened one of the apps. The correct time filled her screen. She pressed the home button and selected another app. This one gave her the weather forecast for the whole week. There was nothing like this back in their home world.

“We could ask Arcene. It would give us an excuse to talk to her.”

“Yeah, let’s do that…Oo! I just found something interesting! Lodie come here!”

Kol scooted over to make room for her on the couch. Elodie, curious about what he was so excited about, took a seat next to him.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You can take pictures with these!” Kol replied excitedly.

He raised the phone above their heads at an angle.

“Say cheese!” he said as he winked at the camera, gave a wide grin, showing off his sharp canines, and threw up a peace sign.

Elodie followed his lead and gave the camera a gentle smile over her friend’s shoulder.

The phone made a clicking sound and Kol put his arm down so that they could look at the picture.

“Oo, it came out pretty well! I wonder if I can send it to you?”

“Do you know how to do that?” she asked, raising her eyebrow.

“I can find out, but first~”

Kol made a few selections before presenting his phone to his friend with a smile. “Background and lock screen!”⁶

“No way, how’d you do that?” she asked, leaning forward to see the picture better.

“I’ll show you.”

………………..

‘What a nice boy I’ve gotten, Henry⁷‘

Those were the thoughts of Minnie Mae Wilson as she sat in her rocking chair petting one of her two cats and looking at an old picture of her deceased husband.

“I HAVE FINISHED CLEANING THE BIRDCAGE, MRS. WILSON. IS THERE ANY OTHER TASKS YOU WISH FOR ME TO COMPLETE?” asked a young man as he closed the door to a birdcage containing a green and yellow parakeet and turned towards the old woman.

“Yes, Allen, would you be a dear and vacuum the sofas? Monty and Julia have been rubbing on it again.”

“OF COURSE!” Allen replied, with a salute before whipping out a handheld vacuum and getting to work.

“Oh and Allen?”

“YES MRS. WILSON?”

“Didn’t I ask you to call me Granny?” she said with a smile. ‘I haven’t been called Granny in a while…’ she thought.

Allen straightened up and faced the old woman. “YES, GRANNY!”

“That’s better,” said the old woman as Allen went back to his vacuuming. ‘Such a good boy, always speaks up so that I can hear him, never murmures,’ she thought.

When Allen finished vacuuming he turned once again to the old woman. “GRANNY, MAY I GO OUT FOR AWHILE?” he asked.

“Of course, dear, but be back by supper,” she replied.

“I WILL,” he said before racing upstairs to his room then back to through the living room in a carnelian and white super suit and cape and out the door.

He stepped through the back door into the fenced backyard of the Granny Wilson’s Victorian home. At one point the large yard entertained a family of five as well as a dog but now, the only people there to enjoy it were Granny Wilson and her new ward, Allen.

Allen glanced at the grass. He made a mental note to mow it the next time he had a chance before taking off into the air and beginning his patrol of the small, lakeside city.

………………..

“CRAI, did you pick up the groceries?” asked Zupilee as she heard the hatch of her spaceship open behind her. She was leaning back in the captain’s seat with her feet up on the dash eating a bag of chips.

“Affirmative,” replied the android as she stiffly walked in with armfuls of paper bags.

“Good! Put them in the cabinets!” Zupilee said as she uncrossed her legs and hit the button that slid open all the cabinets that were part of their little kitchenette.

CRAI did as she was told before returning to her roommates side. She looked up at the spaceship’s windshield. On the shield, America’s Next Top Model was projected. CRAI turned around. There was no projector anywhere in the spaceship and the windshield looked nothing like the typical tv screen.

“Do you want to join me?” asked Zupilee, “The holoscreen gives great video quality!” she said as she continued eating her chips.

‘Holoscreen’ thought CRAI. She committed the term to her internal database.

“My database says that you are supposed to be researching the lives of humans right now.”

“Geh!” Zupilee dropped her chip. She slowly turned to her companion in a strained voice. “Th-that’s what I’m doing! I’m learning about their lives through their media,” she said as an excuse.

CRAI tilted her head to one side. “Wouldn’t it be better to conduct field studies or take notes?”

Zupilee pouted before turning in her seat to face the robot. “Okay! If you’re so smart, what did you learn while getting groceries?”

“Retrieving data. One moment.”

