Inyanga's Star and Other Constellations

Inyanga's Star Epilogue

One summer dawn, as Sol sizzled the stone of the walkways on campus, a cluster of Secondae students came together under the sun that filtered through the purple, blue and red petals on the floralwoods above, even though it was the break between exams and a new semester.

Each girl carried a whole pile of textual references in strong arms. A link portal shared by Amafu Lizulu and Inyanga Numbia dropped the two off at their designated meeting point. Their new friend Sabra Abrams jogged over as if she has been out for a run on campus since before sun up. Popping into existence, Storm Gloriam sped over. Yǔyún Mingxia hopped out of her Ma's car, racing to the circle.

Five girls circled around ad-Dafira Hall to the back by the dumpsters and dropped down, spreading textbooks and airpages of notes on the hard ground. As if searching for any last minute ideas, fixes, or breakthroughs, Sabra, Storm and Amafu kneeled down and dug through the books. Standing over the others, Inyanga passed her eyes down an airpage in her own handwriting and muttered instructions to Mingxia, who knelt over a thick book she wasn't looking at and held her gnomon high, glaring at it with an intense focus that just might help with her spellcasting.

Perhaps a concentration great enough might shape the illegal tracing spell into an ideal protecting form; perhaps the stars will hear her prayer.

Three times Mingxia cast the spell, whispering, "Cantio volo incantare et non possunt capi. Absconde me." Once she cast it on herself, once on Capo Storm, and once on Militis Sabra.

Leveling her eyes on them, she reminded, "Just in case. If possible, leave the spellcasting to me."

"I know the orders. I gave them," Storm hushed back, and she and Sabra followed Mingxia, creeping through a link she conjured into Local Area News 10, Live to You from the Shade. The link dissipated, leaving Capi Amafu and Inyanga behind on campus.

Crawling low through the studio set, Sabra, Storm, and Mingxia bowed behind a table to get out of glaring spotlight. A weather magician reporting on the Shade was in the middle of saying, live on air, that nothing could be done about the overcast sky that had covered the Shade neighborhood all summer, even though sun bathed the rest of Soliara City in nourishing rays from rise to set.

Smiling wide with red lips to punctuate the good news, Soileil Meena promised, "Shade residents can expect a respite from the clouds at the end of Iunius."

She didn't say how long the respite would be, how many days or mere hours the Shade would get its turn in the sun. Beaming with a suntanned face at her viewers, Soleil made a shallow promise she had weeks to get out of.

Easily within line of sight, Mingxia readied their censoring incantation to place it on this newscaster, Inyanga's airpage of instructions clasped before her.

Last week Inyanga had caught the weather magician in a lie. The Secondae For Open Secrets met under a soundproofing spell in the basement of a cafe downtown, and with blue light flickering, its snaps occassionaly applauding her words, Inyanga's amplified voice told the crowd, "Soileil is always lying about magic running out. She is always fearmongering about how if magic ran out, Constellation would be prevented from casting its weather modification spells. Yes, if the company's weather control spells stopped suddenly, the city would storm and hail, and disastrous weather patterns would lead to flooding, hurricanes, and far worse skies than the century of cloud obscuration afflicting the Shade.

"Yet we, the Secondae for Open Secrets, have come to the scientific consensus that such a climate disaster can only happen if the company allows it to happen. Constellation gives Soliara the power to control the environment, and only Constellation can take it away. The supply of stellar energy cannot run out. Nor can magic hit peak traffic, or snag, run dry, or trickle, or slow at a bottle neck. The studies conducted by this independent research group all arrive at the same conclusion: the newscasters are lying not about the effects of halting weather modification spells, but about the cause of such a cessation."