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Jenny

Earth date: April 3, 3049
Centaur date: Marks Matrix: 15th Remembrance, Tier 4i, 395th Vibration of Chronostring 1093; 3violet2 R shading. (2nd reality expression, simplified for linear cohesion and homo Sapiens comprehension.)


Jennifer Navarra was flying.

Far, far beneath her was her home town of Hennessey, the only town on the newly settled planet of Centaur’s Heart. It looked like an exquisite toy, sparkling with lights from the houses as the people woke up to start another day. Wanting to see as much as possible before waking up, Jenny swooped down further, looking for her friend Nick’s home. She found it, the ceiling opaque in the early morning light, and floated close beside his window. He didn?t have on the room’s dream shade, but she didn?t take advantage. They were best friends so he respected her privacy, too.

She could see just inside his window, though, and onto his puter desk. Magic didn?t work in the puterverse, and as she was inside a dream, Jenny could see the puter desk as only a fuzzy sound that smelled like warm blue. What did stand out on the desk, in pulsing splendor, was Nick’s sposedto. Identical to hers, it was what had made them friends to begin with when each discovered the other’s sposed to while on an astral field trip to the Crab Nebula. He thought hers was too tomboyish, while she?d thought his too girly. Especially for a nine year-old boy. It didn?t take long for each of them to stick their tongues out at each other and start name-calling. From there a friendship had started. Now, almost a year later...

"Jennifer."

Jenny looked around and saw way up in the sky the soft pink and yellow of her mother’s Shifting spell, gently calling to her to wake up. She took one last look at Nick’s window, then flew up into the sky, moving out of her dream and shifting into the real world of school, play and magic.

She opened her eyes, immediately awake, and jumped out of her top bunk bed, her head accidentally bumping the Shifting spell sphere and scattering it into a shower of gentle sparks that followed her to the floor. She landed on the carpet and, careful not to waken her three year old sister Alyeta, pulled a change of clothes out of her dresser and closet and raced off to get ready for another day. Another day with Nick.

"My!" her mother laughed as Jenny ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. "That was fast! Did you wake your sister?"

"No," Jenny said, shaking her head while reaching for an orange from the kitchen’s tree. The weather on Centaur’s Heart being as perfect as it was, along with its new inhabitants being the kind of people they were, kitchens were outside the home. Theirs was a largish yard of rich earth that grew fruits, vegetables, herbs, shelter and furniture.

"Do you have your sposedto?" she asked, knowing her daughter never went anywhere without it, yet unable to resist the motherly reminding urges.

"Mooooommmm," Jenny said, rolling her pitch black eyes, their cobalt blue flecks dancing with disguised cheerfulness. Her mother’s eyes were also dark, but Jenny was second generation Marks, so her race attributes had no trace of homo Sapiens in them. "I?m ten years old! It’s not like I?m gonna forget that." Nonetheless, she patted her skirt pocket and checked. The sposedto hummed back in vanilla and tufted greenfinch, Jenny’s favorite sensations.

"All right, then," her mother replied, smiling and kissing her on top of the head. "You?d best hurry off to class. Your father will stop by later this afternoon and walk you home, okay?"

"Okay." Retrieving the sposedto, Jenny whispered to it. "?Member, I?m s?posed to walk home with Dad today." She was probably old enough to walk home by herself now, Jenny thought, but there was just no way she would give up walking home with her dad. She shoved the sposedto back in its home and waved to her mother. "Bye, Mom!"

Jenny ran through the house and out the front ghost door, making it bubble and snap as her aura clashed ever so slightly with the energy plane of the door. Magic and technology could exist together - Magic was nothing more than incomprehensible and imaginary technology - but their physical laws always vied for superiority and the result was an uneasiness in spectral reality whenever they bumped.

Outside, it was a brilliant day. Centaur, the star around which the three planets of Heart, Hoof and Soul raced in the same orbit, was very similar to her parents? distant home planet of Coda, being small and intensely white. The skies were similar too in that they were vivid blue and crystal clear, allowing the Centaur’s Mane - the asteroid belt in orbit fifty million kilometers further out, to sparkle and paint the sky all twenty and one-half hours of the day.

The breeze was fresh, chilled and soft, so Jenny started conjuring her Feather spell, then remembered her mother wanted her to get more exercise. She wrinkled her face briefly, but obeyed, deciding to walk to school instead. It would take her an extra twenty minutes this way, but at least she could scrounge for the wild strawberries that hid in the brambles on the town outskirts. She tied back her waist length blonde hair so it wouldn?t catch in the prickers and hurried off across the Common.

The strawberries were tucked off the path a meter or so. The police determined that Jenny had found some, but didn?t have time to eat any before she?d been taken...