CRAI’s cyan optics glowed a bit brighter before abruptly going back to normal. “Humans exchange coins and paper called money for goods and services. To get to the nearest grocery store from here, one must exit the forest and proceed 1.2 miles west. Grocery stores have parking spots especially for the physically disabled. They are usually the slots nearest to the entrance. Humans experience irritation when made to wait in extensive lines. Adolescents experience traits associated with the emotion of nervousness when they accompanying parent leaves them in line alone without money to pay for their items. Supermarkets are usually kept at-“

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Zupilee said with a sigh. “Maybe I’ll go to one of those “clubs” I hear the Earth has.”

“Unwise. We have school tomorrow and organic organisms need time for rest.”

“Oh come on!”

………………..

Carolina Harrison walked climbed up the stairwell of her home after a long day of work. Even for a spry young thirty year old like her, long days at the office could take quite a tole. As per usual on Thursdays, her husband, Pastor David Harrison was at a meeting nextdoor at the church.

In the past, this would have meant that she was home alone but things were different now. She knocked on the guest bedroom. “Damien!” she called. She opened the door to see the teen in a state of undress. “Whoops! Sorry about that!” she said as she blocked her view with the door.

“It’s okay, I’m just changing my shirt!” said Damien as he tugged his soiled shirt from over his head.

“Just came back from the rec center?” she asked, opening the door back a crack.

“Yeah,” Damien replied as he unwrapped the sports tape from his hands. “I also went for a short run.”

“I hope you’re staying hydrated through all that. Would hate for you to pass out on-” Caroline opened the door a little wider and stopped in her tracks. “How did you get all those scars?”

Damien froze in place as the older woman took in all the keloid scars on his upper body. There were some that looked like they had come from grazes while others looked like they came from slash wounds and still others looked like puncture wounds of some sort.

“You’re only 16⁸, what the heck happened?” she asked worriedly as she drew closer to him.

“I don’t…” Damien let his voice trail off.

Caroline looked at him before letting her worried hand drop to her side. She remembered when Dinari had first dropped Damien off and she and her husband had asked about his eye. He hadn’t exactly given them a straight answer back then too. It seemed that after four weeks, the boy still wasn’t comfortable enough with them to tell them about his scars.⁹

“S-sorry,” she said. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. They seem like they’ve been healed for awhile now anyway.”

“Yes, they have.”

Caroline stood there as Damien put on a fresh shirt in silence. Just as Damien finished putting it on, his phone, navy blue in color began to buzz.

He picked it up and read the message.

“I’m gonna have to go out later,” he said.

“How late?” she asked.

“About 9:00.”

“It’s going to be dark by then,” she replied.

“Dinari.”

She sucked in a breath. “Okay.”

………………..

Arcene sat in her pajamas at her desk on her school computer. Her room was completely dark except for the light of computer screen and desk table.

Her sisters were home. She could hear them going about their business as she sat locked up in her room. Her parents had yet to come home.

She continued scrolling through the webcomic she was reading. It was one she really liked. It was about a girl who could hop into the worlds of the books she read. Normally she would speed through the latest upload with great glee but for some reason, she just wasn’t interested today.

She sighed and closed the laptop before plugging it in for the night. She went to her bookshelf and contemplated starting a new book before deciding against it when she realized she didn’t have anything she particularly wanted to read.

Instead, she went to her window and kneeled on the light blue carpet. Ever since meeting Dinari, whenever she felt for nothing, she always felt the need to look at the stars. She wasn’t sure why exactly the stars had suddenly become so soothing to her. Perhaps it was because of the many times that she and her absent friend had spent the whole night staring at them. They reminded her of him, and thus calmed her restlessness.

“The sky doesn’t look very nice right now though,” she murmured to herself.

This was true. The city lights made the stars a lot harder to see and the moon was in its half phase. It wasn’t as mysterious as a crescent nor as beautiful as a full moon and without the hope of one that a waning gibbous provided.

Arcene was about to call it a night when she spotted a light streaking through the sky. She gasped and straightened herself. It was a shooting star!

Her eyes followed the light as it streaked across the sky. Unlike most shooting stars that disappeared out of sight as they exited the atmosphere, this one seemed to actually be landing.

“Dinari!” Arcene exclaimed. She took note of where the star was heading and scrambled to action.

She slipped on a hoodie and her flip-flops and grabbed her house keys. She raced down the stairs and out of her house. She leapt off the porch and into the yard. She grabbed her silver bicycle, a hand-me-down from her older sister and let it through her gate before hopping on and peddling as fast as she could. She lifted her head to the sky. The falling star was still above her but was gradually falling to the ground.¹⁰ As it drew nearer, she knew exactly where it was going.