Twinkle Eyed

It took Indena a while to get back, but we were all relieved to hear her walk through the front door.

The fear she had on her face quickly eased when she saw me awaiting her return. Naturally, she scolded me for running off.

"I'm sorry," I said, feeling bad for causing her so much stress. "But I did it because you were mean to Yamin for no reason."

"Whoever I'm mad at is none of your business."

"That's not true!" I shouted. "We're a team. So if your a big jerk, by extension so am I!"

She quietly looked at me in a judgmental way, but her eyes eventually failed to keep contact with mine.

Marek let out a loud throat clearing sound to get our attention. "We should tell her about the plan to escape, no?" Marek asked.

"Plan to escape?" One of Indena's brows raised, curiously.

~☆☆☆~

It was just a hair past 2 in the evening. The sun was shining through the overcast and gave me my first real good peek at its warming glow.

The sun is amazing.

Our group was hiking through the valley, trying to find the location of the car Indena and I took shelter in before. I made sure to mark it on my map so we knew exactly where to look.

"This is such a stupid idea," Indena grumbled. "Are we even sure these car parts are going to be in good condition?"

When we saw it last, it wasn't in good shape, especially since a moose was attacking it for some reason. It probably was in even worse shape now. But there was a chance the spark plugs were still okay. That was all we needed to fix the car in the garage, at least. Marek's car was a whole other issue.

"We'll see when we get there," I told her.

"At least most of the snow melted."

I don't think she would have agreed to this plan if there was snow still around. She'd be in an even worse mood, if that was possible.

Based on my map, it was only a little longer before we got there.

Rather than continue to complain, Indena decided to strike up conversation, which I worried would be its own mistake.

"So…Blue Boy…" she aptly nicknamed Marek because of his coat.

"Eh?" He turned to her.

"What's your deal? That blue coat looks awfully fancy."

He did look fancy, minus the dried up blood and cuts all over his clothes.

"I come from a prestigious family in Favana. Like my father before me, I serve as a Jr member of the Royal Council of Erdareich."

"So, are you royalty?" I asked with stars in my eyes.

"No," he chuckled. "I'm just a representative politician."

Uh oh… Daddy once told me not to talk to politicians. He said they lie a lot and you can never know what they're really after.

Should I start ignoring him? Mmm…nah. He seemed nice enough.

"So you're a bootlicker," Indena commented. "Got it.”

"How rude!" he gave her a scowl, then his head fell in shame. "Not that I'm proud of my life choices..."

"What about you, deula?" Indena turned to Yamin next.

Yamin grimaced at Indena's name calling.

"Please, don't call me that."

"Oh, did I hurt the little deula's feelings?" Indena folded her arms and condescendingly tilted her head up. "Why don't you ask your Eighth Star Angel to come down and strike me with lightning? I thought you guys like that sort of thing."

There she goes again, being a jerk to Yamin!

Rather than let her get away with it, I released a small electrical discharge from my crystal heart to shock her.

*ZAP!*

"Ouch!" Indena skipped as she was electrocuted. "Why you…"

"Keep being mean to her and I'll shock you again!"

This didn't count as an attack since it was mild. So I considered it Pavlovian conditioning more than anything.

Indena looked mad at me, but her face started to sag with defeat.

"Yeah, fine…guess I'm the jerk again…"

As disingenuous as she sounded, she did stop.

"But seriously," she tried again to chat with Yamin, but less aggressively. "What's your deal?"

"There's not exactly a whole lot to tell," Yamin summoned the courage to speak. "I don't have a job or anything yet, and I was homeschooled for a while."

"Why were you home schooled?" Marek asked.

"Well…um…" Yamin played with her star shield necklace. "Kids used to bully me for being half Kanai."

Indena's face turned red and her body heat rose up significantly, same with her heart rate.

"O-oh…Kanai, huh?" she rubbed the back of her head. “That sucks.”

Based on my database, and a lot of subbed anime I've watched, Kanai are people of the Far East. Indena was definitely Kanai. You could see it in her eyes. Yamin obviously wasn't full blooded, but she had some similar facial features.

"Childhood wasn't all bad," Yamin said. "I spent most of my time at church or with my mom shopping. I-I mean, I still do that stuff. I even stargaze on clear nights."

Ooh! Stargazing is something I've always wanted to do!

I latched onto Yamin's arm and startled her. I hoped she’d let me join the fun one of these times.

“Please please please let me come with you next time!” I begged.

"I um…" she nervously patted my head a few times. "To church, shopping with my mom, or stargazing?"

Gee, all of those kinda sound fun...

"Yes," I replied with a shrug and smile. "Mostly stargazing!"

"I’d be happy to have you tag along, next time," she smiled.

"Yeah!" I cheered.

As my joy was at a peek, a horrible sight brought my spirits back down like a crashing meteor.

A collection of metal scrap and broken parts littered a small clearing in the trees. It was like a giant tin can had gotten shredded by a lawnmower.

No doubt about it. This was what was left of the car.

"Holy crap… Ha!" Indena laughed. "That moose must have been super pissed off!

