The temple floats.
Emily stands with her hands behind her back, rocking on her heels, and cranes her neck to try and see the cloud-obscured top. Are those clouds coincidence, or micrometeorological phenomena induced by the heat radiating from the thing? She's seen Mom's scientific footage of a volcanic eruption on the coast, the surging clouds flaring with lightning, the soot-stained hailstones dropping miles and miles downwind. Emily cocks her head to one side, then thinks, sadly, that there probably isn't enough energy coming off the artifact to create its own cloud cover. If there were, more people would be reporting radiation poisoning. Probably just coincidence, then.
"Bummer," she mutters, out loud. Ma hears and rests a hand on the top of her head. Emily presses up into the touch, then remembers that she's eight years old and it's well past time for her to move on from her childhood need for physical reassurance and pulls away. "Can I explore?" she asks.
Mom and Ma exchange glances. Mom rolls her eyes, but she's grinning. Ma just rolls her eyes. "Emily," she says, "you're a very bright young girl, but there are big crowds here, and we don't want you to get separated from us again."
Emily knows exactly which incident they're referring to and relents, kicking at a pebble as her sole concession to the wave of disappointment. Logically, it makes sense. There are a whole lot of people swarming the festive fairgrounds, and despite the vanishingly low probably of abduction or other harm, her mothers' worry is in itself an undesirable outcome. She needs to introduce additional variables. She needs to—
She pauses, then points. "Those girls are in a group by themselves. Can I go with them?"
Another glance is exchanged. "It looks like a school group," Mom says. "More socializing can never hurt."
"Not quite accurate," Ma says, and now she's the one hiding a smile, "but I catch your drift. The teacher's over there, I think, with the blue hat? Let's see what they're up to."
"That's Sander," says Mom, her face relaxing into a smile. "You know, from the seminar Emily gave last week? They're a wonderful person, I'm sure they'll be happy to incorporate Emily into the group. Wait here, sweetie."
"Uh-huh," says Emily, and flops down on a bench to stare at the weird floating... thing waiting above her while her parents go over to negotiate a playdate. It happens, sometimes—she knows they feel guilty about pulling her out of school for advanced classes, based on an outdated assumption that socialization can only be properly obtained in a sort of haphazard, slapdash, trial-and-error approach. She definitely doesn't mind meeting new people, though. So many fascinating bits and pieces! And sometimes they know stuff she doesn't, which is basically the greatest thing ever.
"Hi," says a girl. Emily looks up to see her standing next to the bench, holding a funnel cake with one hand and wiping powdered sugar on her red skirt with the other. About seven or eight, maybe. "Teacher said I should hang out with you. We're doing the buddy system."
"So you're my buddy," Emily says, grinning big. The girl stumbles back a step, startled, so Emily dials it back a notch. Two notches. "You shouldn't prod at that lateral incisor, by the way."
The girl shifts guiltily. "I'm not prodding at anything."
"Your tooth," Emily says. "It's loose, it'll fall out on its own. Probably while you're brushing. Which you should do right after eating a funnel cake, really. That stuff's terrible. One of my moms is a dentist. I'm never allowed to eat it." The girl's just staring, so Emily adds, "It's super gross if you pull a tooth out early. There's, like, blood. It's awesome. I did it with one of mine just to see what it would look like." She opens her mouth and presses her tongue against the half-grown-in adult tooth, to illustrate.
The girl wrinkles her nose and looks a little sadly at her half-eaten funnel cake, but she's got that awkward half-smile that people have when they're not going to be a jerk, so Emily figures she's probably on the right track. "I'm Emily," she says. She doesn't extend a hand, because handshakes are weird and awkward even when adults do it. Such a disease vector!
"Uh," says the girl, "I'm Celia." She shuffles her feet, folds her paper plate carefully over the rest of her funnel cake, and puts the whole mess into a little purse she's holding. "You want to go closer? Have you been here before?"
"First time," Emily says, cheerfully, and gets to her feet. "Are you from the city?"
"Yup," Celia says, morosely, and falls into step readily enough with Emily's speedwalking. "I've never really gone further away than this, though. Armonia this, Armonia that. It's awful to be in one place for so long. I pretend I'm someone else, sometimes. Pick out new names, you ever do that? There's not really anything else to do. It's boring."
"Are you kidding me? The library's there. That's, like, thirty billion trillion books with thirty billion trillion stories to take you anywhere you like." Emily walks in silence for a moment, then says, "That was hyperbole. I was exaggerating humorously for effect."
"I got it," Celia says, with a hint of a smile. "Are you for real?"
