“What exactly is this?” Kiri asked, stirring the contents of the bowl.

“It’s stew,” James said.

The three of them sat at the table in Celeste and James’s room. James had given Kiri his meal and was currently eating a small portion of Celeste’s, which James could tell was dampening her mood further.

“And what is in the stew?” Kiri asked. James shrugged. He honestly didn’t know.

“Meat and flavored water of some kind. It’s not bad. You should try some,” James suggested.

“You eat humans!?” Kiri said, aghast.

Celeste rolled her eyes. “We eat animals. Well, jespers mainly,” Celeste said.

For some reason Kiri seemed even more shocked at that than she was at the idea of eating humans.

“You eat the life of the earth?” she said, disgusted. She glanced down at her bowl and quickly pushed it back towards James. He could see the nausea present on her face. “You can have this. I won’t be eating it.”

Celeste smiled to herself and then lifted the bowl to her mouth and took a large noisy slurp of the stew. She set it down and wiped the excess off her mouth.

“Barbarian,” Kiri muttered under her breath.

“Me?” Celeste said. “I’m not the one running around barefoot.”

James frowned and peered under the table. She was indeed barefoot.

“Have you always been barefoot?” James asked.

Kiri shrugged. “Why would I want to put something between my feet and the earth?”

She said it in such a matter-of-fact way that James nearly thought he had been doing it wrong his entire life. He thought back to her running over the uneven ground of the village and was filled with a renewed respect at the fact she had done all that barefoot. James glanced down at the bowl of stew and pulled it closer to him. At the same time, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the whisp. Celeste’s eyes widened, and she growled audibly.

Speaking of animals, James thought to himself.

He went to pass the whisp to Kiri but found it no longer in his hands. He quickly turned to Celeste, where he found the whisp clutched protectively in her hand.

“Celeste! That’s for Kiri. I know you like whisps, but she needs to eat something,” James said, reaching for it.

Celeste stiff-armed him back into his chair and held the whisp to the side. “She can have it, but only after she answers my questions. I’m tired of feeling like I’m being left in the dark,” Celeste said.

Kiri narrowed her eyes. “Fine. Keep it. I probably wouldn’t like it anyway,” she said, crossing her arms. Celeste gave her a flat stare and broke off a piece, throwing it to her. Kiri caught it with deft hands.

“Does this contain meat, as well?” she asked.

Celeste shook her head. Kiri shot her a nonbelieving look and turned to James. He shrugged.

“Not as far as I know,” he said.

Kiri eyed the piece of brittle white fluffiness and eventually popped it in her mouth. She did a poor job hiding her enjoyment.

“Very well,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

“Who the heck are you!?” Celeste blurted out. James gave her a pointed look.

“I’m Kiri,” she said, confused.

“Yeah, yeah. But why do your fingernails and eyes glow? Does everyone below glow? And what’s life like down there? If you don’t eat meat, then what do you eat? Does the temperature change down there? It can get super cold and super hot up here. And—”

James bonked her on the head again. “Slow down,” he said.

“We should set a rule to where you can only do that once per day,” Celeste said, rubbing her head. After a few moments of rubbing, she sighed. “Why do you glow?”

Kiri shifted in her chair uneasily. She thought for a moment before replying. “Long ago, Kodama chose a young girl to be the light of the forest. She was the first heir of Kodama’s will. As long as she stayed within the forest, it would have life and be able to grow. I was told she lived a happy life and when her time came to close her eyes for the last time, the forest went dark, and her daughter began to glow, lighting the forest up again. The pattern continued generation after generation until finally coming to my mother… and now me.” She said the last part as a whisper, as if it physically hurt her to speak the words.

“So… do you have powers?” Celeste asked. James rolled his eyes at her lack of tact.

“I have a… stronger connection to nature than most, but I can’t feel anything from up here, which worries me.”

“Has a, uh, heir of Kodama’s will ever left the forest before?” James asked.

Kiri shook her head. “Not as far as I know. It was the only rule that Kodama left for the heirs.”

James and Kiri fell silent, contemplating that fact. Celeste, on the other hand, impatiently looked from one to the other.

“Do I have to be the one to ask it?” she said plainly. The two looked at her with identical expressions of confusion. “Who or what is a Kodama?”

“It’s a…uh… God?” James said, looking at Kiri.

She shrugged. “Kodama is the embodiment of the earth itself. Some refer to Kodama as a god, while others feel the relationship is closer to that of mother or father to child. Kodama being the mother or father, of course.”

“And you believe this?” Celeste said. Her tone was more curious than condemning. Kiri simply raised her glowing fingernails and shook them in front of her face. “Fair enough,” Celeste said. James sighed, more out of mental exhaustion than physical exhaustion, and leaned back in his chair.

“That should be enough, right Celeste? Give her the whisp,” James said. Celeste looked down at the whisp and then back at Kiri.

“One more question. What is that?” she asked, pointing at the picture of the beast that she had drawn. James perked up at this question. This was something he wanted an answer to as well. Kiri looked to the side. “You only decided to stay once you saw that drawing,” Celeste prodded. Kiri eventually sighed and turned to face her.

Perhaps her and Celeste are more alike than they think, James thought to himself.

