Technocracy: Saera/Terry

Saera stood there, in the sunshine, pale skin and platinum blond hair almost glinting, like metal. Her hands were behind her back. She turned her head over her shoulder. “What do you suppose brings us together?”

Terry arched brown eyebrows. His skin, pale but not as pale as Saera’s, was also bright in the sun. He brushed a tranche of his brown hair out of his eyes. “You mean, all four of us.”

“Yes.”

“You could ask yourself. You and Marin have known each other the longest of any of us.”

“Yes, but that is different. Mine and Marin’s friendship is not the same…” Saera glanced at the back of her hand. “Not the same as the four of us.”

“How is it not the same?” asked Terry. “You two became friends first, and now we’re four. That seems pretty easy.”

“Hmm,” hummed Saera.

“Are you going to tell me what you’re thinking?”

“Perhaps.”

Terry walked around her back and to the front of her. They were standing on the outskirts of the forest, near Terry’s house. It was early November, but it was unusually warm for a mid-Autumn day. They didn’t even need their jackets; the sun beamed down overhead out of the bright blue sky, and only a few clouds, here and there, marred the vastness of the heavens. Saera peered upward as Terry came around to her front. Her silver eyes seemed to see forever, up into the furthest reaches of the sky.

Terry looked up as well. “What are you looking at?” he asked.

“Just the sky,” said Saera.

“Shouldn’t we be working on our assignment?”

“Yes,” said Saera, and the silver of her eyes seemed to grow heavier, denser. She turned to him. “Yes, that’s why you invited me here, right?”

“Yeah,” said Terry. “Yes, that’s why. Though it was your idea for us to meet up.”

“Yes, but you suggested we meet here,” said Saera. “So this meeting is both our doings.”

Terry gave Saera a careful stare. Her pretty face was so delicate in so many ways, not least of all in how her brows would flit and flex above her silver eyes. Saera’s expressions were as light and as changeable as the breeze: she could look happy one moment, sad the next, angry the next, and yet there was such a lightness to her emotives that one could be forgiven in assuming that she was merely pretending to feel her feelings. It was as though her expressed emotions were merely a cover for something buried underneath.

Or so Terry thought. “It was your idea to go outside,” he said. “I’d have been happy to stay in my room.”

“I guess… I wanted to get away from indoors, a little.” Saera wrapped her arms around herself. “And our question is: how is certainty defined… right?”

“Yes,” said Terry. “That’s the assignment from Mr. Nicodemus: we’re supposed to write about the question, How do we determine certainty in knowledge?”

“And he paired us up,” said Saera. She looked up at the sky again.

“Yes,” said Terry. He looked up at the sky with her. “I’m glad. Are you?”

“Yes,” said Saera. She tilted her head his way, and she smiled. “I’m glad to be paired up with a friend.”

Terry chuckled. He laughed under his breath. “Me too,” he said. “So let’s try and work.”

“Which is why we are out here,” said Saera. “I like to have a clear idea in mind before I start writing things down.”

“So we’re out here to… think?” said Terry.

“Yes,” said Saera. “I mean, that was my plan.”

Terry shrugged. “Fine by me. But if we’re going to think, let’s walk. Come on, there’s a path that will lead us into the trees a little.”

“We do not have to if you don’t want to…”

“I mean, I’ll make a suggestion,” said Terry. Saera twisted her head around to face him, flashing those bright silver eyes upon him. “I do a lot of my best thinking while I’m wandering around. I like to be walking. Maybe it would help you, too.”

Saera kept her hands behind her back. She gently tilted her head to the side. “I’m willing to try,” she said. “All right, we shall do it your way.”

“Okay,” said Terry. He started off across the green grass, green but beginning to dapple with the dead dull brown of colder months. “Come on, it’s this way.”

So they passed out from under the sky, into the shade of the trees. The sunlight here lit up the leaves that had turned now so brown, so yellow, and so orange and red. Already these leaves coated the ground beneath their feet, but so many still hung over their heads in the trees, and the sunlight lit them, filtered through them, dappling their path with an array of rainbow shades. Saera looked above her head again. The view was, in its own way, more breathtaking and beautiful than the clear blue sky that had hung above them before.

“So,” said Terry. “What is certainty?”

“You like to get straight to the point,” said Saera. “It is funny how you often drive the rest of us where you want us to go.”

“O-Oh,” said Terry. “I didn’t mean that. I mean, I’m not bossy or anything, am I?”

“No,” said Saera, who grinned gently and chuckled. “But you do enjoy taking the lead. You were shy at the beginning. I remember. But not now.”

“Oh. Well, a-as long as you don’t have a problem with it.”

“No.” Saera’s silver eyes narrowed. “So, your question: what is certainty?” She put her hands behind her back. “Certainty is to know something for sure.”