"I mean, if we're talking whether I get the odd existential quandary, no more than anyone else facing up to the idea of mortality for the first time," Emily says.
Celia stares.
"My hamster died last week," Emily explains. "Mr. Chubbles. Old age, but yeah."
"Yeah," Celia echoes. "That's really sad. Poor Mr. Chubbles."
"Yep. Didn't suffer or anything, though. Had a good life." Emily decides that maybe this friendship is still a little too new to bring up the autopsy she'd performed to make sure. "What do you think this temple thing is for?"
Celia stops and puts her hands in her pockets, staring up at the mysterious floating artifact. Emily notices cutis anserina on the back of her neck. Goose bumps.
"I dunno," she says. "My big sister says it's the government trying to control us. Grampa says it's those damn rebels." She says it all in one word, Emily notices, those-damn-rebels. "But I don't know where they'd get the resources. I guess it's probably just the aliens doing something important from afar, but I don't know what it's for."
Emily nods at this analysis. Elementary political reasoning, but a well-presented and concise summation. "We have insufficient data," she says. "And since they don't let anyone get too close, I guess that means we'll keep having insufficient data. No use spinning our wheels. It sure looks cool, though."
"Sure does," Celia says.
There's a low, distant thump. Emily is cocking her head to one side, trying to figure out what exactly makes a sound like that, when Celia barrels into her, sending them both tumbling to the ground. The other girl's heavier, holds her down, and for a second all Emily can hear is the rapid staccato of her breathing. Then there's a much louder, more distinctive roar, and it's impossible to hear that as anything other than a distant explosion.
"Stay down," Celia grits out, and rolls off Emily, rubbing dirt out of a nasty looking scrape in the palm of her hand. She raises her head up to peek over the bench, but apart from a general backdrop of yelling and screaming as the fairgoers realize what's going on, there's no more sounds to indicate what's happening. Emily still has her face pressed to the dirt. She's shaking. She'd heard stories about the political situation near the capital, Ma had almost called a halt to the visit because of them—
They both jump when Celia's phone chimes. Celia answers, out of breath, "Grampa? Grampa, calm down, I'm okay. No, this isn't Darla, this is Celia. Darla was my name last week, remember?" Celia rolls her eyes at Emily, smiling shakily. "I'm okay, I'm with a school group and my new friend Emily. It looks like there was an explosion closer to the temple. We're safe."
Emily sits up, brushing dust off her sleeves. She's still shaking. She can see Ma and Mom clearing a path through the crowds toward them. "So much for the field trip," she says. She can't really make herself look toward the explosions, but she can smell the acrid tang of smoke in the air. Not enough for pyrocumulus clouds, though.
Celia's teacher, jogging up ahead of Ma and Mom, snaps, "Vanessa," in a sharp, worried tone. "There you are. You got so far ahead of the others."
"I walk fast," Emily says, apologetically.
"I'm not Vanessa," Celia says, a little stiffly. "I was Darla last week, I'm Celia this week."
The teacher's face softens. "I know, kid, I'm sorry. I'll remember. You hurt your hand?"
"Yeah," says Celia, then turns to Emily, who's just getting to her feet. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," says Emily, and puts on a muted smile so her parents will stop hovering and go help the teacher round up the last of the students. "Here, you dropped your purse."
Celia takes it from her, then hesitates and pulls it open. "Here," she says, and hands Emily her half-eaten, smashed wedge of funnel cake. "Parents are way more willing to let you have sweets after a traumatic experience. You deserve it."
Emily grins big and, after an uneasy moment, Celia grins back.
"Vanessa," the teacher says, and Celia sighs but doesn't bother making a correction. "Time to go. We've taken enough of the Greys' time."
"You're weird," Celia calls back, just as she's leaving earshot, "but in a sort of cool way."
Emily yells, "You too!" but she's already thinking ahead, to all the stuff she's learned today. Maybe she'll read a book or two about the political climate on Chorus—it's an element of her education that's been sorely lacking, thus far. Maybe she'll read a book or two about explosives.
She pulls the crushed funnel cake out of its paper-plate shell and chomps down, thoughtfully. Maybe she'll read a book or two about baking, while she's at it.
"You're okay," Mom says, like she's reassuring herself as well. Ma just rests her hand on the top of Emily's head, and this time she doesn't pull away.
"Yeah," she says, finally staring up at the massive temple looming overhead, with the thin cord of smoke rising from near its base. The temple's shadow stretches long with the early-morning sun at its back, reaching almost to Emily's toes. Emily thinks she should maybe read the book about explosives first. "Yeah," she says again. "I'm okay."