The Furies: Wallflower

By Reiko Miyazaki

*~*

Prologue

Posted: 12-13-02

Revised: 12-23-02

*~*

Chances last a finite time

In the warm July nighttime

Every care that keeps you from your feet

Is a care that carries your defeat

Sing that song you sang long ago

A heartbeat, so sure and slow

Hold me and don't let go

The fourteenth domino

-- Ozma "Domino Effect"

*~*

He remembered baseball; outside in the warm April air, throwing the ball back and forth with his older brother, Turcafinwë.

Once, Turcafinwë had brought home a friend from school – Akihito Shintaro. Believing his brother's friend to be the most wonderful man alive, he had remained in his room the whole time, too shy to introduce himself or even let himself be seen by Akihito.

Turcafinwë dragged the truth from his little brother, and laughingly told Akihito about his brother's shyness at their school the next day.

His friend didn't laugh. "He's a wallflower, Finwë," was all he would respond.

"He's a wallflower."

*~*

At fifteen, mathematical and scientific genius Nolmë Spenna was already indespensible to the field of chronoferology – time travel, or literally " the study of time-carry" – and had graduated from the Academy, Kinmotsushiti's prestigious university, with masters' degrees in metaphysics and applied stellar philosophy. His older contemporaries and colleagues had hailed Nolmë's preliminary designs for the Temporcise, an actual time-travel device, as one of the most brilliant and innovative ideas to come from the Academy's Chronoferology Department.

As always, Nolmë's in-home laboratory was in a state of carefully organized disarray. Unattended forms and papers were the main cause of the mess, though lab equipment left unclean could also have been blamed. Aniron, the pretty paperwork guru at the ACD, constantly chided Nolmë about the state of his files. "The only reason you get away with so much disorganization is because you're so brilliant. The department heads are way too patient with you," she was fond of saying. Though he and his working partners always laughed, they knew she was right. Nolmë Spenna was the most brilliant mind from a family with a well-established tradition of excellence in acadamia, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it; dedicated workaholism was Nolmë's only occupation.

He'd never been adept at sports or athletics of any kind; small for his age, red-haired and stormily violet-eyed, Nolmë's intentions in life had always been clear to himself. At a very young age, his family had enrolled him in an accelerated learning course, and the boy had adapted himself quickly to the rigorous schedule with astonishing ease. The heads at his first school hadn't been at all surprised when, after going through a series of extremely difficult testing, Nolmë had been recognized as yet another Spenna genius – the fifth to pass through both his grade school ("Ingolë Center for Accelerated Learning") and the Academy before the age of sixteen.

The visonic* beeped twice.

"Damnit!" Nolmë, in the back corner of the cluttered apartment, dropped the pencil he'd been using to outline the newest modifications to the Temporcise on a piece of bluish graph paper. On his way to answer the annoying machine, he tripped over a mostly-uneaten box of Japanese take-out, managed to break a dead light bulb he'd changed two months ago, and knocked over a beaker of an acidic compound onto the Galician's newest edict of law adjustments in the Galactic Forum. Letting fly a string of well-chosen profanity, Nolmë righted the beaker and pushed the "Play" button on the visonic.

"Hello, Noli, dear!" The face of his mother smiled at him cheerfully. Nolmë replied with a phrase that seemed a bit less than polite. However, it was evident that this was yet another one of Chiyeko Spenna's prerecorded messages to her son; she took no notice and plowed right into her speech.

"Now, I know you don't like being bothered in the middle of your work, so I'm praying to Bokkai that I'm not interrupting, but I just want you to know your father and I are thinking about you." Chiyeko's digitally holographic countenance beamed. "We're so proud of you, tackling your job at the Chronoferology Department, and it's really been so honorable for the family."

"Thanks, Mom," replied Nolmë absently, inspecting the damage to the Galician's memo.

"I've also heard about a little bash that your friend, the Shintaro boy – what was his name? Oh yes, Nikkorasu – will be holding at his place this evening. Don't bother," as Nolmë reached for his digital clock, "it'll be two-thirty when you get this message, and the party starts at seven or so. I daresay Nikorasu will want to call you himself – "

The visonic beeped again. Nolmë pressed another button. "Yes?"

"Hey, Nolmë!" Nikkorasu Shintaro, one of Nolmë's few friends, grinned at the now-slightly-perturbed redhead.

"Nikko-chan, nice to see you . . ." he trailed off.

The boy laughed. "You don't look happy. I guess you've already heard from your mom about the party tonight."

"Indeed. May I say – right now – I really don't intend upon going?"

"You may, but it won't make your mother very happy." Nikko's previous smile turned to a pleading pout. "C'mon, Noli-chan, I've wanted you to get out for ages. Do you realize it's been almost a month since you came out of that hellhole you dub an apartment?"

"I took a brief sabbatical to work without distraction, Nikko. You of all people should know how much I hate annoying . . . bothersome . . . petty disturbances." He rolled his eyes.

"Point taken." His friend sighed. "Noli, it's just one party. What harm could it do?"

" . . . my best friend and my mother are conspiring against me." Nolmë drummed on the table for a few seconds, contemplatively struggling. "Oh, all right. I suppose it wouldn't hurt."

"YES!"

"But if I lose my Temporcise train of thought because of this – this social event, Nikkorasu Shintaro, I will not be pleased. You don't want to taste my wrath."

"Yes, sir!" Nikko saluted and disappeared.

Nolmë groaned, and slid to a sitting position. An actual party, one that didn't involve business and would contain peoples his age.

How very frightening.

* – a device not unlike a telephone, that conveys sound waves and a holographic picture through to the recipient and placer of the call.