“But what is ‘for sure’? Aren’t we just using words to define words?”

“Aren’t we doomed to that? We cannot define words with pictures. We must use words to describe words.”

“Well, yeah, I mean, that’s the point of the dictionary. But there must be something… better?” Terry’s copper eyes now took their turn to narrow. “What does the actual dictionary say?”

They both pulled out their phones. Saera was faster. “Firm conviction that something is the case.”

“But it can also mean the quality of being reliably true,” said Terry. “That word ‘reliable’ seems important.”

“I concur,” said Saera. “So does ‘firm.’ They both imply a kind of… solidness. Sturdiness.”

“Like a rock,” said Terry.

“Yes.”

“Do you think we’re solid, the four of us?” asked Terry. He put his hands in his pockets. “Are we sturdy?”

“I believe so. One reason I wonder about us is that we came together almost by accident, but it seems to me that we are solid, that we are stable. It makes one wonder. Why is that?”

Terry huffed a breath. “Sheer dumb luck?”

Saera turned her head and gave him a look. “Perhaps.”

A breeze blew then, ruffling their hair and their clothes. Terry was wearing a tan button-front shirt and some dark green pants. Saera was wearing a blue jean skirt and a deep red blouse. Terry slid down a slope and began walking closer to the bed of the stream. Saera vaulted down and landed noiselessly behind him, jogging to keep up.

“So, certainty is firm and certainty is reliable,” said Terry, as she appeared at his right side. “How do you get those qualities from knowledge?”

Saera’s silver eyes darted to and fro. “It seems difficult. Knowledge isn’t like a rock or a tree. You cannot measure it. It doesn’t have weight or height or length. Knowledge is all in the mind. It is not tangible.”

“Yeah,” said Terry. “That’s definitely true. You can’t touch knowledge.”

“You cannot see it or smell it or taste it. Knowledge is a totally un-measurable thing. So how do you decide if it’s firm? How do you decide if it is reliable?”

They exchanged glances. “I know what you’re thinking,” Terry said.

“Do you?”

“You’re wondering why you think our friendship is so good when it can’t be measured. You can’t measure friendship either.”

Saera flicked her pointer finger at him. “That… was not bad.” She smirked. “Although you are incorrect. You can measure friendship, in a way you can’t with knowledge.”

“How do you measure friendship?”

“I suppose…” Saera glanced at the ground. “I should think you can measure friendship by how willing the friends are to help each other. The lengths to which they are willing to go on each others’ behalf.”

“So…” Terry chuckled. “You can measure friendship with knowledge, kind of.”

“I guess you can. Kind of.” Saera’s phone chirped. “Ah, that’s Mama. I’ll have to go now.” She tapped a message to her mother on her phone. “Do this same time tomorrow?”

“I have to make sure my dad meets with his city management counselor tomorrow. How about on Wednesday?”

“It’s a deal,” said Saera. “I shall see you then.” And she turned, and began to run out of the woods.

Terry tapped his pen against his paper. He preferred paper, generally, to digital surfaces. He knew this ran the risk of him being ‘precious,’ being ‘special,’ in a thousand cliched ways. But he couldn’t help it. There was something about the texture of paper and pen, the feel of a ballpoint moving across the grain of the paper pulp, that seemed to ping something deep inside his chest. It seemed to help his thoughts flow better, and to allow those thoughts to be better and more competently expressed when he was writing down what he wanted to say. He always wound up typing up what he wrote into a digital format after he was done. But he liked to get it down on paper first.

His phone chirped. He looked to the side.

>Maybe you can measure certainty of knowledge with action.

He picked up the phone and tapped away.

>Action, like how?

>Like

The phone was thinking for a moment, as she seemed to hesitate.

>Like, the more certain you are about knowledge, the greater the chances are that you will put that knowledge into practice, yes?

Terry tapped his finger against his chin.

>I guess that makes sense.

>So, then, we shall say that the greater an item of knowledge compels someone towards action, the more certain it is?

>That makes sense.

Terry stared at his phone for a few moments. Saera did not type anything else. So he did some typing of his own:

>Why do you use the word ‘shall’ so much?

A long pause followed this. Terry wondered if she would respond at all, when more than five minutes passed. But at length she typed:

>It’s proper. ‘Shall’ is the action word for the first person. It is what you use for I/we.

>Oh.

>Is there something wrong with that?

Terry gagged a bit. He hastily typed.

>No, not at all. I actually didn’t know that. That’s neat.

>I know not everyone uses it. But it seems right to me.

Terry gave a small smile.

>I mean if you’re right then it’s correct.

>It is precise.

Terry laughed.

