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The next week passed quickly. The program planned speeches and ideas and events. Mari ran the office for Mik and she sent speech ideas his way, but really no solid draft. The day of the rally appeared all too quickly and all of a sudden Mik was standing at the steps of the stage, looking over the crowd and wondering what the fuck he had gotten himself into.

Rel and Muan stood to the side, both looked about as nervous as could be. Dowfen Talen, president of Norash, was grinning and dressed in semi-formal clothing. Some sort of sweater vest and dress pants combination. Talen marched up to Mik and shook his hand, all smiles and light conversation.

“Shouldn’t you be… with body guards or something?” Mik asked, looking around for the men and women dressed in black, “for your protection?”

“Ha!” Talen made a dismissive motion with his hand, “I slipped security. Boy, is my vice going to be pissed when he finds out I’m missing again. But it’s just a council meeting and I don’t need the protection anyway. I’m not the one everyone will be watching.”

“Thanks.” Mik muttered.

“Ah. Don’t worry so much, Mikalon,” Talen patted Mik’s shoulder affectionately, “public speaking never killed anybody.”

“Well, no,” Mik muttered, looking over the crowd again, “but I don’t even have a speech prepared.”

“Do you ever?” Talen asked, giving Mik’s arm a light smack before he skipped up the steps and strode into view of the crowd. They went wild. Talen was like a political superstar to them, “Hello people!”

Mik swallowed hard and glanced about. Mari slipped through security and to his side, clipboard in hand, pen tucked behind her ear. She pulled to a stop, just short of Mik, huffed out and tucked a stray lock of black hair behind her ear.

“Security’s done their rounds. No suspicious activity. Where’s Paw?”

Mik motioned to the catwalks, the rigging over the stage that held the lights for the concert that would be playing after dark. Paw was sitting on the edge, watching the crowd as the crowd watched Talen. A scream and Mik watched as Paw pushed off of the rigging and dropped lightly beside Talen. The crowd was horrified because they had thought he was people. The moment the Sidhe landed, they burst into cheers.

“Talen’s just introduced you and Paw,” Mari murmured.

“Crap. What do I say again?”

“Sidhe. As many times as possible in the next half hour, say Sidhe.”

“Sidhe…”

“Oh, and we like Sidhe, you like Sidhe… I don’t know why I’m coaching you on that part, go, say Sidhe and do your thing.”

Mik stepped up to the curtain, just out of view of the crowd, and turned to Mari, “my thing?”

“That thing you do, where everyone hangs off your every word. Go.” Mari made a shooing motion before she moved off towards Rel and Muan.

Mik sighed and stepped into view of the crowd. They cheered. Crazy kids. But Norash was built on the ideas of crazy kids. Women gained the right to be in the military because of crazy kids. Maybe the Sidhe could earn the right to live. Earn the rights to their own land back.

Talen handed Mik a clip-on microphone. A tiny little thing that Mik could hardly see. He clipped it onto his shirt, just above the second button. Talen gave Mik a wink before he turned back to the crowd.

“Mik!”

They cheered. Crazy. Mik made a face, forgetting he was in public, and glanced at Paw. Paw was surveying the crowd, eyebrows drawn down just enough to signify that he was sniffing something out and wasn’t entirely certain what it was.

“Alright,” Mik held his arms up, started at the sound of his voice broadcasting across the crowd, “alright, let’s calm down the emotions.” It would give Paw a moment of peace to search for what he was hunting for, “we are all here for a very serious matter.”

“Sidhe,” Talen muttered, something in his voice portraying horror and yet a deep respect at the same time.

Mik stepped up beside Talen. He wondered if the president was faking it, or if that was true emotion. The lines of Talen’s body implied that the emotion was real, the way the man rubbed nervously at the wide leather bracelet on his right wrist.

“We the people,” Mik turned his full attention to the crowd and watched as all eyes turned to him. As every head turned from Talen, to him. He had everyone’s attention. Creepy. But public speaking wouldn’t kill him. So. He started again, “We the people. Our species, our race, has built a civilization. We have skyscrapers and planes and machines to wipe our asses. We can spy on our neighbours and kill one another with a flick of a button. Our doctors can heal the sick, our scientists can make almost anything. But our world is a lie. Our civilization is a lie.

“We haven’t changed. We’re still cavemen fighting over a piece of meat. Except instead of meat we’ve got money. Can’t eat money,” Sidhe words, “can’t build a house out of money alone. You can’t. You haven’t the skill required. You haven’t the money you’d need to build a house out of dollar bills.”

“I don’t have enough money,” Talen muttered, causing a ripple of laughter through the crowd.

Mik paused for a moment and smiled, he wiped the smile away with two fingers and took a breath, “our houses are fireproof but a new fire burns through, one that can’t be solved by dumping water on it. We’ve contained viruses. Black plague, syphilis, diabetes, sicknesses of the past. But we’ve created new sickness. A sickness that cannot be solved no matter the dose of antibiotic.

