Tochtli was a quiet little town—quaint Father had called it—set along the river of Usagi that flowed from the capital down through all of Lunette. Cricket had been there once, when he was about five or six, but he didn't remember very much of it. Only a faded and washed-out memory of a vendor painting his name on a rabbit lantern in intricate, swirling characters.
"You're going to stick out like a sore thumb," Ignacia complained. They had crested a hill that overlooked Tochtli and stopped for a brief supper. The horses grazing nearby.
"I'm sorry?" Cricket asked, shoveling another quarter of a sandwich into his mouth. Youta, the youngest of the kitchen's staff, had taken to cutting the crust off his sandwiches when he was a child, and she'd just never stopped. He loved her for it.
Ignacia reached over to grab his wrist, dragging it upwards so his already folded up sleeve fell further down his arm, and the two moon-jade bangles clanked against his forearm. "These."
"Marwa gave them to me for my name day." He yanked his wrist from her, holding the bangles to himself protectively. "They match the ring Father gave me."
Something flickered across Ignacia's face, guilt maybe, but then she shrugged it off. "Put them in your bag. You can keep the ring."
"Why?"
"You look like a royal brat." She grabbed one of the quarters from his unwrapped sandwich and took a challenging bite.
"I am a royal brat." He didn't like the term brat, but it was true enough. He'd never had to want for anything. He'd never known hunger, or a cold winter's night. Father had seen to all of his needs. And those things that weren't needs? Crustless sandwiches? The staff catered to those. He knew that well enough.
Ignacia frowned, shaking her head. She didn't argue with him on that fact, and he didn't expect her to. She'd been one of the ones to say it, after all. "Right now, you can't be a brat. You have to be their prince. The man they want to be king. Take this seriously."
"I am taking this seriously!"
She gave him an unimpressed stare, and Cricket begrudgingly wriggled the bangles from his wrist to tuck into his bag.
"We should wait until tomorrow to go in."
"Why?" Cricket stuffed the last bite of sandwich into his mouth, his cheeks puffing out from being too full. If it weren't for the too-large bite in his mouth he might have sounded whiny.
"So we know what time it disappears, and when it reappears. Anstice said we shouldn't get caught inside just in case."
"But Iggggggggy." This time he did whine, stretching out her name purposefully to annoy her. Ignacia's face remained impassive, but the twitch in her eyebrow gave her away. A little more prodding and—
"Fine, but just for an hour. We get out before the sun sets. Are we clear?"
"Yes ma'am!" Well that was too easy.
They left the horses on the hilltop to graze, and bask in the early evening sun, a neat circle of magic woven around them to keep them from wandering off and passersby from stealing the supplies left behind. Ignacia hadn't liked the idea, but Cricket didn't want to lug all of that into town. He'd won out in the end.
A market was set up in the middle of town around a glittering fountain with an intricate statue of the lady Selene at the center. She was kneeling in a field of moon flowers, her face set into a smile.
"'Scuse me." A child giggled as he brushed passed Cricket into the square.
"Jingyi! Get back here!" his mother shouted, trailing after him in a pace that wasn't quite a run, but couldn't be considered a walk either. "I'm so sorry." She bowed to them, a rueful smile on her lips. "He's just excited about the Sunday market is all."
Then she was off again, only just managing to get a hold of the boy's shoulders before he toppled headfirst into a stand of melons.
"Sunday market," Ignacia repeated the words, her brows furrowing. "We left on a Monday, didn't we?"
Cricket wrinkled his nose in thought, looking up at the white clouds drifting through the sky as if they could provide him with an answer. "I thought so. And it's only been a couple of days. But I could be wrong?"
"I'll check my journal when we get back to camp." Ignacia decided, her fingers tapping a tattoo against the sword on her hip. Something was bothering her, niggling at her. Cricket could see it. But she hadn't figured it out yet, and she didn't want to put words to her unease lest she be wrong. Ignacia hated being wrong. "We'll talk to some of the vendors. See if they've noticed anything strange."
"We don't have much time. Let's split up."
Ignacia opened her mouth as if she might argue, but she nodded in spite of whatever was going through her head. "You go that way."
Cricket nodded, and turned off to the right to begin with the melon vendor little Jingyi had almost toppled.
"Excuse me sir." Cricket offered the man a little wave, and a wide smile. "I was wondering if you could—"
"Only melons for sale here." The man's beard twitched in irritation. He took an appraising look up and down the length of Cricket, and turned his attention instead to a woman who was knocking on the melons as if trying to root out a gnome from inside them.
