Character Names and Meanings

Yue: pronounced You-Eh, Moon in Mandarin

Malkia: Queen in Swahili

Dawn Oniri

Yue's Star Part I

A reporter once wanted to interview Yue for her charity work, multiplying high end cuisine for the lower class in Soliara.

Malkia Eun crossed one black heel animated with a sparkle of live hot star dust over the other. "But why food production?" she soon asked. "The people of Soliara already have enough to eat, and Constellation feeds the hungry. The company has the scale to ensure all needs of nutrition are met." She leaned in as if lobbing a softball. "So why do this work?"

The whole time Malkia had been setting up this obvious question, Yue had needed to rein herself in to keep from interrupting. "Have you seen the slop they shlap out at the shelters?"

As she shifted the cross of her own legs, she noticed a hole in the side of one of her flats — she had owned these leather cast shoes for half a decade. "I'm a food lover. The thought alone breaks my heart, to think of the poor never getting a taste of caprese with tomatoes fresh conjured from the ideal, or a short-rib mascarpone infused ragu, the twelve hour simmer taken care of with the flick of a gnomon."

The interview chairs had been positioned with the tables that held a buffet of Yue's multiplied dishes for the feast in the background. The appetizers were out, steaming, and children were lining up to fill their bellies with miniature foods. You would think the spicy and fatty smells wouldn't have the same effect on a chef after years in the kitchen, but Yue herself hadn't eaten, so her empty stomach roiled lava.

One thing she wanted to clarify. "Don't get me wrong, I never tasted ragu before my business took off. I grew up eating my mom's bao pork buns, and fried rice, and jianbing crepes stuffed with eggs and green onion. She made the best yuèbǐng moon cakes. Simple home cooked stuff."

It was the next course that stumped Yue. Standing above the empty trays waiting for the entree in view of a camera link, she waved her gnomon wand.

And nothing happened. The food she was attempting to conjure up did not appear.

The first spell Yue ever mastered was food multiplication.

She skipped over every elementary spell in the textbook, eyes glossing over, scanning, absorbing, assuming they would be no trouble — portal creation, surveillance links, starlight light, conjuring, summoning, heating, levitation, flight navigation — she went straight to multiplying one cream cheese fudge brownie into four thousand.

Theoretically speaking, such food production spells should go off without a hitch, no matter the complexity of the delicious subject of multiplication. A simple carrot should be no easier to multiply than a carrot cake muffin, or mint and preserved lemon tagine, or a carrot gazpacho.

Theoretically, the produce Yue had invented, a cross between a sweet potato and a ham shank, crusted with crispy bacon hide and dripping with mouthwatering maple grease — and all without harming the hair on a piggywig's nose — should be no more challenging to duplicate than her troughs of yuca fries with yellow aji amarillo salsa, or her caramelized patent purple spicy peppers, or her signature leche frita, and yet ... here she was at a benefit for the orphans of Soliara, all two thousand and ninety-three of them, and no matter how many times she swatted at the sweet bacon potato with the gnomon, it would not be fruitful and multiply.

#

The student lab after hours was the best place in the world, Yue thought. Once everyone else had left, she could have every counter to herself, and experiment with the flavors and textures of her choosing without complaints about the smells.

How some people could find the scent of fermented lemon or cultured butter or so-called stinky cheese unpleasant was beyond her.

The light in the student lab would dim after hora septa, going low power to save expensive starlight, and most students would clear out for a meal and some well-lit study at the campus cafe, but Yue would put on her apron, roll up her sleeves, draw her gnomon wand, and get cooking. There was just one problem.

Dawn Oniri.

The girl spent all hours in the lab running magical experiments of her own, complete with fizzles, sparks and bangs, and worst of all thinking — mostly out loud.

True, Dawn didn't complain about Yue's pastry experiments and their smells, and true, she helped dispose of them by eating, but her non-stop talking got to be such a distraction that Yue want to stab her.

"Uh un. I don't believe this. Alternative facts presented here, this can't be right. These two papers have different measurements and data that supports contradictory theories. If you summon rain without working a vacuum spell into the calculations to make room for the rain drop, in a closed system like our atmosphere, there's nowhere for the air to be displaced to. The conjuring of so much as one drop — or an atom of one rain drop — would create a pressure change."

She could rattle off a mile a minute even with polysyllabic tech jargon. It was truly a talent.

"Can you shut up, please?" begged Yue. She was trying to perfect the taste of a miniature artichoke, which surprisingly proved so bitter it bit the tongue. It needed to be reinvented to hit the buttery notes with a built-in acidic lemon undertone.

