TEN - The Very Last Lunese

I stood on the porch holding the dot, eyes closed, while watching the woman huddled in the glass cage miles and miles away. It was odd. I couldn’t quite get a handle on how far in time it was from me. It was less than a month, but in which direction?

A menacing mist swirled inside the glass box. Like the Mist here only darker – dead. Arou’s mom sat on her haunches, her arms wrapped around her knees. Her violet eyes flashed with an air of hauteur. On either side of the box were large, eight-foot tall, misty-looking cocoons not visible to most people: Miasmen. I could see them because I held the VIH-dot. She thought I’d know what to do. She was wrong.

“Ricci!” I whispered as he walked into the room with a young cadet who didn't look a day over twelve but was probably sixteen.

Ricci was an Ephor now and looked very much still like himself cockier. The woman stood up. She glared at the man.

He looked at her and smiled: the way the Cheshire cat smiled at Alice when he discovered she couldn’t make her own body parts disappear on command. The Cadet was wide-eyed and chapfallen.

“It’s the First Lady. I thought she was dead,” said the cadet.

“No. But she is the last of the Lunese,” the Ephor answered.

“The slave race from the moon?” asked the cadet.

“I was never anybody’s slave,” she said.

The Cadet glanced sideways at the Ephor.

“You only did everything that I ever asked,” the Ephor said. He turned to the Cadet and began speaking to him. “Either way, she’s the last.”

The Lady responded, “You wish I was the only one left.”

“Yes, well there’s that. But she’s not full Lunese now is she?” the Ephor countered.

“She’s coming,” the Lady said to the Ephor. “Arous is coming.”

“You think she’ll come for you? You abandoned her.” The Ephor and First Lady Gray were nose-to-nose with only the glass separating them.

The woman was silent.

“She’s beautiful. The most beautiful creature,” said the cadet staring into the glass cage.

“Catch your drool, Cadet,” he said. “Oh, introductions. Where are my manners? Lady Gray, Cadet Hodge-Baire, etcetera, etcetera. Keep a close eye on her and don’t do anything stupid.”

The Ephor turned to walk out of the room. He stood by the door and looked back at her. She was staring at him. The Miasmen on either side of the glass cage shivered. The Cadet noticed them for the first time.

“Miasmen!”

“Calm down - for crying out loud! You act like you’ve never seen one before.” The Ephor laughed.

He continued, “Of course you haven’t. You’re not important enough. Only VDP’s see them – Very Dead People. Well, they see them right before they die, well, now that the Miasmen are mine. ”

“You are still so full of yourself,” she said, laughing she sat back down.

“You followed me every step of the way. Abandoned your daughter to chase me all the way out here. Don’t forget that.”

The Lady had turned cold. “Don’t you forget: our daughter.”

The Ephor turned to the cadet. “Cadet, she’s yours. If you handle her well, you’ll have a front row seat to the beginning – or ending, not sure how that’s going to work out yet – to the very last Lunese - Half-Lunese.”

He reached for the door and turned back to the cadet again.

“And if you think she’s fetching, wait until you see our daughter.”



I opened my eyes and looked from the porch and down the oak-lined drive. As I was opening them, I saw flashes of events from that moment in the past as it sped into time: the Lady handing a VIH-dot to the cadet, the cadet riding a black horse through the desert, Edlawit finding her lamb and receiving the hand delivered VIH-dot, Arous driving like a mad-woman across the desert, Arous sitting in the café with the cadet seated near her, watching her. It’s been weeks since she ran away. It’s been even longer since her birth father came to see her.

Soon, she’ll be close enough to him that he can watch her in the flesh. Until then, he has his spies. One of which, must have been the cadet in the room, the boy who delivered the dot. “Simon Hodges-Baire.” I said. “Soon to be Captain Hodges-Baire. Wonder what he has to do to get Ricci to hand that title over.”