Day 4: Bonfire

"Well, Jeremie?"

Jeremie twisted the stick around in his hands, looking across the bonfire at leach of his friends. "Well…what?"

"You picked the short stick, so you have to tell the first story," Aelita said. "Isn't that how it works?"

"Of course it is, but this isn't the shortest stick!" Jeremie held his stick out in front of him, dangling it dangerously close to the fire. "It's definitely longer than Ulrich's."

"Uh, no it's not," Ulrich said, holding up his own stick. "The stem is definitely longer."

"Uh, yeah, but the branch sticks up higher," Jeremie said. "No one said the stem had to be longer, just the stick."

"Boys, this isn't rocket science," Yumi said. "Someone tell a story, before the fire goes out."

Jeremie wanted to tell her that they had enough wood to last at least another hour, but he had a feeling she already knew that. "Well, if you guys want me to tell a story that badly…" Jeremie tapped his chin. "Let me think, let me think…"

He had no love for the stories he knew they wanted to hear - or any idea where to begin with making one. But he was buoyed by the sight of all their eyes on him, eagerly waiting for him to begin. "Well," he said, "one time, I was working on this program to strengthen some of the back-end structures on the wireframe matrix for the Overwing. It took me hours just to rearrange everything, and then, when I was done… it didn't work. It just wouldn't respond to anything I was doing. I couldn't even get the Overwing to materialize in Lyoko. So I knew I'd hav to look through every line of code I'd written, which was just about 400 lines at that point…

"…and it turned out it was just a typo," he said. "All that effort wasted just because I'd forgotten an end tag on line 268. It's every programmer's worst nightmare!"

His burst of frustration was met with silence, and awkward grins from his friends. The exception was Aelita, who'd been listening with rapt attention. "Oh, I remember that," she said, covering her mouth. "That was an awful night, and it really was very scary. We could've lost the Overwing for good!"

"Exactly," Jeremie said. "And that's why you always have to be careful. Even if you think you know everything."

"Well, Jeremie," Odd said, "that was…"

"Unusual, but defintiely understandable," Yumi said. "I wouldn'tve wanted to lose my vehicle. So, thank you. And…so, I guess Ulrich is next?"

She flashed Ulrich a smile, which made Ulrich quisibly quake in his shorts. "Ah, well," he said, "well, there was this bonfire, and a bunch of kids were-"

"Oh, come on!" Odd said, rolling his eyes. "The old "a night just like this" cliche never works."

"Are you saying you can do better?" Ulrich said.

"Ulrich, you're looking at a master storyteller here." Odd spread his legs out wider, and cracked his knuckles. "So, this one night, when the moon was full, a werewolf, a vampire, and a vacuum cleaner salesman-"

"Too cheesy," Ulrich said. "Next!"

"Hey, you didn't even let me start!" Odd said. "You're missing out on something great!"

"Great, like what?" Aelita said. "You can defintiely finish, Odd."

"Like this," Odd said. "So they had this arrangement going, where the vacuum cleaner salesman would… go up,and he'd knock on peoples' doors, and when they'd answer, the vampire and the werewolf would take turns eating whoever answered the door!"

He cupped his hands into claws, and made scratching motions at Aelita. Aelita giggled a bit, which seemed to buoy Odd. "Thank you, thank you," he said. "See? A crowdpleaser. On…some level."

"But, wait a second," Jeremie said. "Was the vacuum cleaner salesman getting anything from this? He wasn't even selling any vacuums."

"And why didn't they just eat him instead?" Yumi said. "Did they really need him to get what they wanted?"

"That part actually makes sense to me," Aelita said. "Vampires can't cross thresholds unless they're invited. The salesman would be able to make their victims cross the threshold."

"Wait, they can't?" Odd said. "I mean, of course! Of course they can't!"

"But then where's the werewolf come in?" Ulrich said. "Why are a werewolf and a vampire even working together? And does it mean they can only do this once a month?"

"Okay, okay, so it has a few holes!" Odd said. "It's a work in progress. I'll sleep on it."

"You should add in a ghost somewhere," Ulrich said. "The more the merrier."

"Ulrich, that's enough," Yumi said. "I think it's my turn. So…" A smile crept across her face.

"This is something I heard from my cousin Asami in Japan," she said. "A girl from her school went into the last stall of the third-floor toilet, without seeing the Out-of-Order sign on it…when she went in, she heard a mysterious voice, saying, "Do you want red paper, or blue paper?" And-"

"And she said she wanted no paper, and the spirit left her alone," Ulrich said.

"Ulrich-!" Yumi shook her head. "Okay, so someone here knows the legend. You pick red paper and you get cut in half, you pick blue paper and you get strangled. But, no. Another girl who was in the bathroom said that she'd heard her say, "Well, why can't I just have white paper?""

All eyes were on Yumi now, even Ulrich's - she felt a bit relieved that he didn't know this part. "After she was gone from class for two hours, they opened up the stall, and she wasn't there," she said. "And they never heard from her again."

She paused. "Not for three more months, before they found her living fifty kilometers away with her boyfriend," she said. "She used the legend to elope."

"Oh, come on!" Odd said.

"I don't know," Aelita said. "That is pretty scary."

"It's an unnecessary risk, is what it is," Jeremie said. "But, it was good. And, Aelita, it's your turn now…"

"Oh, I suppose it is. Well…" She took a deep breath, and looked out at the others. For several seconds she was silent, presumably while she got her thoughts together. And then, without warning, she began.

"I dream sometimes that I'm back on Lyoko," she said. "Not just for XANA attacks, but all the time. But it's not like it actually was, when I was living there full-time. It's quiet. No one ever comes, not even any monsters. And I just… I keep walking forward, in the dreams. I go where the path takes me, and when I reach a way tower I go into that, and I fall until I arrive at the next one, and keep walking through another sector. It just goes like that, over and over, all night. Sometimes I stop, and sometimes I even just…lie down, and look out at the landscape for a while."

There were no comments, so she went on. "But I never think about anything when I'm there. I don't even know if I know how to think. I just…live in the moment. Sometimes I close my eyes…but whenever I do, it's only because I'm waking up, and starting a new day in this world. But when I close them again, it's like I'm back to where I started, down to the last detail.

So whenever I wake up from this, I wonder… is a dream like this closer to reality than not? Could the life I'm living be the part of my life that's a dream, and could this endless walk cycle be my reality? And does that mean…I'm only going to be stuck in Lyoko forever, without anyone to come and tell me that there's ever been anything different?"

The beach was bone-silent now, apart from the occasional crackling of the fire. The other four were staring at Aelita, slack-jawed. Jeremie, in particular, seemed quite affected by the story - he was trembling in fear, looking almost as though he were about to cry. "Aelita…" he said. "That's…is that true? Is that really happening?"

Aelita gave Jeremie a concerned look, and then leaned in, and put her hands on his shoulders. "Well…sometimes. But I know it's not true. I know nothing could ever be more real than this."

He pulled her into a hug, which she returned. They sat in silence for a long, long time, and only after several minutes did one of them remember to feed another log to the flames.

- Carth