Dawn went on mumbling without cease about the weather. 

"This study claims that the impact of half-measures in weather modification spells would lead to a build up of pressure due to displaced matter and the creation of matter in a closed system. But the ACD reported the number of agricultors cutting costs by failing to cast the vacuum spells that would make room for the conjured rain in the planet's atmosphere. These reports are so contradictory, I can't follow the physics. It's like the science itself is lying."

"Daaaawn," moaned Yue. Eyes fixed on her traitorous dark green little artichokes, her mind was focused on uncovering what had gone wrong. What made them taste so . . . stars damn awful?

"You can't just conjure rain in a closed system, obviously!"

"Can you be quiet?"

Dawn's hand slammed down on the table and now she wasn't talking to herself but lecturing Yue. "This study claims that farm companies are not paying for the vacuum spells necessary to make room within the planet's atmosphere for conjured rain!"

Yue said, "Um, that's awful. How dare they?"

"According to conservation of matter, the precipitation being summoned into existence would displace the matter already present. Without a vacuum spell to compensate for the added pressure . . ."

Looking up from her cutting board — which wasn't needed for magical food prep except that it made Yue feel that she was really cooking, it felt right, like in Ma's kitchen — she said, "You're telling me they're breaking the rules conjuring rain?" Then, "Ugh, why am I listening to you when I'm trying to get my marble artichokes right?"

Dawn met her eyes. "The odd thing is, there are contradictory reports. Studies that conflict. Alternative facts! I can't understand it. It should not be possible to make something out of nothing if you don't make room for new matter."

"Right. When I multiply my artichokes a little air gets displaced, but I send most of it out of our atmosphere to make room for each little guy."

Looking down again at the artichoke sitting on the counter in front of her, Yue held out her hand, palm up, recalculated the recipe she had in mind, and multiplied that little artichoke with a slight modification. She felt the puff of air against her skin, and then felt the skin of the artichoke against her hand. It steamed a little, but she had conjured it to be cool enough to taste from the moment of its creation, and so she brought it to her mouth and bit down.

Painful. Painfully bitter. She resisted spitting. Chewed and swallowed instead.

"You felt the little puff of air moving across your hand? If you were to conjure the artichoke into the flesh of your hand instead of above it, your flesh would be displaced, exploding out of the way of the artichoke in a bloody wound. Now imagine when you conjured it above your palm you hadn't vacuumed any air away. The force would push the air apart, just like an artichoke inside your hand would push your flesh apart. It would be like a little explosion. Probably enough to put a hole in you. The pressure out of nowhere has the force of a bomb."

"So what was that about rain drops?"

"You cannot make something out of nothing. I hold in my right hand a study that upholds that truism," she held the report in that hand higher, "and in my left, a report on weather modification spells over the past three centuries that claims precipitation conjuring spells have been used in the Silesia region for floralwood agriculture space and accelerated crop growth, as well as the farming of flora resistant to magical growth modification.

"Yet this one," she picked up a third, not at all daunted that she didn't have three hands, "states that atmospheric pressure just hasn't changed. Summoning the rain from elsewhere would make more sense, but then we would be stealing precipitation, possibly from other nations. Not that any nation would be able to stop us or have any way to prove it, but it would be unethical.

"Contradictory reports, half detailing the impact of weather modification spells as if nothing would go wrong with vacuum spells being underutilized, and half suggesting that the change in pressure would soon come to have a catastrophic impact on the planet's climate. One scientist posits the impact of a cessation of rain conjuring in Soliara while another report makes it appear we have never and could never conjure a single drop without irrevocable changes to the pressure of the planet's atmosphere.

"A publication by the ACD points out that farms are cutting costs by not paying for the vacuum spells to prevent a change in pressure; yet according to half of the studies I found, it's like it's not happening; they essentially claim that there has been no change in pressure. It feels like a coverup! How can science itself lie?

"The lie will cause climate devastation! The farmers are skimping on an expensive spell, but it doesn't need to be so expensive! They could just charge less. Constellation is selling weather modification schemas and licenses to the big farm companies and charging so much that the farmers are pinching pennies and misusing spells. The cost saving is just . . . unnecessary, and it will do so much harm to our whole civilization. The planet's weather systems will be irreparable altered, all because Constellation wants to price gouge. They have a monopoly! They can charge anything they want! They can charge less and still have sky high profits."

"Hold on, what? They don't have to charge so much for magic?"

"Of course not."

Sound familiar? Thanks for reading Yue's Star Part I. Part II will be out on Monday! Have a good weekend all, and thanks for choosing Constellations for your weekend reading!