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Prep writing for next event, one of ???

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Sometimes the firefly swarms in Xibalba were so thick you could scarcely open your mouth for fear of swallowing several dozen. Of course, this did not bother Xbalanque because, for one thing, he controlled the fireflies like he controlled everything else and could keep them away from him if he liked, and for another, if he did happen to swallow twenty or thirty of them, it was just extra protein. Today, though, the swarms were thin. He had dispatched a great many of the fireflies out to the wilds of the universe after sensing a disturbance a month previously, so their swarming had been greatly cut back.

He knew that many of the fireflies would not return, and this was expected. They were disposable soldiers, cheap to breed and cheap to disperse. If only ten of them made it back with interesting news then the whole endeavor was worth it.

There was not a whole lot happening today, which hardly differentiated it from the days before, or the years before… In fact, today was scarcely different from the last several centuries. Xbalanque refused to follow this line of thought to its logical conclusion, and in trying not to, did so anyways. He was a dying god of a dead kingdom.

Thankfully, before this thought could continue any further, a firefly coming to land on his hand interrupted him. He lifted it for a closer look. It smelled like the wilds of the cosmos.

“What news?” Xbalanque asked the beetle. “What have you seen?”

“This one went all the way to the edge of the world and rode the solar winds much further,” said the firefly. Fireflies, even the self-aware sort, had the tendency to refer to themselves in the third person, and some of them took it upon themselves to be poetic. “This one rode the solar wind all the way to the Big Planet beyond the rock belt, where it found a vessel floating in space. It could smell your touch on the vessel and another touch, like yours but not like yours. It entered the vessel and searched for the smell and found a boy, and more of its kind who nested in the boy’s hair. The boy smelled of you but also of the not-you, and this one observed him take himself apart on many occasions.”

Xbalanque regarded the firefly curiously, his mind churning, seeking to explain this. He called another swarm of fireflies over.

“Check the dead lands,” he told the swarm. “See that my brother is still secured there. You stay here,” he told the scout bug. “You have done well.”

The swarm buzzed off to do as instructed, and Xbalanque found some sweet pollen for the scout.

“They boy lived beyond the world?” he asked. “Near the big planet? The red one, or the one with rings?”

“This one found him at the red one,” said the scout bug. “The boy lived in a vessel. It moved.”

Xbalanque nodded, considering this. The swarm returned.

“These ones could not find your brother,” they said.

Xbalanque swore.

“Shall these ones sound an alarm?” they asked, and Xbalanque was about to tell them to do so when it dawned on him that he already knew where his brother had gone to, and that he could prove useful yet.

“No,” he told them, and dismissed the swarm. From his head, he plucked a long, shiny black hair, and from his temple he drew a small ball of gray brain matter, so small he would not miss it. He wrapped the hair around the ball and cupped it between his palms until it became a firefly. He held his palms to his lips and whispered instructions to it.

“Take this one to where you saw the boy,” he instructed. “It knows what to do when you get there.”

The first firefly flashed a sign of agreement and took off, the second following closely behind. Xbalanque sat back on his couch, content to watch them go. His brother would prove himself useful whether he wanted to or not.

Prep writing for next event, three of ???

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On Monday, he woke up screaming.

On Tuesday, he woke up on the floor.

On Wednesday, he hit his head on the top bunk.

On Thursday, he was screaming again.

On Friday, Astor did all three.

“People are going to think I’m beating you,” said Chess as she cleaned a cut on his forehead. “What on earth are you dreaming about?”

Astor thought for a moment. In the past, he’d had very vivid dreams, culminating in the night he met Zaoll, but after that they’d kind of tapered off. And the last few nights he couldn’t remember any at all. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You must know,” said Chess, dabbing peroxide on the cut. Astor winced away from her.

“Ow!” he said.

“Sorry,” said Chess. “Hold still. This is deep – I need to get them to look at that loose panel. You’re sure you don’t remember?”

Astor thought again. He shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Hold still,” said Chess. She dug around in the medicine kit for some liquid stitches.

“Okay,” said Astor, and shivered as she applied blue sealant to the cut. “That’s cold.”

“All done, kiddo,” said Chess, closing the medicine kit. She gave him a rough pat on the back and got up. “Go find yourself some breakfast. I’ve got a busy day. We’re going into port on Ganymede tonight.”

“Alright,” said Astor. He turned to look at his cut in the mirror, and gave it an experimental prod. The stitches were rapidly drying from blue to clear.

“Don’t pick at it,” warned Chess as she left.

“Okay,” said Astor. He gave her a few minutes, and then left the bunkroom and headed for the Crew caf. He never dared go to the passenger caf – crew caf had better food, and even the more experienced passengers, the ones on longer voyages, knew it. He found himself a scone and a juice box and sat down to eat. He was undisturbed, and finished quickly. He wanted to go down to the engine room today and see how the kittens were doing –

He got to his feet to leave, and was hit with a sudden sensation of vertigo. The boy staggered forward and caught hold of a chair for balance. After a second or two, the dizziness passed. He frowned and shrugged it off, then kept on his way down to the engine room.

As he went, he noticed a buzzing in his ears, but he told himself it was just normal ship noise. He was fine. He didn’t have a concussion. You couldn’t get a concussion from falling out of bed.

(It was not normal ship noise, said his subconscious. He was not fine. He had a concussion and needed to go to the medical bay.)

He took the stairs down to the engine room two at a time, ran the last length of hallway, and stomped in, trying to make up for this morning’s less-than-stellar track record with pure exuberance. “Hi, Rory!” he called.

Rory O’Tate stuck his head up from a machine bay several yards away. “Hoy, Astor!”

“Where are the cats today?” called Astor.

“Check under the coupling box,” replied Rory. Astor went, still ignoring the buzzing in his ears, even though it was nearly as loud as the engine by now. He crouched by the coupling box, and nine pairs of blue eyes peered back at him.

“Hey, kitties,” he whispered, and gently lifted up one of the kittens. It was one of the two headed ones, and he was especially partial to it because it had a stripe down its noses like he did.

The kitten mewled at him. The buzzing in his ears got louder and gave way to crackling, like communications static. Astor shook his head and gave the cat’s belly a scratch.

“Hunahpu,” said a voice in his head, and a flash of pain momentarily blinded Astor. “Hunahpu, can you hear me?”

“That’s not my name,” he said dimly, and there was more pain before he thankfully passed out.

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“Astor,” said Chess. “Astor, can you hear me?” She sounded far more worried than Astor could ever recall her sounding before. He opened his eyes. The pain was gone.

“What happened?” he asked. Chess was leaned over him, her head backlit by the bright lights of the medical bay.

“You passed out in the engine room,” she said. “Do you remember anything?”

He had… he had heard a voice. But it didn’t seem so important to tell her now. In fact, if it had anything to do with all that Fa’e stuff and the dream and Zaoll and what happened to Zaoll, then it was probably very important that he didn’t tell her.

Astor shook his head. “No,” he said.

“I’ll check him for a concussion,” said the Medic, and Chess moved out of the way. She seemed to have sensed Astor’s hesitation, however, and gave him a look that he instinctively knew meant she thought he was lying.

They were all so distracted that they did not notice that one of Astor’s fireflies had dislodged itself from his hair and flown away. And had Astor been the one to notice, he would have realized it was not one of his fireflies at all.