Holly’s father had held his hands together with the palms facing each other below his chin. His large wedding ring with the blue gem faced outward. The ring had a wide black band and the stunning gem was a square shape with rounded corners.

“Just promise me you won’t take Leo there,” he said.

His crystal necklace shined against his black shirt with the diamond shape on the front, of red and purple. Fractures of light moved outward in waves from the crystal, and then melted slowly into the air in the spacious room. It appeared that his throne like chair was slightly elevated as he sat calmly but noticeably concerned.

“They are messing with the programming of the youngsters. With the natural programming. They will lose their ability to feel,” her father continued, looking somber.

The Elion family had governed with a peaceful decorum that did not involve threats. They served the people. And they had known their place in the universe.

But the new order had come to power through the wanting. It was the wanting of power that had brought them to a full half turn toward the pull of the other moon, whose energy would always have a subtle attraction.

It was the corrupt kind of power that brings a quick burst of adrenaline, but does not last. And it demands more. And more. To sustain it’s fix. This is what the new order was after.

But after would have been too strong a word, really. After. Because to be after something implies some kind of a choice. And by then the new order was acting on an impulse. A reptilian type impulse.

And that impulse was driven by a force, to halt. They could not go with the tides of the planet and worked against them.

It would seem that the planet of Rillarok was on a backward trajectory if one were only to examine the new order. But they would only be granules of sand in the scope of time. And whether a planet could go backward in evolution would only be answered many cycles later.

* * *

The filament in the kitchen that Holly could see was now becoming a little more copper in color. The thickness of the filament had not changed. She knew what it was. And it wan’t anything. Wasn’t anything on earth, that it is.

But Holly was an Elion, of course.

And she could see at a particularly high frequency of light. And the copper was conducting strength to her. It had actually tried to connect with her as she had walked out of juvie after visiting Leo.

There had been some kind of problem with the security, and visitors that were there had to stay in the next room for about twenty minutes while they fixed an electrical glitch preventing the metal doors from opening.

The copper wire had started to come down through the ceiling then. But she wouldn’t have it. Not there. And not right after Leo had asked her where Ryan was from. And she had blocked it with her mind.