Location: forest on the outskirts Lunar city, MOON
Time: 8pm
“I’m going to embarrass myself, Hazelnut. That’s the only thing that can come out of this meeting,” I told her.
“How am I supposed to make a decision for the WHOLE country!? I mean, I know, I’m 18 and I should probably have most of this ‘king’ stuff figured out but seriously!? This meeting’s gonna have an impact on everyone who lives under the MOON!” I yelled to Chestnut like I was crazy. Which I probably was crazy. Did I mention Hazelnut was a raccoon?
It didn’t matter that I was yelling in the middle of the forest at night. Not much people would notice, since the people of Moon country were nocturnal and nowhere near quietly going about their night. Well, my people, since I’d be king of this country in about three years anyway, but that didn’t matter to people in this town either.
Of course as the royal family my parents and I lived in the capital of Moon country which was a city called Lunar, so the people around here were so used to seeing me that if I did something crazy or unusual, they’d hardly turn their head my way. But that’s all beside the point.
Right now I was supposed to be getting ready for my first board meeting, which was in thirty minutes in counting. I tried to ask my parents what this meeting was about and how I was supposed to get ready for it, but they refused to tell me. ‘A king should always be able to think fast and make a smart decision for his people, even on very short notice.’ my father had preached to me during breakfast. Okay, so a king should. But Dad never said how a king should deal with having to make a decision on such. My way of dealing with this was going deep into the forest to sit and count stars while venting to a raccoon that I had named Hazelnut (Before you judge me, she’s a great listener!).
I loved staring at the night sky. All those tiny glowing dots they call stars, reminding me that I was only a pebble in their grand picture of the galaxy, a single grit even, or maybe a dust of sand. I loved how out in the forest alone, I could hear all the crickets talking to each other and the sometimes, if I was lucky, clear, uninterrupted howls front the pack of wolves that lived not too far away. Ha. My version of bliss.
“Why do we even have to migrate south anyway!? Can’t we just stay here?” I asked, but knew the answer. My dad had said it before when I was really young:
“If we don’t migrate south, it'll set the world off balance. The moon can’t stay on one side of the earth forever.”
“So we control the moon?” I had asked him.
He smiled. “We don’t control it so much as guide it. If the Moon’s people move, it moves with us.”
“So we have to live in the night forever?” I had asked him.
My dad had answered with his favorite catch phrase. “Yes. That’s just the way it is. Just the way it is.”
Wow. I wasted ten minutes just thinking and staring at the sky. I’d better head back now, as my parents will throw a huge fit if I'm late for my very first decision-making meeting.
I said goodbye to Hazelnut and started my way back into town. She became nothing but a black shadow in the darkness, already headed off to find her children who were off playing near the creek.
I broke into a run, using pure instinct to find the town along with the help of a few fireflies who ever-so kindly lit the way. I was running like a wild man. I could feel the amazing cold night air flowing past me.
GRUUUUUUURRRNNNN
After two wide steps I caught my running short. Again, I heard what sounded like a car engine starting up. There were no cars in this forest. Had to be an animal. I looked around, wondering what could have made that-
GRRRUUNNN
I turned to my left to be face to face with a huge brown bear. Ah. so it wasn’t the wind blowing on my neck, it was just this huge bear's nose!
“Stay calm, stay calm.” I chanted to myself as I slowly backed away. I was almost to a range where I felt safe when I just had to step on a twig. The noise scared me and I tripped and fell in the leaves.
It’s ears twitched.
I started to feel very sweaty. The bear’s eyes soon opened, and the next thing I knew, it was staring right at me.
I really didn’t feel like dealing with a bear right now. But I guess I didn’t have a choice, huh? Instead of attacking me, the bear came up from underneath the fallen tree it was sleeping below and stretched. Wait a minute. I recognized this bear.
“Pancho?”
The bear turned to me and gave me a nod before leaving. It was Pancho. When my people migrated to our city here up north, seeing bears became common, then usual. Knowing Cold season was on its way, I had only a few more days of seeing him before he went into hibernation. At least I wouldn’t be here to miss him during that time. If all went right, this city would be left as a ghost town as soon as he shut his eyelids for the next four months.
