City of Lights

This might not technically be a vignette, but it’s a little piece of back-story I wrote for a character of my current project, “Quantum Conscience,” a sci-fi visual novel. So if nothing else, it’s a little glimpse into the galaxy where the story will be set.

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Cikaiti. City of lights.

“Light is most precious where darkness presides.” This was a popular saying amongst the people of Cikaiti, because they knew that the name of their city led to grave misconceptions. Strangers visiting Cikaiti expected its brightness to blind them. Instead, they discovered a city covered mostly in darkness. Thick black clouds reigned over the entire atmosphere of Ludebba, Planet of Quiet, and wove the thickest webs of shadow over the grand capital, Cikaiti. Tourists who visited at the wrong time of year could linger in the city of lights for a full month and only glimpse a few shifting beams of sunlight, like the prongs of a rake scraping the spongy hills.

A little girl liked to play in these hills at night, for the people of Cikaiti did not fear the darkness. When Cikaiti became darkest, certain plants would unfurl and cast a glow from their bulbs, scooping out shadows and replacing them with velvety light. When this happened, the hillsides seemed to sparkle. The planet’s surface mirrored the stars above, until the heavens and earth blended together like spilled paint.

The young girl, Mierol, liked to search for a special red flower that only unveiled itself under certain constellations. Mierol’s parents had named her after this flower, the mieroldee, whose crimson petals matched the messy mop of hair on Mierol’s head. But Mierol did not spend any time studying star maps or trying to predict the mieroldee’s awakening. She enjoyed the ongoing search, and the occasional surprise of success. She liked to sprawl across the fibrous soil until she lost her orientation, and felt as if she swam with the stars. The earth would warm her back, for numerous micro-organisms thrived in the spicules beneath her.

Citizens of the planet Ludebba, like Mierol, understood that the appreciation of light arose from the predominance of darkness. They all anticipated the day of the Sun Bath, which only happened once a year, but not for the same reason as outsiders. Tourists who visited Cikaiti for the Sun Bath witnessed something quite normal: the sun came out, the clouds cleared, and light filled every crevice. City dwellers, meanwhile, stayed inside or wore protective lenses because the light overwhelmed their sensitive vision. They enjoyed—from a distance—the honey hue of the sunshine, and the emergence of every single plant which usually curled into the ground. On this day, the earth renewed itself. The plants drank every drop of solar energy and stored it for later. The spongy earth soaked the sun’s heat and swelled with fullness.

But one group of outsiders appreciated the significance of the Sun Bath more than anyone—more, even, than the citizens of Cikaiti itself. They realized that the plants of Ludebba had evolved to store solar energy more efficiently than any piece of man-made technology. They also knew that the plants would contain the highest amounts of energy on the first night after the Sun Bath. So on one such night, when Mierol was eight years old, the Pilfyres attacked.

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