Saera took her seat in Theory of Knowledge. She sat near the window, as she always liked to do, and waited for the rest of the class to filter in. She tended to get to her classes early, and Theory of Knowledge, her first class after Lunch, was no exception. Indeed, she usually did not linger in the cafeteria when the bell rang, so she often found herself in the classroom much sooner than her fellow students. The rare exceptions were when Marin wanted to speak with her privately, a thing she always made time for.

“Hey.”

Saera gave a smile and turned. Terry sat down next to her, pale face—though not as pale as hers—approvingly contorted in a friendly expression.

“How has your half of the essay come?” she asked.

“I’m running into some trouble,” said Terry. “I mean, I think I know what we should be saying, what you were talking about, but…”

“But…” Those silver eyes were glinting, glinting,

Glinting as though glimmering within the dirty earth,

Scraps of brilliant sky that amid rock shone very bright.

Terry could not help but squirm beneath the silver gaze. Even apart from the color of them, Saera’s eyes had the ability to pin one in place, when she truly focused on someone and fixed her full attention on them. Marin and Ardo could do something a little like this, also, and Terry had been told that his own intense stare was a bit hard to tolerate when he fixed someone with it. But Saera had it the most of all.

“But,” said Terry, fully focused, “but the words aren’t coming. It’s funny.” He tapped his stylus on his desk screen. “I feel like I know what we want to say, but I’m having trouble coming up with ways to express it.”

“But if you don’t know how to say it, do you truly know what you want to say?” said Saera. “I think that knowing how to say something goes together with knowing what to say. If you don’t know the one, you won’t know the other.”

“Yeah…” Terry put his cheek in his palm and glanced past Saera, out the window, to the trees that erupted in the warm bright colors of Fall.

“I’m having trouble too.”

“Really?” Terry said, caught off-guard. “I thought you were doing well.”

“I find I am writing a lot,” said Saera, tapping her index and middle finger up against her cheek. “I write, and write quite a bit. I’ve filled whole pages. Yet when I look at it, when I actually read what I have written… there’s not anything there that I think is worthwhile.”

“Wow. I’m actually surprised. I wouldn’t have expected that coming from you. I mean you’re in Creative Writing. You’re a much better writer than I am.”

“Just because I can write doesn’t mean I have anything to say.” Saera turned to him and grinned. “I guess we have got opposite problems? You have got the ideas, but not the words. I’ve the words but not the ideas.”

“All right, all right,” said the voice, and their Theory of Knowledge teacher, Mr. Nicodemus, walked into the room, trailing his long scarf behind him. “First things first, I expect progress updates on your paired essays by the beginning of next week.” He glanced upon them, his blue eyes sparkling and bright. “I know you have two more weeks to turn those essays in, but I need to know that you are not merely procrastinating, that you are actually moving forward and are actually proceeding towards a defined conclusion.”

Terry and Saera eyed each other sidelong, his copper-brown meeting her silver-white.

“Several of you have written to me about your concerns regarding this paper. Some of you, even people who have been doing well in this class, have written to me, wondering if you are going in the right direction as regards to your ideas.”

Terry’s eyebrows rose. He glanced at Saera. She did not look back at him.

“What I want to stress is that I don’t necessarily need ‘correct’ responses from you. Remember what I told you at the beginning of the year. We are tackling questions in this class for which there often are no correct answers. Sometimes there are just answers, period. The questions are often inconclusive.”

Terry hastily jotted down notes.

“What I want from you on this paper is not a searching-after of correct answers. What I want from you is a clear answer. You will all, inevitably, come to some different conclusions on the question of certainty in knowledge. I paired you up precisely so you would generate different responses.” Mr. Nicodemus crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against his desk. “But I want whatever answer your pairs come up with to be expressed clearly, precisely, and completely. I want a well-developed thesis. I want an idea that’s fully formed, not just half-formed. That is the point of this exercise. Anyone, any person sitting at a desk, can have an idea. They can have the scrap of a thought. But the test is: can you develop that idea? Can you expand that idea? Can you draw that idea to its logical conclusions? That is the test of this class, and that is particularly what I want you to do with this paper. The exact ideas themselves are, actually, not as important.”

The class stood silent, not a pindrop being heard.

“All right,” said Mr. Nicodemus, moving to the big digital board and tapping it to bring up a menu. “Now, last time Imran Refner’s theories about idea exchange dominated the bulk of our discussion. Today, I want us to…”

“Let’s get together again this weekend,” said Terry, leaning over to Saera.

“Yes,” she said. “But let’s get together at my house this time, for a change.”

“That sounds fine to me.”

“Mr. Philips, did you have something to say?” said Mr. Nicodemus, turning his head.

“N-No, sir,” said Terry, who bent his head and began to copy notes.

