The world was made of symbols. Nature used symbols as warning signs for the world’s inhabitants, to give people, plants and all other life forms a chance to survive. Nature used a sun flare to warn of an oncoming worldwide heatwave, the kind that caused ravenous droughts and populations to wither. Nature used Ridderah, Big Moon, to flare a warning of cataclysmic sea surges, the kind that sank cities and demolished technologies. Nature used certain cloud patterns to warn of incoming catastrophic winds, the kind that ripped babies from parents’ arms and tore land from its roots. There was always warning from Nature, so life might adapt in time. Nature didn’t intend to destroy, only to reset order. Sometimes people became symbols, and that was when Nature’s order began to crumble. 

Nature never used Crë. Small Moon had its own life, separate from the physics of the rest of the known universe. Eric Blake had spent his life studying it, creating vehicles to pass into space, fashioning vials that would bring back samples from Crë’s volatile surface. He had gone so far as to test its effects when the shining, sparking dust and fire came in contact with Dhaherite DNA. Fifty-four of his test subjects died when the copper substance was injected. His daughter, Ellie, was the first who lived. 

The crimson disk his daughter had received lay on the desk in Eric’s lab. He and Klara had argued over where to keep it or whether to keep it at all. Klara wanted to destroy all evidence of the thing, cut ties to whatever outer force was likely to call Ellie to them. Eric knew who the disc was from, but refrained from telling his wife. It would be too much. Once he had managed to bring her down from shrill pleas to her fake gods, Eric had convinced Klara that the disc was not a threat if Ellie didn’t personally hold onto it. 

‘If she presents it to the world,’ he had said, ‘She will declare allegiance. It’s best we keep it safe.’

‘Safe?’ Klara’s blue eyes, identical to Ellie’s, were wide with an unwavering clarity. ‘Don’t bullshit me, Eric. If our daughter is a target, you are not keeping that thing anywhere near her. It needs to be melted.’

‘This isn’t from Tassuri. A Kagosae Scouting doesn’t come in disc form. They would send a Scouter to our home.’ 

‘Oh, don’t condescend. They’re forever changing the rules! How do you know this isn’t one of them? They’ll do anything to cause a stir and take our daughter from us.’

Eric knew she was right, and if he hadn’t known better, he might have been in the same mindset as she was, might even fear for their demi-disaster child. But it was far worse than Klara could imagine. She feared Tassuri had marked Ellie as a future contender for the Kagosae. That was preferable to the truth. 

As he sat at his desk, surrounded by monitors and dials and the archaic paper notes of his ancestors, Eric studied the object that marked Ellie as a person of interest. On one face of the enamel disc was a flower with seven broad, flame-tipped petals. On the other side, the one staring at Eric, was a hawk’s head viciously clenching a flaming crescent moon in its maw. 

He left and returned to his desk numerous times. The anxiety that claimed him was something he hadn’t felt in years. He was unsure how to process it, or whether he wanted to. In the past, Eric went one of two ways when it came to feeling this way. One, he might have taken an anxious episode and walked hand-in-hand with it, remaining in his lab to ride it out, which usually led to a fantastic discovery. He blamed these Type One anxieties on his inner genius. How else would he make world-changing scientific discoveries if something within his psyche didn’t nudge him towards it? Two, was a different breed of anxiety. With Type Two, Eric knew there were no discoveries to be made and the only option was to deflect until the wave of horrors passed by. He would distract himself, usually by inviting Klara out for dinner, followed by numerous cocktails at her favourite bar and finishing with taking her to bed. It utterly threw Eric to suddenly have discovered a Type Three.

When he had found the disc, he hadn’t thought too deeply about what this might mean for the long term. His main concern was, and rightly so, Klara’s response. Now that part was over with, there was the long term to think about. If the government heard his daughter had caught the interest of a rebel group, they might either insist upon deep investigation into the entire family’s gene pool, or else dispose of her before anything might become of her. He couldn’t live with either option. If Tassuri found Ellie to be as weak as she was, they would investigate the rest of the family. They would find out Lily was also Dhaherite. Then there would be the horrors of explaining that deception, among the others he had committed over his two decades working for them. Only he and Klara knew everything. It needed to remain that way.

 A clatter broke Eric from his thoughts. He turned to see Ellie bent over the ground, her slender arm reaching to pick what she had dropped. 

For a moment, Eric was sure it was the disc and his eyes roved his desk for the crimson metal. The flame-petaled flower peered up from beside his coffee mug. Relieved, he allowed himself to look at his daughter and the mess she’d made. A metal cup was on the ground, spilling a substance Eric knew was one of his wife’s morning brews. They always tasted ridiculous so he was almost glad the spill had happened. He sighed out of habit.

