Winter was looking at me like I had already been talking with the cannibals. His outstretched membrane flapped in the wind, and he folded together like a living umbrella, all the while looking at me. I did my best to ignore him, and I kept feeding off the daylight. After a moment suspended in the air, he spoke. "Tale's been gone for along time. Aren't you worried? I'm worried. It has started again. They will come hunting us. This time they have the power to destroy us. How could you let him go?"
I was tired of explaining myself to everyone. "Just finish eating. We can talk about this more when we land."
"I'm already full. Besides the Sun is too low. I prefer the taste of high noon to four," Winter said.
I wasn't about to argue that point. What fell to into the atmostphere was much better tasting in the early afternoon. At least it was to some of us. We live off the solar wind, what little of it comes to Earth. The particles that make it to the upper atmostphere are radiated just enough to give us the neuroushment we need.
The cannibals rarely came to this part of the sky. Their polution was sometimes a problem, but that was only after brief storms. It took a long time for me to accept that they burn their own kind to keep warm.
I like to consider myself an expert in the behavior of cannibals. I've watched them enough to know that they were still clueless about our existence. At least that was until Tale had gone missing. Tale and I had been observing their recent behavior. A school of them gathered inside one of their structures and began to feast upon one another. I had gotten used to seeing this kind of activity, but this time something had captured me and Tale's attention. After a flash of light a loud booming noise I had never heard before, the cannibals were killed. Turned to ash.
There was a peculiar scent in the air. It was as if the canibals had been basking in our feeding ground. I knew that's what drove Tale closer to them. For a long time after that it was one of our feeding grounds. I didn't like the flavor of this place, but many did.
After a while, some of the cannibals came back. They walked around with sticks waving in the air, making noise like they do everywhere we find them. These creatures can't stop their endless noises. It has only been over the past fifty years that it has gotten out of hand.
They had been hiding in protective armor that made them difficult to see. At first, they were hard to distinguish between their surroundings. If they had been standing still, I would have been at a loss to know any cannibal was near. Like me, Tale had always been fascinated with the cannibals. So, I could not have been sure if it was the camouflage or curiosity that made him reveal himself.
Their noisy sticks started to tick and click wildly as Tale approached the cannibals. They could not see him at first. Tale was hiding his presence, but I kept thinking he would show himself. I was right. He got as close as he dare and then opened himself up. The noise spiked up, causing their sticks to wave about. This seemed to scare the cannibals away, at first, but at the last moment one of the female cannibals, Niche, turned to see Tale coming at them. She grabbed a box that was also hard to see and started toward Tale.
Afraid of what might happen, I ran to help Tale. The sounds of their detectors increased. I thought they might have been able to see me, but it was too late for me to check. The world shifted and tumbled a bit. They tried to to put me in a box that was hard to see. It was distracting, but I managed to keep hidden enough that they lost me. Or so I believed.
As it turned out, I was captured. They had me in their box. I just didn't know it for a while. The world seemed as it was, but when I moved about, searching for familiar places, I found only the same landscape. It seemed I traveled a long way, but I went nowhere. I was being reflected and bounced around in their box, and I couldn't tell the difference.
I had heard of caves and places where some of us get lost for a long time. I had once found a land where the feeding was abundant, and I almost felt as if I was in the sky. After a while it made me dizzy, and I found it hard to leave. I later found out it was an entire land of salt.
Oh, to be sure, many in the past have revealed themselves to the cannibals. Only back then it was mostly harmless. We tended to scare them, and they created wards to keep us away.
Their strange way of pretending that magic exists had changed very little over the centuries. It was as if they had to have that illusion to get through life. When all they really needed was to each each other.
"Winter, do you remember the time of the monsters?"