“He is something very personal to the heirs. The villagers have all heard stories of him, of course, but the heirs are the only ones who have ever seen him. He is very selective about who he appears in front of.”

“Okay, but who is he… or rather what is he?” Celeste asked.

Kiri sat quietly, thinking of the correct words.

“Is he Kodama?” James asked slowly, remembering the beast’s all-knowing eyes. Kiri shook her head.

“Not exactly. He is a representative of Kodama. Or his messenger, perhaps. Kodama shows him or herself in many ways, but a living physical body is not one of those ways. Instead, when the need arises, he sends him,” Kiri said, gesturing to the drawing. “He shows himself only on rare occasions but is always present during one specific event; when an heir is gifted the light.” She immediately looked down to her fingertips. “I don’t trust you—either of you—but I do trust him.”

It hurt James to hear the honesty in her voice, but he didn’t feel like he had any right to expect otherwise. The Divers, his fellow Vinci citizens, were responsible for the destruction of her village and the death of her mother.

“Here,” Celeste said, tossing the whisp at her. Kiri caught it and took a large bite out of it. James shot Celeste an almost pleading look. She rolled her eyes. “And sorry… for tackling you,” she muttered. James smiled. Kiri looked up, surprised.

“Thank you,” she said. Celeste waited.

“Anything you want to say to me?”

“Not particularly,” Kiri said, returning to her whisp. Celeste growled and stood up, storming over to the stairs.

“Where are you going?” James asked.

“Away!” Celeste said, not bothering to turn around.

James watched her go, lacking the necessary energy to keep her from leaving. As she ascended the stairs, however, he became keenly aware of the fact that Kiri and he were now relatively alone. His heart started to beat faster, which he found incredibly weird. It had never beat rapidly in front of anyone before. Kiri didn’t seem to be bothered at all by them being alone together, and for some reason that gave him a vague sense of anxiety. She just casually ate her whisp, oblivious of him sitting across from her. As the silence crept on, he became more and more aware of his beating heart. He was so focused on it that he nearly jumped when Kiri finally broke the silence.

“When will we be leaving?” she asked in an indifferent voice.

James straightened his back. “Uh. Hours. A couple hours. We have to wait for people to sleep.” James cringed internally. Not only was his heart making it difficult to focus, it was also making it difficult to speak.

“How exactly do we get down from this machine of death?” Kiri asked. James could hear an insufferable groan from above and tried to talk over it.

“A rope. I made a rope. It was actually pretty difficult. I had to collect a whole bunch of separate pieces and tie them together with the strongest knots I knew. And—”

James paused. Was he trying to impress her? This thought sent his heart into an even quicker pattering. Just when he thought it was going to overwhelm him, the image of the beast’s eyes appeared in his mind. Strangely enough, it calmed him down. There was a village burning to the ground below them, and he was trying to impress the girl sitting across from him. That thought sobered him. He let out a sigh.

“There’s a rope at the bottom of this ship. We’ll use it to get back down to your village and find your people.”

“We?” Kiri said, tilting her head.

“Yeah. I’m going with you.” Kiri shot him a bemused expression. “I’m sorry, but when a giant talking beast asks you to protect someone, you don’t just hand them a rope and say good luck,” James said, exasperated. He caught the faint traces of a smile on Kiri’s lips before she forced it away.

“As if I need protecting,” she huffed.

“You don’t, but I’m still going to try and help anyway,” James said, smiling.

“Gag me,” Celeste said from somewhere above them.

James looked up and rolled his eyes. When he looked back, he found Kiri staring upward with unease. When he followed her eyes, he found that she was looking at the lightbulb.

“Something wrong?” James asked.

“Yes, quite wrong,” she said. “That’s powered by electricity, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah,” James said, wondering what her point was.

“You eat meat, you steal from villages, and you use electricity.” Kiri shook her head in disgust.

“What’s the problem with electricity?” Celeste asked from above. James looked up to see her head poking out over the edge of her platform.

“It was what destroyed the previous world,” Kiri said as if it were common knowledge. Celeste’s eyes bulged, and James nearly toppled his chair over.

“You know what happened to the old world?” James said, amazed.

Kiri quickly shook her head. “No, that knowledge has been lost. All we know is that it had something to do with technology. We…lost control somehow.”

“The heck does that have to do with a light-bulb?” Celeste asked, annoyed.

“Nothing, really. It’s just that, to my people, using electricity is the first step in repeating the mistakes of the past.”

“You guys live boring lives, don’t you?” Celeste said plainly.

“I could say the same to you. Trapped on these ships with nowhere to go,” Kiri replied.

“Please don’t fight again,” James said, exhausted. Kiri and Celeste looked at each other, then sighed and turned away. “I’m going to get a bit more rest.” James stood, then spotted the blankets piled on the floor. “Why don’t you sleep on my bed and I’ll rest down here,” he suggested.

Kiri shrugged. “Fine, but only because I’m curious what it’s like up there,” she said, standing.

James started to explain how to climb the stairs when she turned her back on him and started running towards them. She sprinted up the first few steps before lunging across to the stairs on the wall in front of her, skipping the awkward corners. James was too mentally drained to be surprised. He simply grabbed the blankets off the ground and smothered himself into them.