Tales From Talimara

The Boy In the Red Shirt

This story begins my novel-in-the-works. It introduces Lira Stallion, Regna Talon and Jinarvah Maltek, three of my imaginary friends. They'll probably be recurring characters in this book.

He seemed very familiar, as if they'd known each other for a century or more. There was something in his eyes, bluer than the sky, that made Lira certain that she knew him. She sat on the bench and let her sandwich grow cold in her hand as she thought of the boy. He wore a smart red shirt with a blue collar, gray Cryarian sneakers and, quite adorably, never left the arms of his identical twin sisters for the whole time she had seen him.

Lira Stallion blinked once and swallowed a bite of her sandwich. The bench she had chosen was her favorite. Main Street's sidewalks were dotted up and down with such benches painted in a variety of colors, but this seaweed-green one was Lira's favorite. It was under the rustle of a Talimaran Trestle tree, there was an incendiary waste depository nearby and it was right outside her favorite toyshop.

The girl glanced behind her, but the store's familiar wooden sign still hung from its second-storey mounting. It declared Trinkets & Tinsel- Toys and Entertainment for All Ages Since 2977 proudly, just as it had been for more than two hundred years. Master Selfridge was the craftsman, and was continuing a proud tradition that his family had begun long ago. Lira was very happy whenever she bought toys there, and also did work for the toymaker as a small-time apprentice whenever she had her hands free.

As she remembered the music box she had been instructed to assemble, Lira blinked again and bit into her sandwich. She had been working on it for five weeks, wholly immersed in the complexity of the challenge. There were so many parts to put together, and because of her self-belief Lira had declined the use of an instruction sheet, preferring to do it herself, confident she had learnt all the skills necessary from her master to do so. Still, even Lira Lamina of the Raymordian House of Stallion hit barricades sometimes, and she had reluctantly come back to ask for help from Master Selfridge.

That was when she had seen him. The little boy in the red shirt.

Lira's first reaction upon seeing him was to try and figure out the shade of his hair. It looked like a polarized marriage between sun-blond and cut-wood brown, and it seemed to change depending on the angle of the light. His elder sisters, a pair of eye-warmingly beautiful young teenagers, were wearing sweaters of azure and maroon pink, with matching earrings and ponytail-elastics. Their eldest brother was a tall young man in his late teens who wore a dressed-down casual summer suit, as dark as his hair was.

They must be Cryarians, Lira had thought. They look so handsome. Where else could they be from?

As if to accentuate her theory, the little boy and one of his sisters had been examining the tactile projections of their mindgates as they arrived. A glowing cube ablaze with all kinds of digital information was tumbling in space above the boy's upturned palm, and dashing to and fro between his hand and his head were wisps of light, visual projections of information that traveled up and down his arm.

This eye-catching group of children had been delivered downtown by a very regal, albeit immensely ancient, automobile with white tires and a coat of paint blacker than the night sky. Its hood ornament shone with the glint of the morning, and Lira began to wonder how old it was. After all, following the Ascendant Age hardly any vehicle touched the ground unless it was broken or being constructed.

That thing belongs in a museum.

Lira stopped short, however, when she saw the insignia emblazoned on the doors of the car. Painted in fiery red, afternoon gold and chevron black, along with olive green and Moredano blue, that family crest announced a great degree of National respect and power. Only one branch of one family in one city displayed that crest. The powerful Cryarian House of Maltek was a ruling House in the capital city, descended from the legendary heroes from the shrouded years well before the Age of the Ancients began. Over the thousands of years they were traditionally and historically warriors, guardians and protectors, defenders of the Nation and custodians of Talimara's peace.