Wildflower, Chapter One

Neetra was in the Media Centre with Sludge-Man, looking over layouts for the next issue of his comic. One full-page advertisment in particular had our heroine absorbed.

“Baumgaarten are really branching out from boys’ underwear,” she declared. “That’s a great suit of rubber armour for girls. So nice to see a firm in your galaxy that’s moving with the times. And the best part is it’s not only stylish, but practical too.”

“If there’s any chick in the cosmos who’d rock that look!” Sludge-Man leered supportively. “So why not treat yourself once we’re in print?”

“I just did,” replied smug Neetra, indicating the telepathic hotline at the bottom of the page. “Trust me, they’re going to fly off the shelves, and creating this place has its privileges.”

“But even the most bodacious babe’s sometimes gotta wait,” continued Sludge-Man, leading her to a line of easels all hidden under drapes. Neetra, it had to be said, looked rather less the founding member of The Four Heroes who’d established this new iteration of Nottingham when she pouted and stamped her foot.

“Cliffhangers are cliffhangers, little dude-ette,” Sludge-Man informed her yet again, unable to restrain his cackles. “That goes for my foxiest fan same as all the rest!”

“You show Joe,” Neetra protested petulantly.

“Joe doesn’t write me every week asking what’s gonna happen next,” the other pointed out.

Neetra pouted some more, in the hopes this might help. If Sludge-Man was as girl-crazy as he claimed then she should by rights have been able to eyelash-flutter her way to an advance-viewing of each new installment, but on this one area he never budged. Just before she could begin her usual round of futile pleas and entreaties the office telephone rang.

It was Flashshadow and Mini-Flash Splitsville. Following either one over the phone presented its own set of challenges, but together they managed to convey to Neetra that something big had happened.

Our heroine hurried to the Town Hall and sought out the private suite where her friends had said they’d be. She opened the door and there they were, with an unfamiliar third girl.

Even at a glance, Neetra would have known her for a Special Program Mini-Flash. She wasn’t in uniform, and nor was it that Shadow and Splitsville were Special Program too and apparently knew her. Rather, it was that the curious character which Flashshadow in particular exhibited but was common to all her mysterious Flash Club division was about the stranger too, a certain something Neetra might have defined as not being quite as physically present as was typical, but making up for it by registering on the senses somewhat more. Very fair-haired, she was not deathly white of complexion but by contrast to Neetra’s own pale pink a porcelain our heroine thought lovely. Or rather she would have done, had it not been a bit of a surprise to get it all at once. For the girl was naked, and not shy. “Unblushing” or “unashamed” indeed weren’t strong enough words. She simply stood, though there was in her look the tiniest hint it would be woe betide anyone who dared comment.

That notwithstanding, Neetra took the risk. “What happened to your clothes?” she cried at once, for she felt it an important question even if nobody else did.

“Ease off on the throttle, boss-lady,” Splitsville grinned. “Mini-Flash Juniper here should have been called Mini-Flash California. Never did get hip to the dress-code. Without the sisters to clue her in, every day would have been laundry-day. Like volleyball season all year round, dig?”

“When Joe gets back from his business-trip I’m going to have a word with him about what exactly he’s showing you at that film club,” said Neetra. “Hi, Mini-Flash Juniper, pleased to meet you. Welcome to Nottingham. It’s always like this.”

Flashshadow murmured words to the effect that Mini-Flash Splitsville could lend Mini-Flash Juniper her spare tunic since they were both on beige.

“It doesn’t have to be Flash Club uniform,” Neetra added. “Strictly speaking you’ve all left, even if most of our Mini-Flashes still wear theirs. Maybe just try to put something on though,” she finished with a grin of her own.

Mini-Flash Juniper looked to her and smiled. She was very sweet when she did so, adorable even. But it was only then.

Summer was at its height. The orbital city of Nottingham on its inverted pyramidal rock was first in line to catch those rays which even when filtered through the atmosphere of Nereynis would have made a hot hemisphere sultrier still. Sun which had encountered no prior obstacle since beaming from the source plastered itself flat against the sides of tall buildings. Male Mini-Flashes tugged on fresh tunics each morning and felt prickly for the exercise.

There were only male Mini-Flashes in the class Mini-Flash Juniper elected to join.

Joe was away, so his Special Program masterclass wasn’t running. Juniper was set to sign up on his return and study alongside her friends Flashshadow and Mini-Flash Splitsville, but for her standard lessons she chose a cohort that was all beige-clad boys. It was fair to say she caused a stir from the moment she stepped into the seminar room.

For Mini-Flash Juniper, quite contrary, seemed to have simultaneously taken Neetra’s advice on clothes and gone as far as was decently possible to ignore it outright. The thinnest and most form-fitting of powder-grey membranes masked only where it was absolutely required to do so, while working no alteration whatsoever to the silhouette first seen in Nottingham. At one extremity this garment ended with slim pastel-pink halter-straps, and at the other tiny shorts. Mini-Flash Juniper’s marble-smooth sculpted legs were bare, as were her arms and shoulders and slender neck and breastbone.

It was quite an entrance. Juniper however was a creature of habit, which helped her new classmates make a swift transition from being thunderstruck to falling in with her routine. Indeed, her routine became theirs. In no time at all the days were revolving around it.

She owned several different membranes, and would fly to class wearing one with another in her bag to change into when she arrived. No other Mini-Flash did this. Entering the room she crossed to her desk and put her bag down, took off her shoes, then padded out again in clean white socks carrying the unworn garment.

The girls’ changing-room was just across the corridor. Its door when closed made for no more interesting a sight than any other of its kind, and to the male Mini-Flashes was a poor substitute indeed for what was going on behind it. It was however the only one available, which might have been why they kept a close eye on it all the same.

At length Mini-Flash Juniper would emerge, now clad in her study-membrane with the one for travelling draped over an arm. The pegs in that seminar room were in the corner, adjacent to where Mini-Flash Robin sat. Next on Juniper’s itinerary was to squeeze herself into the narrow space between him and the wall, and there hang her slightly damp commuting costume up to air.

She was a tall girl by Mini-Flash standards, and there was no question as to whereabouts her figure was fullest. On these points Mini-Flash Robin received acute daily reminders.

And even after she was gone to her desk, there the membrane still hung. All day. Under his nose. Near enough to all but brush his cheek.

Mini-Flash Juniper would then don a pair of large round glasses and proceed to dazzle at theory, taking notes with twice the speed and assiduousness of the heat-stymied boys. When afternoon lessons came to their end, Mini-Flash Robin quietly drew a tremulous breath and braced himself. The day’s second stretch of sweetest fleeting unrest was followed by his agonies sweeping off to make ready for their return journey. Then as he and his flightless exhausted peers plodded home through the summer dust Mini-Flash Juniper would skim by over their heads, usually singing to herself a high little song.

She wasn’t friends with the boys. In fact she barely even talked to them. The only people with whom she would associate were her two former Special Program sisters, and when she spoke in her carrying cut-glass voice of days out “with friends” this invariably meant Flashshadow and Mini-Flash Splitsville. She was a different person in their company, laughing and alight and warm. At such times her wistful classmates would watch, mutely aware of something far sharper than mere sentimental affection engendered by that lovable smile.

It was more like the feeling of being denied.

END OF CHAPTER ONE