Back in town, everyone was just waking up. I saw a window slide open and a girl a little younger than me look out, the moonlight shining in her eyes and the light wind ruffling her hair. I saw bright lights as I passed the Shine & Dine cafe where the people were just ordering their nightly coffee. I heard the whooshing of the night train, a speedy metro that ran from as early as dusk to as late as dawn. Not that the sun ever came up around here.
People littered the city streets: as many phones glowing in people’s hands as there were stars in the sky. Talking from all over. Some little boys playing football on the sidewalk of their street. The day’s sleeping was officially gone, it was Night Time.
Up ahead I saw a big, black, circle-shaped building with wide stripes that flaunted neon lights that changed color every so often. At the top to the right it read MOONLIGHT TOWER. Ah, home sweet home.
Moonlight tower was the equivalent of a middle-aged castle, though a bit skinnier. It had 30 floors and a considerable number of bodyguards.
“Yo, Joe!” I said, running past him and a few other guards at the entrance. He kept his eyes trained on the people walking around across the town.
See I usually ignore the rule ‘no running in the house’, and it was all fun and games until I bumped into one of the waiters on the way to the stairs.
Unfortunately she was holding a bunch of plates and dropped them on the floor, resulting in cracking and breaking.
“Shoot, sorry.” I told the waiter. But she was still very angry.
“Seriously Fog!?” She forgot to put the title name ‘Prince’ before saying my name, but then again, she had delivered food to me for almost two decades. “You can’t just walk in this house can you!?” she asked a question but her face told me I better not give an answer.
Instead I repeated my sorrow, and told her I would’ve helped her clean up if I didn’t have a meeting coming up. She huffed and started on the mess while I ran ‘walked’ to the elevator and pressed 19. As soon as I made it there I went down the right hall to the meeting room.
I wasn’t the type to have a written page ready for what I was going to say or take a breath before walking into a big situation. I just pushed the front doors open and took in what was happening.
My parents were both in there, my father staring at the map on the table and my mother gazing out the window looking over the city.
She turned to me.
“Ah, King Fog, you’ve finally made it.” she smiled jokingly at me.
“Not a king yet, but it’s good to see you too Ma.” I told her, then I walked over to dad.
I immediately knew this next meeting was an important one. He had the ‘MAP OF ZEMLYA’ sprawled across the table, and with Zemlya being the name of the entire continent, I could guess the meeting had to do with my entire country and maybe even the Sun tribe’s country.
I followed his eyes and tried to look where he was looking on the map. He had drawn a light blue line across it that I knew was our people’s route to get to the other side of the continent. It seemed he had drawn a path across the continent that he was sure would guarantee we wouldn’t run into the sun tribe, and just to make sure we didn’t he had drawn a yellow line on the page that I guessed represented the Sun tribe and their path across the continent. His Sun tribe line had stopped short in the middle of the map, as if they were going to quit migrating in the middle of the continent.
“So the Sun tribe’s gonna disappear into thin air in the middle of their exodus?” I asked him.
My father laughed. “I’m just trying to figure out their next move. After they make it to the Plains, I’m not sure where they’re going to go, so I’m thinking about where they most likely will go, if there going to stay down south a while longer plant fresh flowers again, then they might take the longer to leave and we might bump into them, but if they're going to stop at the canyon to speak with the Big Horned sheep, they might cross our path at The Plains later on.”
Yes the Sun tribe can talk and understand animals, trees and the like. Always thought that was dopey personally, but that’s what they’re most known for in the Moon tribe, besides supplying us with most of the food we eat and being crazed people with hardly any morals.
“Why can’t we just ask the Sun tribe what route they're going to take? Then we’ll know how not to bump into them.”
“Because the Sun tribe is our enemy, son. If we’re trying to avoid them while migrating why would we bring one of them in here to talk with us now? They could see the path we’re taking and ambush us.” dad answered.
I sighed.
“That's just the way it is son. Just the way it is.”
All I could do is sit there and think, when I’m king, that won’t be the way it is. When I’m king, things we’ll be different. Very different.
That’s when we heard a knock on the door.