“Everything we are, we owe to the Sidhe. Everything we could become, we owe to ourselves. To our children. Sidhe bone technology let us build fancier houses, allowed us to destroy one another, to claim civilization.

“But we haven’t changed. We aren’t civilized. We’re monkeys in a concrete jungle. Our emotions are so shallow you couldn’t sup it if you had power.”

Paw snorted at Mik’s words and slid up beside Mik, taking the man’s hand in his own. Mik glanced at Paw, then back to the crowd.

“The government has already said that they would help. But our so called civilization requires us to have votes. Votes of the people, votes of you, you crazy kids who set this all up. The Sidhe can help us again, we can build a real civilization, make something that is worth remembering. Make ourselves Ayato.”

Something passed over the crowd. Talen turned very slowly and gave Mik an odd look. What was wrong with that, with saying that others could be like Ayato was, that others could do what Ayato and Rava could do?

Paw pecked Mik’s cheek and gave him a grin. Obviously things were going in their favour.

Someone in the front row raised their hand and Mik walked to the edge of the stage, bending as they said, “But. Ayato is powerful, he’ll always win. We can’t make a difference, we’re one in billions.”

“I’m not Ayato,” Mik responded, “I’m a bastard child of a politician, lost in the system and forgotten until a man named Koln tried to… get even, let’s say,” the thought of the events just before the program made Mik smile, “I have no power and I’m not even fully people,” he spread his arms from his sides just a bit, a Sidhe thing that gave those participating in the conversation to judge, “I don’t have a religion, I follow no god, I follow nothing but Whisper. I know there are gods, I know they have plans.” making it like he was standing up to the gods, that was a bit much… “I mean, it’s hard to deny there are gods when you sleep with Whisper.”

Paw made a small, shocked sort of gasp. The crowd smiled at Mik.

“But look what I’ve done. Your gods want the Sidhe alive. They wouldn’t,” Mik shook his head slowly, “have allowed us to get this far. The priest lines wouldn’t have allowed us to get this far. I am nothing, I was nothing and to nothing I will return one day. But here I am, ambassador and talking to you guys at a rally. You aren’t nothing, you made this possible,” a motion around him, “look around you. Someone else sneaking into the program lecture and being chosen out of thousands by a Sidhe, one of you, being chosen by a Sidhe and look what is possible. You are only as small as you think you are.”

A ripple through the crowd. Mik turned his head towards Talen. The man shrugged and looked towards the curtain on the side of the stage. Rel and Muan stood there. Muan was peering at the crowd, at something specific, Rel was looking about, horrified. Mik motioned to them and they came forward without hesitation.

“I would like to introduce you to Muan and his partner.” Rel didn’t seem to want to introduce himself and if the crowd didn’t know who Rel DeAniege was, there was no need to explain it to them, “Survivors.”

The crowd turned to one another and began talking quickly.

Muan made a sound at the back of his throat, chest rising as the male took on a challenging stance. Mik frowned at Muan and looked over the crowd, trying to see what Muan saw. Nothing but heads of people. News crews filming to the side.

“Can you calm him down?” Mik murmured.

Muan immediately turned to Rel and wrapped an arm around the young man’s shoulders. Rel didn’t even come to Muan’s shoulders. It looked awkward, to stand like that. Rel smiled bitterly and looked at Mik. Mik could only shrug at Rel’s look. A distraction was a distraction.

“As you can see, the program can do a good deal for the Sidhe. But we need your help, still,” they weren’t convinced. Oh, he had the crowd going, but whatever it was that made the crowd hang off his words wouldn’t exactly make the viewers at home want to rush out and help the Sidhe. Something had to give, “There are some who say we shouldn’t help the Sidhe. There are some who say the Sidhe are unintelligent, animals, soulless beings that are good at imitation. Some say we should let them die, few say that we should go out and finish what Mother started. I say they are wrong.”

A gunshot rang out. Mik immediately turned towards Paw, fear lacing through him, driving the air from his lungs. He felt something wet on his chest. Oh gods, was someone hit? Was Paw hit? Mik reached up and tapped the wet stuff, bringing his fingers up, coated in red. It was so difficult to breath. So… He looked down, check the spatter, see who got hit.

Blood welled up from the wound in his chest.

“Oh sweet glorious gods.” Mik hit the stage as pain bloomed, as his mind caught up with his body.

People rushed towards him but everything was so dark, he couldn’t tell who it was. He forced himself to breath, he forced his body to work, struggled again and again to breath. But his heart wasn’t beating, the air wasn’t going anywhere. Everything went dark.

Something tugged and pulled him and something else pulled him another way. He had no idea which tug to follow, which path to walk towards. Up and down were the same, left and right. Both tugs were tinged with power and all around him was darkness.

But then he saw something. In the direction of one of the tugs, sky. That was home. That was the way back to life. Mik dove for it, rushing towards the light. He stumbled but regained his balance a moment before something slid sideways.

And Mik stepped into the underworld.


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