Flux

Prologue

It was one of those days. You know the kind. Wet, not exactly cold but not warm either, terribly windy and not at all conducive to outside play. Thus, Aiya found herself sitting on the weekly collection of cracker crumbs and dog hair on the playroom's sofa, gathered during last week's lazy adventures of doing nothing.

It had been a long week of rain. A strange week if Aiya thought about it. Never in all her 14 years had she ever seen it rain for six days straight. Was this what her parents had been talking about?

She had heard her parents discussing the climate changes during dinner conversations and having late-night hushed talks about the potential dangers that were most likely coming to their part of the world due to the inevitable shift in weather regions, but surely this rain was unrelated.

Aiya felt a tiny bloom of something in her lower belly that felt odd, and she didn't want to focus on it. Later, after years of experience brought understanding, she would learn this feeling to be part of her natural intuition of changes to come.

However, at the moment, safe in her home, being warm and dry, she made a sudden and easy decision. She simply stopped thinking about it, the way only children can do, and went back to her drawing.

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Sometime later, Aiya's brother suddenly bounded into the room, bellowing a loud sound mixed between a yodel and a scream. He burst through the door, so suddenly Aiya had felt her bones almost jump clear out of her skin, while her drawing hand jerked violently, causing her pencil to make a horrid slash across her almost finished sketch of Wesley Fitzgerald. Before she was aware of herself, she heard her own voice screaming.

"What the hell, Marvin! Shut up, would you!" Then more quietly, she muttered to no one but herself, "Bloody hell, the little shit made me ruin my picture."

She felt both shame and excitement at the minor profanity spoken and the scorn she quietly voiced for her little brother, all the while hearing her mother's voice reminding her that, "Patience is a virtue Aiya" and, "Remember my love, when you're upset with someone, sometimes it is much easier to join them than fight them."

This last sentiment was always followed by her mother's most mischievous grin and a wink, leaving Aiya wondering if her mother was some kind of ancient trickster goddess instead of an average homemaker who liked to blog about the dinners she made.

Turning back to her brother, deciding the drawing was a loss and not worth being upset over, Aiya noticed her brother either didn't hear her over his boisterous voice or, as he often did, chose to pretend she wasn't even there.

She felt the corners of her mouth twitch. Her brother's ability to focus so entirely on one thing and be in that moment was some sort of magical gift, she decided. She didn't think it was simply because he was only ten; she was sure it was something special that was purely Marvin.

As she watched him jump around the room on a pretend horse, or something, possibly fighting monsters or dragons, Aiya reluctantly felt her mouth turn into a full smile.

Even though initially she had been startled and a little upset by his sudden intrusion, she now found herself captivated by her brother's imagination.

Just as he was struggling with a particularly large monster, which had four arms and two heads with long sharp teeth that were dripping with the last warrior's blood, she found herself standing beside him, imaginary weapon at the ready.

Glancing sideways, catching his eye, she said, "What is the plan, great warrior? How do we defeat this horrid beast?"

And thus, the afternoon vanished before them in a flurry of battles and celebrations as they laid to rest one foul monster after the other.

They didn't notice the rain turning from a gentle, steady pour to a torrential downfall as if the heavens had opened the flood gates of a long-forgotten waterfall or the strange blue and purple lightning that streaked through the skies high above the heavy black clouds.

They slew their monsters, giggled often and roared furious battle cries until all they wanted was popcorn, orange soda and a movie. All the while, something terrifying and strange was happening almost 6,000 miles away over the Mediterranean Sea.

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In the years to come, the afternoon of slaying monsters with her little brother would be one of Aiya's fondest memories. The world changed that night, and everything she had ever known would eventually be torn away.

By her twenty-fourth birthday, Aiya would find herself fighting for her life alongside her brother with real weapons, wishing the monsters were still just imaginary.