Ellie rose from her crouch with the empty cup but she didn’t look at Eric, she just stared at the seeping pool of clear liquid dotted with herbs from Klara’s garden patch. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. 

Eric had no words. He wanted to snap her out of this apathy but didn’t know how. Did the girl not know how to get a towel? He went to the back of his lab, retrieved a roll of tissue paper and headed back to the mess. By the time he returned, the concoction had pooled all about Ellie’s slippers. She just stood in it, eyes skirting about the place as if she was a trapped mouse planning a hopeless escape.

She wants to escape me, Eric realised, and rather than sadden him, the thought made him furious. Or perhaps it did sadden him, and the fact a mediocre child could upset him was what brought on the rage. ‘What did you come here for?’ he snapped.

Ellie looked at the empty cup in her hands. There was a slight tremble in them. 

Eric went and unspooled the tissue roll across the puddle. He crouched and wiped by Ellie’s feet but didn’t look up to reassure her it was alright and everyone made mistakes like this, because it wasn’t alright. She knew better than to be clumsy in his lab. Clumsiness anywhere annoyed him, but in his place of work...she might as well have burnt the place to the ground. Distractions were as threatening to his research as hazardous gases from other planets.

‘Father?’ Ellie asked. 

Eric looked up after slapping a third pile of sopping tissues to the side. The sound shuddered between them a little longer. ‘What?’

‘What’s that?’ The girl’s gaze was fixated on Eric’s most recent endeavour. 

‘It’s best you don’t ask about that, Ellie.’

‘Because I’m too small to understand?’

‘Yes.’ 

‘Will you say I’m too small to understand when I’m bigger?’

‘Probably.’

She gave a little pout. ‘Why?’

Eric nearly groaned. The dreaded why. 

‘Because, Ellie, you are small.’

Her wide eyes grew bigger and her lip curled with the threat of sobs. ‘Mom said I’m not small. She said you try to make me small.’

Eric stood and looked down at the girl, his daughter. Though she resembled his wife, Ellie was more his daughter than Klara’s. Klara was like a sunburst, unignorable and magnetic. She took up space and warmed rooms while burning everyone up before they realised. He was the shadow, happy to work and remain beneath radars on the day to day. Accolades didn’t mean he was anything more than that. True, his name was known, but a name was not a person. Often people passed him by at conferences and parties. He liked it that way. Ellie was like him, more than he liked to admit. ‘You should be breaking walls, not cowering behind spilled juice.’

‘You want me to break things, why?’

‘I don’t mean…’ he sighed in exasperation. ‘Walls are not always physical.’

‘Why can’t you tell me about the walls, then?’

‘That’s not what I’m saying, Ellie.’

‘What are you saying?’

Eric turned his back on her, spurred by the return of Type Three anxiety. He gave a slight wave of his hand, beckoning his daughter to follow, and brought her to the cusp of his experiment. Ellie came quickly. She tripped and grabbed his hand to steady herself. She nearly fell into the clear film before them, then she straightened and her eyes lit with wonder. He glanced down at her and saw himself. 

The surface crust sample of Crë writhed in a clear sphere casing which rested on a plinth made of platinum. It was the only metal which seemed to stabilise the sample; previous stands had led to explosions with varying levels of damage. The clear films surrounding the plinth and sample served to keep air contamination away from the moon’s crust. He had developed the protective films himself, and they proved quite sturdy against germs and brute force. In fact, they had been so successful, he had patented the creation as crëglass and sold units of it for a fortune to the Tassurian prison system. Crëglass proved highly useful at keeping inmates in cells. 

‘What is it, Dad?’

‘It’s Small Moon.’

‘Wow.’ She took a step towards the outer film of crëglass. The surface shimmered slightly as she neared.

‘Don’t butt your face against it. It will burn.’ 

Ellie looked up to the ceiling, where the crëglass arched round, and then back down to the sample. ‘What will you do with the moon?’

‘It’s not the whole moon. Just a small portion of it.’

‘But it’s important.’

‘Yes.’

‘Small and important.’ 

Eric studied the side of her little face. Her skin glowed with the copper sparks of the Small Moon sample, and her eyes swam with the fractals of crëglass light. In those moments, Eric’s anxieties melted away. The problem of the disc remained, but, if he could equip Ellie to deal with the coming months and years, perhaps there was hope for her, perhaps Lily could remain hidden and perhaps their family could be saved from ruin.

‘Elisabeth,’ he began, and waited for her to meet his gaze.

‘Yes?’ 

‘You want to stop being small?’

She shrugged. ‘Mom said I’m not–’

‘You are Dhaherite. You’re meant for more than mediocrity.’

Ellie was quiet for a time. She watched the sparks that belonged in the sky as if they in fact belonged to her. It was the first time Eric saw a strength in her, it was the first time he saw her want something. 

‘I don’t want to be small.’