"I understand, but you see I'm—"
"Only. Melons."
Cricket frowned, but moved on to the next, undeterred. "Good afternoon ma'am, I was wondering if you could tell me if anything strange was going on around here?"
She blinked at him, and shook her head.
"Oh...all right then." Cricket frowned, and moved on to the next stall, and the next, he was almost to the end of the row some minutes later. Each of the vendors had refused to answer him, all looking perplexed, and a little annoyed at an obvious outsider. He thought he should have worn his bangles. Maybe if he looked more wealthy, they'd have been more apt to talk. Or perhaps it was that he just wasn't approaching this right? He'd never done this sort of thing before. He glanced over and found Ignacia deep in conversation with an apple salesman. Hopefully she was having better luck.
"Oi," someone whisper-shouted from the stall at the end. Cricket couldn't tell what the man was selling, it just looked like a table full of junk. "You're looking for something strange?"
"Yes. If you've seen anything? There have been reports that perhaps the town is—" A flash of light-colored movement caught Cricket's attention from the corner of his eyes. But when he looked towards it, he caught just the end of a cloak as whoever it was rounded the corner of the nearby alley out of sight.
"I've got lots of strange things here." The man gestured to the table.
Cricket turned to look down at the collection of junk. A broken wristwatch stuck on the time 6:30, a hand mirror missing the stones from its frame, a small painting with a tear at the edge, and even a fork with bent tines.
"Oh um...you have some very nice things, but I don't think any of this is quite what I'm looking for." Cricket tried to offer the man a polite smile, backing away from the stall. "Thank you for your time."
"Oi, no need to be rude!" The man shouted after him.
Cricket ignored him to turn down the alley, following the whisper of a white cloak that had rounded another corner some feet away. He cast one look back at Ignacia still chatting away with the apple vendor, and followed it. He'd be back before she noticed. And figures running through shadows to keep from being seen were far more exciting and suspicious than talking to vendors who didn't seem to know anything. As far as he could tell, they were going about their everyday lives as if nothing had changed. They likely didn't even know their town was disappearing. But that figure, it'd been moving much too fast, as if to keep from drawing the eye. It was up to something.
He rounded the corner, coming out in a less trafficked part of town, some streets away from where the market had been. The homes here were quiet, everyone had probably gone to the market, leaving their windows dark and washing hung out to dry on balconies. With light steps, Cricket walked down the street, eyes looking for any sign of movement, any hint as to where the white-clad figure had gone. His hand clenched the hilt of his sword, ready for an attack. But there was nothing, no sign of life at all. The person had just disappeared, leaving nothing behind.
"I'll have to check again tomorrow," Cricket decided, turning to head back to the market.
Something else strange caught his eye.
A pale, jade luna moth fluttered in front of his face, landing on his nose for a moment, playful and light. Then it flitted in front of his eyes, before bouncing through the air tracing a path in the opposite direction.
"You shouldn't be out this early." Cricket tilted his head, eyeing the soft glow of the moth in confusion. It danced through the air, weaving in circles around his head, as if urging him to follow it. "What? Do you know what's going on here?"
There was no answer. There wouldn't be. Insects were small, easily affected by whatever magic lingered in the air, sensitive to it in a way the elven clans long descended from Selene and Helios no longer were. Moths like this one were more in touch with the natural magic in the earth. But they couldn't talk. Still this one was trying to tell Cricket something, something important if its frantic bouncing was anything to go by.
"All right then. Let's see it." He nodded, resolving to follow the little creature wherever it may lead.
He followed the moth through the streets. Let it guide him past a smithy, and an inn. They reached the edge of Tochtli as the sun kissed the horizon. The moth did another quick twirl about Cricket's head, and he huffed, stepping over the boundary from town to open field. There was a soft pop, like the uncorking of a bottle of fizzy wine that had gone flat. He turned back, and found...
Nothing.
Just swaying grass where the town had once been. Everything, the streets, the inn, the smithy, the market, the laundry, Ignacia, was gone.
"Iggy?" The name drifted from his lips, more prayer than calling. "Ignacia?"
But she was gone, just as the town was. Cricket turned ready to glare and interrogate the little creature, but it too had disappeared. Leaving Cricket alone, surrounded by tall grasses that waved in the wind, and the subtle rush of water from the river.
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