Yeah. This wreck wasn't going to help us at all.

Yamin tried to be optimistic and say that we might be able to find something useful, but it was just a hazard to sift through that sharp scrap.

"Are there any other cars here?" Marek asked.

“I-I was wondering that too,” Yamin spoke up. “Where there’s two car wrecks, there’s probably more.”

We hadn't seen any others, but I had a suspicion that maybe we would find something elsewhere as well. That’s when I got the idea to check from above. And what better place than to look out from our first shelter when we got here?

~☆☆☆~

Indena and I lead the group back to the rock overhang. The sun cast a shadow over it from its angle in the sky.

Something was crawling around that darkness though. I activated my night vision and gave it a good scan.

-WARNING! THREAT SIGHTED!-

-IFF tags activated-

-Locust demon tagged; Foe-

-Enemy count = (20)-

More of those demons from last night! They must have been hiding here to keep out of the sun.

We’d been in the daylight for a while, but I was still charging up like the solar battery I was, so I didn’t have stardust to defeat them.

“If that’s one of those locust demons, maybe we shouldn’t go in there,” Indena suggested.

“Sorry, guys…” I slouched with sorrow. “I don’t have enough stardust to deal with twenty of them.”

It’s too bad. We could have seen a lot from up here. Guess we just needed to find a new spot.

If only I knew how to use my wings too. A bird's eye view would have been even better.

Yamin perked up, then kneeled down to my level. “Why’s stardust important?”

“It’s the only thing that can kill demons,” I answered.

Her eyes wandered until they were looking toward the shade full of dark creatures. Then she glanced at Marek before looking back at me.

“Wait…” she uttered, rising up and extending her arm toward the darkness “That’s right...”

Yamin’s eyes sparkled brightly, followed by her skin radiating rays of luminance all over. The palm of her right hand began to twinkle and it grew brighter by the second.

Finally at the peek of its glow, the light that burst from her hand outshined the sun. The other humans had to turn away as her brilliant challenge to the dark wiped away all the demons in the shadow.

“Damn…” Indena uttered in awe. “She’s more an angel than you, Shrimp.”

“I’m not an angel,” I reminded her. That didn’t make what Yamin did any less impressive.

“If I wasn’t so scared back home, I’d have protected my town.” Yamin lowered her arm. "But, looks like I wasn't strong enough in the moment to do something."

“Doesn't the church teach you that stuff?” Indena asked.

“No, they don’t teach the average church goer how to fight demons,” she said. “Some of us didn’t even believe they really existed…until now.”

“You’re full of it,” Indena responded.

“No, I-I’m not…” Yamin explained that a lot of people in her church thought of demons and darkness as metaphors for evil, injustice and sinful natures all people have. “We’ve only ever been told that a priest can fight against demons anyway, and even then it’s a losing battle until the Eighth Star shows up.”

They were really putting a lot of their eggs in the Eighth Star’s basket. But luckily, now I wasn’t the only one in this party who could use stardust.

~☆☆☆~

From up here on the rock overhang, Yamin actually managed to spot some more car wrecks. She had good eyes.

One wasn’t too far away, so we checked it out.

More of that dust was on the front seat. This dust was the same stuff that happened when the Reaper stole the life out of the monster wolves and plants.

A morbid thought entered my head, wondering if all the dust we were seeing around these places were actually people the Reaper had stolen all the mana from… I kept that to myself, but Indena’s grimace told me she was thinking the same thing.

Marek popped up the car's hood, then made an endearing cheer.

“Yeeah!” he shook his fists with joy. “We can use this to fix both cars!”

It was a similar model to the one he had, so it made me hopeful that we’d be out of this valley soon.

On the other end of the car, Yamin and Indena were inspecting the trunk…

"Aaahh!" Yamin screamed.

We all rushed to the back of the car.

A skeleton was inside there, long decayed from being trapped inside the trunk.

I did a bio scan to see if I could identify anything about this person, but all I was getting was that they were male and a few of his leg bones were broken. He also had some sort of bandana around his mouth.

Yamin covered my eyes and pushed me away. "A kid shouldn't have to see that."

It wouldn't be the first skeleton I've seen recently. The Reaper was way more spooky than this.

Using one of the shovels in the trunk, Marek started digging up a grave for the skeleton and tossed him in. I sprinkled in the dust from the car seats, just in case those were people at one point too.

Before putting the dirt back, Yamin kneeled down and said a prayer. I joined her.

"Lord, we call upon your name to ask you to claim the soul of whomever was lost here…" Her words were almost song-like, as if she were praying along to a mystical rhythm.

"Yes, lead these people to heaven. Amen." I said in conclusion of our prayer.

"So be…Huh?" Yamin's eyes perked open.

"What?" I turned to her.

We both shared a few awkward sounds before deciding to nod and close the confusing case.

"Gee, all that praying sure is helping get this dirt in the grave," Indena commented as she and Marek shoveled in soil. “Make yourselves useful and start unscrewing the engine parts, please?”

Sigh…always so pushy.