Solaluna

Solaluna

N. C. Franz



Chapter 1

Moonside

Lora’s Little Mishap



Lora had never been so angry. She was simply furious! Her entire family was in an uproar! And over what?! Some lousy solar flare that only happened once every thousand years? Sheesh!

         “Calm down!” Her brother insisted. Caleesh was always so passive. He never seemed to have to cope with problems, even though he was only 3 years older than her, who was only 17.

         “I can’t! Our family sucks!” Lora said, quite rudely. For on Moonside, it was considered the most dishonorable thing to do – degrading your family. Family was exceedingly important on Moonside.

         “SHHHH! Can you imagine what would happen to you if someone heard you say that? You would be banished to Nalulan!” He whispered. She quivered slightly at the thought of this – Nalulan was the only place where Moonsiders had no power on Moonside. Where they felt weak, exposed, even repressed. This prison, of sorts, was located at the very Western tip of Moonside – the closest point on all Solaluna to Quilqar, the Moonsiders’ source of their unfathomable power. Thank Heavens the servants weren’t listening – otherwise, this conversation would’ve already been circulating the entire court.

         “I hate this! The very thought of putting up with our family when they quarrel over something so trivial as this flare is beyond me!” Lora spewed, making her intentions to isolate herself for a while undeniably clear.

         “Lora…” He paused. “Please don’t do this.” He pleaded with her. “Please stay here.” He was so calm when he said anything. She almost bought it.

         “I just can’t! Every time this happens, our family gets so…” She couldn’t finish her sentence without further dishonoring her family, though self-isolation was also dishonorable. This was a no-win scenario.

         “Lora. You know that Mom and Dad would hate it if you left at a time like this. They are always so mad when they learn that someone in the family is gone during a time like this. And you also know how Mom gets when she’s mad…” He made her feel so guilty in the way he spoke, softly crooning, eating away at her emotional defense. The tears in her eyes started to well up inside, blurring her vision. Caleesh was starting to look wounded – his way of “going in for the kill.”

         “I’m starting to not even care what Mother thinks. I hate this.” She restated, though weaker, more susceptible to his persistent plead. She stroked the soft petal of a  Balqua flower with her pale, almost sallow blue skin. Balqua flowers are the most common plant in all of Moonside, and also the most beautiful. They are always in bloom, for it is always night on Moonside. Balqua flowers are a difficult-to-describe shade of deep, imperceptibly faint blue that is always shaded to match the mood of the moon.

         “Sometimes I feel the same way about it, but then I remember that I have responsibilities to fulfill in our household.” He said loyally. That was always something she struggled with. He glanced around, making sure nobody was listening. All he saw was their family garden, bathed in twilight, full to the brim with Moonflowers, all in full bloom, Lunar Grass, which filled out the lawn and the rest of the untamed landscape of Moonside, and all sorts of other indigenous Moonside plants. Little did he know that they had an eavesdropper hidden in a rather thick cluster of Craterberries.

         “Well, I HAVE to get out of here.” She inhaled sullenly. “I can’t handle it. All this bickering about absolutely nothing of any importance!”

         “It IS important. Solar flares have a major impact on Sunsiders, and though not really that dangerous to us, it could be lethal to them. And you know what could happen if they were wiped out…” He said. She knew full well what he was talking about.          

         See, if Sunsiders get too much energy, their bodies can’t contain it, and so they die, rather violently, charring what little of the Sunside wasn’t charred. When that happened – and nobody knew why – the entirety of Solaluna, their shared but separated planet, would be exposed to powerful heat that would kill Moonsiders as well. This hadn’t happened for millennia, but Moonsiders have very good memory. Their elders told stories of when only a handful of both races survived. That was after the War of the Sun and the Moon, but it was still an event which would be marred in Solalunian history forever.

         “I know, but that’s just a tale. Just a myth. We don’t even know if it even really happened.” She said, though even she didn’t believe the blasphemy that she was spewing.

         Their eavesdropper was getting quite an earful. This was a rather juicy conversation to be hearing. He would get paid a fortune if he relayed this to his customer. He quickly, but rather loudly, started off out of the Kamdran’s garden. A little too loudly.

         Both Lora and Caleesh had been highly trained in the way of astralstriding. They could streak from place to place so quickly, it was difficult to see them. They were like water bursting through a geyser. Their eavesdropper never saw it coming, even though he had also been trained as an astralstrider. One moment, he was leaving their conversation area, and the next, two teens were standing in front of them, defensive stances impenetrable, and glares furious. He noticed that these kids were the ones who were having the conversation only moments ago, a good 30 feet away. These kids were no pushovers. He would either have to do some very sweet talking, or pull out some very nice moonpulling. Caleesh and Lora were both dressed in very formal attire, woven from  Balqua flower petals, and so they were obviously very rich, because their clothes were absolutely decadent. They provided little flexibility, which was crucial to a moonpuller, and almost no protection physically against moonpulling. He judged that they would easily fall prey to a quick and precise form. He stretched his mind onto the nearest source of water he could find, which just so happened to be in the various flowers and lunarberries beside him. He dared not take any water from his opponents, for that would put him in the worst desirable illegal situation possible – the death penalty. He found the water in his mind, and like magnets were pulling the water in the viney stems ever-so-slowly, they started to contract. The teens, knowing what he was about to attempt, began to scour the garden for the place where he was going to strike at them. They shot out their minds, interwoven for battle, searching for the water that they couldn’t claim. Lora found it first, and immediately following, so did Caleesh. They both tightened their stances, ready for a lightning-quick slash or tendril of water from that spot where they knew their eavesdropper’s mind was plotting. They coordinated a counter-strategy, and so the game began.

