Earth Descended: 1.01

Ming and Petro give each other that one look. It’s that look where they make eye contact, and Ming’s eyes bulge, and her irises thin, and her lips curl in to disappear under her teeth. And then Petro huffs at her because she’s making faces when she shouldn’t be, and Ming breaks into a sly, thin smile in response.

“And you must remember,” bellows Petro’s aging father, his stern eyebrows thick and low over his eyes, “that this expedition is simply a step. It is one step ahead, one step among many many more, in your lives, in the lives of our people, and someday in the lives of humanity.”

This line is some serious bull, so Ming and Petro share the look again. It’s a hunting and scavenging trip, not a grand trial. They’ve ventured out into the forest before, and even camped inside for a night. This is no big deal.

Petro’s father abruptly stops pacing back and forth in front of them. He pivots into a neat, straight, best-face-forward stance. His chin lifts with military pride, and he gazes down his nose at the two children before him, surveying them, as if this last look-over will ensure their absolute safety and success. He’s quite silly; Ming and Petro will be fine.

“You are on the cusp of adulthood. Do not take this light—I see that look, Ming.”

Instead of schooling her expression into the same blank, stiff frown that Petro wears all the time, Ming twists her mouth, raises her eyebrows, and does an unconvincing job of pretending to be innocent. “What look, sir?”

From behind Petro’s father, Ming’s grandmother coughs.

She is a small woman, worn and hunched, pulled in like a raisin. Her knobbly hands shake as they press a small wooden box into Petro’s father’s hands, but smile lines crease her face, and her eyes glitter with the same all-knowing sparkle that Ming gets whenever she has something planned.

“Ming and Petro are the most well-prepared children of their generation,” says Ming’s grandmother. Her voice crinkles, sounding like a series of tiny metal bells, and she smiles as Petro’s father slowly and reverently opens the box. “You don’t need to be so protective.”

Ming and Petro share the look yet again.

Frown deepening, Petro’s father holds out the open box. Inside sits a clump of little bone sticks, carved and inked with the names of nearby landmarks. Ming licks her lips, and Petro gulps.

"You know how this goes," Petro's father says, stiffening his posture. Somehow, he lifts his chin even higher and puffs his chest out still further. He's a tall man, large through his shoulders and chest and finely aged with thick salt-and-pepper hair. Petro finds him admirably intimidating, but his mother is a small person, so he may never reach his father's height or breadth. He'd like to though.

Petro's father holds out the box, and Ming and Petro share a different look. This is the solemn, certain look that has Ming's sparkling eyes turn wide and Petro's thick eyebrows softening. They know without a nod, a gulp, or a blink, to reach towards the box in perfect tandem, and their hands close around two of the bone sticks, fingers barely brushing inside the box. The bones clink, and they have their assignments.

Ming looks at hers first. She reads the black, angular letters quickly, and then her cheeks lift into a rosy, excited grin. "I got the lighthouse!" Turning to Petro, she flips her bone to show him.

Secretly, Petro hopes he'll get a landmark nearby. The longer he can travel with Ming, the better. Pursing his lips, he shifts his hand on his bone so that his fingers no longer cover the deep, black carvings. "Undead fish clearing," he reads aloud. His stomach sinks, and he feels the warmth of his blood drain from his face. That's in the opposite direction of the lighthouse. He won't get to travel under Ming's adventurous guidance, won't have help setting up camp, and likely won't see her again for a week.

"Ooh." Ming's eyes glitter with interest, and she fiddles carelessly with the bone in her hand, like it has lost its appeal. "That's a good one. I'm a little jealous!"

Petro looks at her, and then back at the bone. "Oh," is all he says.

His father clears his throat and shakes the box. The clinking of bones sounds hollow in the great meeting hall where they conduct this whole silly ceremony. Ming and Petro drop their bones back into the box, and Petro's father shuts it with a loud click. The box goes back into Ming's grandmother's wrinkly, shaking hands, and then the old woman disappears into the shadows.

Ming yawns, letting out a quiet hum. She isn't worried at all. Or perhaps she's tired. It is hardly dawn outside, and the tiny tendrils of light meandering through the meeting hall's great semi-dome windows cast the shaded parts of the room in black, unpenetrable darkness. At least when there had been no light, the dark had seemed less black.

"You have both made all the necessary preparation?" asks Petro's father, clasping his hands behind his back. He rocks on his heels, and the evidence of his nervousness makes Petro's heart thump faster and harder. He's not ready at all.

"Of course!" Ming answers, almost singing. She beams like the sun and adjusts the pack on her back.

Petro nods, and the three of them head out. They pass under the dark, heavy trusses that hold up the meeting hall roof and through the heavy, creaking doors, left open to allow a long rectangle of orange light to shoot across the floor. Once outside, Petro's father stops. He stands by the open doors and watches, his face tight with the stoic urge to hide his nerves, as Ming and Petro walk down the single, empty street of the village.

They make a pretty, symetrical picture. The orange morning sun lights them from the back, silhouetting the children in perfect black, so that it beomces difficult to tell which shadow is Ming and which is Petro. They're the same height still, though Petro's father expects his son to shoot up in the next year or two. On either side of the children, the row houses rise like short canyon walls. They are black silhouettes too, and their little street signs stretch out towards the children like waving hands, sending them off with jaunty, creaking swings. Beyond, the sun falls like rain over the newly harvested farmlands, painting the brown and mottled green patches in gold. And still beyond that, the black, dense trees obscure the land surrounding their little community.

Petro’s father scrubs a hand through his hair, startling when Ming’s grandmother steps through the great doors to join him.

“Instead of worrying,” she says, her face lit with the same terrible mischief that fills her granddaughter, “why don’t we go eat breakfast?”

Without a word, Petro’s father turns on his toes and heads for the little brick-and-plaster house where Ming’s tiny, two-person family lives. He’ll worry over breakfast.