“Indeed? Well perhaps during the course of his pedantry he has chanced upon the study of hydrogen bonds. I recently consummated my own research in this field. I spent a good part of the past year in Farmer Neal’s Farm,” said the boy, sitting perfectly poised on the stump of a tree, back straight and slick hair set in place. Kia hadn’t a clue as to what he was saying, and had never even heard of Farmer Neal. It sounded insulting, and it probably was. More than anything, Kia hated it when people talked of their friends and acquaintances as if the whole world knew them on a first-name basis. Her friend Adam did this often and she loathed it. So Ambrose and I spent the whole day together catching prairie dogs. Adam had been talking of this Ambrose fellow for a few months and had never cared to point out who exactly he was. Kia hadn’t bothered to inquire further.
Kia was a girl. And she was the only Kia in the world. She knew that, because her father the Wizard had told her that her name translated loosely into “Characters and events in these stories are fictional. Any resemblance to real events and persons is purely coincidental.”
“What a tiresome translation. And may I be frank in saying that it is a rather phonetically unlovely nomenclature,” said the boy, rising to his feet, when Kia pointed out the uniqueness of her name. By now, Kia was seething, but her father the Wizard had always taught her to remain calm in such situations. It was only this training that kept her from slapping Adam hard behind his knees. Similar instincts were creeping up on her now, but she kept them in check. Besides, the boy was wearing grey pants that looked like a 60-40 blend of polyester and cotton, so slapping him behind his knees would be rather futile.
“Well, let’s hear your name then, smarty pants,” said Kia.
“In actual fact, my slacks are a 60-40 blend of polyester and cotton. But yes, they do look rather smart, do they not?” The boy then proceeded to look down at his paints, admiring them, carefully fingering the creases and flattening each leg from his waist to his knees. Kia rolled her eyes, and walked off through the thick grass in the direction of her home.
“Djkrie,” said the boy, calling after her.
Kia spun around on one heel. “What?”
“That is my name. Djkrie,” said the boy, with a look of smug satisfaction on his face.
“That’s the ugliest name I’ve heard in my life.”
“So be it. Have you met Trotsky?” The boy seemed somewhat crestfallen at the response to his name, but quickly recovered. Kia was annoyed. This Trotsky person sounded a bit like Ambrose.
“Who? Trotsky? The Russian revolutionary chap? Nope. Haven’t had the pleasure. Perhaps, during the course of your study with Farmer Neal, he told you that Trotsky died quite a while ago?”
Djkrie did not respond. He whistled two sharp notes, and called out, “Trotsky.”
Kia noticed a faint buzz filling the air. It grew louder over the next few seconds, and Kia looked around to find its source. Suddenly, a large, initially unidentifiable flying object flew into her view. The buzz came from a pair of glass-like wings, thinly veined with a mesh of red lines. They were flapping at a furious pace, and Kia was sure she heard ‘Purple Haze’ playing somewhere in the background as it hovered in front of Djkrie.
“This is Trotsky,” said the boy, absently stroking Trotsky’s long, glistening abdomen. It was about six feet in length and looked like shiny sections of sushi squashed together.
Trotsky was a dragonfly. The most beautiful, and the only, dragonfly Kia had seen.