         Moonpulling fights are much like a chess game. Since one can reach out with their minds toward whatever water source they want, the other can do the same to both identify that water source as the other’s, and claim one for their own. If there is no other water source, an intense mental battle is the only course of option. The moonpuller with the most mental fortitude is usually the winner, though in some cases, this is not true. These mental battles can last for as long as both parties are willing to fight over a source of water but neither can gain the upper hand. But this isn’t what Caleesh and Lora had in mind. Since they had other possible sources, they had no need to fight over the one that the eavesdropper had claimed. One possible way to go was for each to claim sources on the left and right of their attacker, though since it would be closer to him and farther from them, he would have the upper hand if he decided to drop his claim on the spot he picked and battle with them for that one. They didn’t know what kind of fighter he was, so they played it safe and chose one behind them, both on their corresponding sides, that would be difficult for him to battle for them with. They claimed, and everyone cohesively possessed their water. This only took a matter of seconds, though that was only a fraction of the fight. The rest was purely physical.

         Eahasti, their eavesdropper, was a very quick, agile fighter. He often chose the easiest way to fight, sometimes rather than the best. He could manipulate water and turn it into whatever shape he wanted so fast it was impossible to see with the naked eye. But he chose to taunt them into making a mistake by feigning slowness, and morphing the water slowly. He chose a razorblade form for his floating mass of water. His hand clenched, and the water contracted and quickly assumed a deadly sharp razorblade shape. His feign worked, as both teens chose a heavier, slower body form, expanding their shoulders and keeping their arms and legs closer to their center, ready to take on heavy water blasts. Lora always played this technique on her younger brother, Haqueesh, when they sparred together, so she had an inkling of what he was doing. She whispered to her older brother that he might want to be ready to change forms to be ready for extremely fast blasts of water. She chose the fast defensive stance, and he stayed with the heavy one. This stayed for a good long minute, before the first water was flung. In the blink of an eye, Eahasti plunged his hand forward, commanding the water to zip outward toward his target, which happened to be Caleesh. The surging razor blazed past at unimaginable speed, and for a moment, it seemed as though nothing could stop it. Seeing it in the corner of her eye, Lora was ready for this fast slash, and chose to divert its course slightly to Caleesh’s left, away from her, using a swipe of her arm, equally fast. It veered the blade off course, and flew quickly away, losing cohesiveness, and slowly dropping. It was still fast enough to slice through a thin line of plants as the force of gravity made it drop down to plant-level. For a counter, Caleesh used his water to become a strong, compact ball pressurized to the point that it became solid in a millisecond, and threw it, overhead, with pinpoint accuracy, at Eahasti’s chest. Though probably not lethal, this would knock the wind out of him, and possibly break a few ribs. Or at least, it would’ve, had Eahasti not stopped it fully mid-air. It wasn’t a particularly fast projectile, and though it had great mass, it was a small matter for Eahasti to claim it as his own and turn it against his opponent, making the ball become a million rock-hard bullets that went at even faster speeds than the razor. Again, with ease this time, Caleesh vaporized the bullets at the middle of their flight. This was all done with a simple hand gesture, because all the moonpuller really had to do was visualize what he or she wanted the water to become, and use a simply gesture to realize it. One could say that this action was purely mental, while another would say that this was because of the physical. Such points of view were mainly what decided which form the moonpuller would assume on a regular basis. Caleesh thought it was a physical reaction for the water, and so he was a very animated and heavy moonpuller. Caleesh, by this time, had adapted his stance to offset the speed of his assailant. Lora, simultaneously, was preparing an attack of her own. She bundled up the water and it started spinning, frothing up inside of her hands. The swirling ball started to glow and hum with radiant energy. Obviously, she was a very skilled moonpuller, because only practiced moonpullers could lunarize water. This meant that the water could not be stopped by another moonpuller until the lunarization wore off. Similar to reversing the polarity of metal, lunarization affected the water on a molecular level, changing the shape of the particles of water, and sending them into an almost plasma-like frenzy. This is what caused it to glow and hum. Eahasti got ready to dodge, because he couldn’t stop it using traditional methods. Lora’s stance widened, indicating that she was going to either create a wave and surge it out straight toward him, or do a side-hand water-sphere at low-speeds, because the widening of a stance means it will be a heavier attack. He was right – at least for the most part. She had her toes pointing inward, so her attack would be very compact. She twisted her wrists as to show she would continue to guide the water as it raced toward him. Again, all this took place in a matter of seconds. She chose the wave, and sent her hands high into the air above her. She threw them down, and with a deafening “CRASH!” the water went cascading in Eahasti’s direction. One might’ve felt sorry for him, seeing as he was being followed by a giant, glowing wave of coursing, blue water. Then Lora did something Eashasti had never seen before: as the wave overtook him, it wrapped around him, shoving him into its cocoon. Lora could still control it, and he held no sway over it. Since he couldn’t make any sufficient movement to summon water, he simply cast his gaze in front, and started sweating profusely.