Inherently Innocent

But Do Not Be Distracted

"Are you a human?" Thyme asked. The ishine shrieked again.

"Not you. Him!" Liliac pointed at the man.
The ishine moved to the side, covering the person.
"We're not here to attack you," Golshan walked forward. Smart, thought Thyme. He looked the most ishine.
The boy carefully walked forward with his hands in the air. The feathery ishine jumped back, lowering its wings and frowning. It seemed to charge for an attack when the man placed a hand on its shoulder. The bird-like creature looked back with its distant eyes, and quietly took in what the man was telling them. He was guiding.
"So, nymph," Thyme stated.

"What?" Liliac exclaimed, almost ofended, "How? All nymphs were in the Program."
"Were we?" Golshan looked over his shoulder.

"This still doesn't make sense."
"We're sorry to bother you, we were just passing by. We'll leave and pretend like this never happened," Thyme spoke to the stranger couple. His own fellow couple looked at him with angry looks.
Yet the strangers paid him no mind. They kept comunicating amongst themselves, strongly enough to have the ishine turn around, giving their back to the nymphs, just to frown at the young man when he apparently said something stupid. The man frustratingly gestured with his free hand. They communicated through both mediums.

"Yup. That's an ishine," Golshan finally put his hands down.

"Should we leave them? We got what we wanted. We should return to Horizon Hill."

"Thyme! We have a bird ishine and a nymph older than us right in front of us, and you don't want to ask a single question?" Lee reprimanded.

Thyme left out a guttural groan and walked forward, placing a hand on the feathers of the ishine. Imediately, everything turned white.

There was lightning followed by darkness, and moving shadows inside. There were opened cans and abandoned aisles. There were three children. No, four. Were they adults? They were the vague image of a person. They were concepts. The cans had unreadable labels. There was no colour. The lights were always on. Everything was eclipsed.

Their minds worked differently. There were no words. There was no speech.

The ishine turned around and screamed. It hit Thyme's arm with its wing, showing the nymph just how much bone against bone could hurt.

The man walked forward, gently pulling the ishine back. He turned and smiled apologetically at the boy, and offered a hand. He took it.

There was a path, light. A building with a broken sign. Inside, the same images as before flashed.

"They want us to follow them," Thyme spoke to the group.

"Great," Golshan ironically placed his hands on his hips and smiled.

"Shut up, what else do we have to do?" Liliac started walking closer to the group.

"Not die!"

Are you a martian or are you poor? A white wall with red grafity they walked by spelled out. Written underneath in simple black marker read, I was born too late and now I can only hope my burrial ground accepts me.

"What does that mean?" Golshan asked.

Nobody answered, but Thyme noticed Liliac stop for a second to take the words in. He wondered if, had he taken more time to look at the walls, he would have found some those poems written inside Program Imaginaria.

They kept walking. Thyme kept his distance from the bearded man, always closer to Lee and Golshan. They passed by buildings, broken stoplights, fallen signs. It was still unbelievable how, after centuries, you could still see the mark humans had left.

"Guys?" Liliac stopped walking.The boys turned to look, and she was pointing at a large trash can. From its edge, a humanoid figure buried its hands into the pile. It had green skin, and yellow petals on its head. Its green hands slowly turned black as they absorbed the man-made object. The trash slowly turned into a pile of dust. From the residue started growing a tree, growing instantly as if the earth had turned thousands of times in a minute.