A/N: Written for the a writing muse community on livejournal, table 10-B and prompt #004. Lunar. See, I'm not going in order after all. :)

All that aside, enjoy and let me know what you think.


The Adventure Kids
3. The Boy in Blue

You can see a boy: tall and with blond hair spiked with gel. Maybe you're looking close enough to see his chin point slightly down, his eyes somewhat dark as he lifts a gloved hand in farewell. Or maybe you're, instead, following his gaze down to a man and a woman standing too far apart to be a couple. Maybe you're looking at the woman's dark blonde hair and thinking the boy must have inherited his own from her. Or the man's blue eyes even darker than his own – eyes darkened because they'd worked too long and been greeted by too much smoke. Or maybe you're looking at the younger boy who he stands beside, close enough to reach for if he chooses – but he hasn't.

You probably wouldn't think he wants to, since there is only one thing to stop him, and that is his own limitations. But he does, even if no-one – not even the younger brother beside him – can see the twitching, straining hand. Oh, he does want to reach out and grab his brother's hand, hold it tight and protectively within his own, except the other boy is already waving with that nearer hand and all that boy of blue, of quiet steel-furred wolves and friendships he hadn't quite managed to grasp, could do is lift his own arm in a forced imitation.

His parents accept it, and you probably accept it too: the wave from a first born son to their parents, speaking of confidence and protection and a slight sadness at departure. Except he's not confident: he is blue, not orange, and he cannot bring himself to believe that the sun will happily rise. There is some forbidding feeling in his chest, something that spells an uncomfortable doom ahead. But he says nothing, because it's not the time to share, to think of how much has changed in their second home – or, perhaps, the first place in ears he's been able to call his home.

He does not lack in confidence though, nor in trust, despite how it might appear. If your parents tell you things will get better and you know the words to be empty comfort. Can it really be considered a lack of trust? Instead, he thinks of it as pragmatism. Because he may be the same age as his more optimistic friends, but he's had a different life.

That is why he's tied so close to the child of Love, that girl barely a breath younger and fuller and bathed in red. But even they do not know it yet, nor did we when we first selected the pair as Friendship and Love respectively.

There was so little to work with before, it was impossible to know which combination of children would create the best team. But now our hearts are at ease as their true task and challenge nears: we gave them tests, or training tasks, to see how well they worked. We wavered when we saw Davison's almost victory. We rejoiced at Etemon's defeat – and watched in dread as the children's Courage and Friendship and Hope were scattered across the desert plains, then cheered louder than anyone when they were reunited. The defeat of Vamdemon marked the end of their tests: the proof that we had picked the right foundations and the right stems and they had created a deceptively strong team.

Perhaps you don't notice it, or perhaps you're looking at the boy bathed in his crest light of blue and realising how his arm is stiff and quickly lowered, how he's not standing as close to his brother as another pair of siblings are, or the other two girls, close enough so their own colours touch. How his blue stands somewhat apart and shuddering call as much as the orange of his antithesis is alluring warm even in the absence of the sun.

I wonder, how many of you have noticed the absence of the moon? Certainly not if you're in Tokyo, or any of the other areas of Japan, or anywhere where it's morning or day or afternoon. Perhaps not even if it's night; perhaps you're snug in bed and ignorant as to what occurs elsewhere in the world while you sleep.

But the moon and sun are artefacts of your world that we've mirrored; our days and nights are defined by something more mechanical: the wakefulness and sleepiness of a computer. The screensaver awakened by inactivity is our curtain over the night. Our sun is Courage, that orange light, which burns brightly in the forefront, accompanied by the Light and Sincerity and Hope. The moon is the softer, less tangible but no less strong Friendship – and yes, it is Friendship before Love, because it waxed and waned and persevered while Love dances through the sky like a shooting star.

Maybe, if you can look closely, you can see the silhouette of a wolf in the moonlight, searching for company. Maybe you'll find it strange, because he has company all around, doesn't he? His brother, and his friends. It's no hard task to just reach out and touch one – except it is, for him, and his fingers will go cold from the lack of it before he can stretch out his hand.

We are sure now, that that stretched out hand will catch someone burning to death in the light, not like the fickle balancing act that occurs between an antithesis, but a strong rope that will keep even if the balance itself crumbles.

We are sure now, and we can be content with our own failures and watch that blue light…and those other less important lights to whom we trust the world.