Terry had been forced to take a cab to Saera’s house. Obviously, his father did not drive, and was in no condition to drive. He couldn’t even remember if his father had a valid driver’s license. So he had been forced to pay money for an automated taxi. He’d just take it out of the money from the state; it meant one less shower in the morning, but that was a price he was happy to pay.

So he came, with his bag over his shoulder, up to the big front porch of Saera’s house—or, at least, where he’d been told Saera’s house was. He’d gotten the address from her, and he was almost totally certain it was accurate, but there was always a nagging fear at the back of his mind. All those years of fake friends. He could not help but be gunshy; he couldn’t help but worry that, just maybe, he’d been fooled, and this was all a terrible joke being played on him.

And the fear arose as a cold sharp spike when the door to the house came open at his knock. For out of it stepped a woman with a haircut like Saera’s, but without Saera’s colors. Her skin was fair, but not pale, and her eyes were brown and so was her hair. She was wearing a pretty white dress with red paisley upon it.

“O-Oh,” he said.

“Oh, are you Terry?”

“Y-Yes, I am.”

“Hello! I’m Ms. Alhimov. Saera’s expecting you.” She smiled in a small, but friendly way, and now Terry could see the hints of the daughter in the mother. “Come on in.” And she pulled inwards, opening the door wide and beckoning him within.

“Terry,” said Saera, “there you are. Hello!” She came around a corner, smiling in her small way, her half-hid way. Her silver eyes were bright and sparkled.

“Hey!” he said, and waved. “Do you want to just go to your room?”

“Yes, for a bit,” said Saera. “I thought we might go for a walk in the neighborhood later. You did say you did good thinking when you were on the move.”

“Yeah, okay!” said Terry. “Sure.” He turned to her mother. “Thanks for inviting me into your home, Ms. Alhimov.”

She smiled, broader than she had before. “You’re welcome, Terry. Saera’s told me about you. You all go to her room, I have some sparkling lemonade I can get ready for you two.” She waved them off, then turned and headed away into the depths of the house.

“Come,” said Saera, who turned on her heel and beckoned him after her, walking as she did through the living room and into the house.

“Sure,” said Terry, hastily following behind.

“Did you have trouble finding me?” asked Saera.

“No, the address was right.” Terry absently glanced over his shoulder. “Hm.”

“What?”

“O-Oh,” he stammered. “It’s just…”

“Hmm?” Saera stopped at the door to a bedroom, presumably her bedroom. She turned and stood primly, staring at him. Terry stopped, and in a hesitant second saw her there, with that pale skin and that platinum blonde hair and those eyes so silver-white.

“It’s just, your mom,” said Terry. “She doesn’t look like you.”

“No,” said Saera, “she does not.”

“Oh, um, sorry, I didn’t meant to make you upset.”

“I’m not upset,” said Saera. She huffed a breath and smiled tinily. “She says I probably look like my father, but she does not remember him. He left a long time ago, before I was born, not long after she found out she was pregnant.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, your father is not the best of men,” said Saera. “Would you rather have him, or no father at all?”

“I don’t—” Terry squared up his shoulders and met her gaze. “That’s kind of a tough question.”

“I know.”

“I guess I’d mostly want to have someone who loves me.” He thought of his grandfather’s warm embrace.

“My mama loves me,” said Saera, “so I don’t mind things, as they are.”

“Lucky,” said Terry.

“I know,” said Saera. Her eyes, silver-white, softened as they stared at him now. “Yes, I know.”

A beat of silence filled the space.

“Anyway,” said Terry, hastily, “come on, w-we can put some music on.”

He led the way into her room, and Saera followed after him, gliding, silent. Saera’s room was very neat, and Terry noticed this. “Tidy,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I like my room to be neat, too.”

“So,” said Saera. “Let us regard where we left off last time. Remember, we need a pretty firm working framework of the essay by Monday, because we have to turn it in as a progress report.”

“Right! Um, yes,” said Terry. “So, we were texting and… we decided about action.”

“Correct. I had said that we might measure certainty in knowledge by virtue of whether that knowledge inspires someone to action.”

“Right, true,” said Terry. “That’s actually a pretty good idea.” He slid down to the floor, and he sat against the mattress of her bed. Saera regarded him with her silver eyes; his boots were a bit dirty, but she was not going to harp on him for it. It was best to hold her tongue.

“Well, so, okay,” said Saera. “Action. A measurement of action, should that be sufficient?”

“What determines action?”

She turned. Terry had swung his head about, and his eyes had done that thing, that thing, that shift in their metals, between copper and bronze, which Ardo and Marin had both talked about, which she had seen, but which was still so odd to see.

“I mean we brought this up,” Terry bent forward. He sat there cross-legged, and he put his cheek in his palm. “But action—what does that mean? I can feel the most random feeling and it can make me act. I can feel”—he thought of Ardo, red eyes blazing—“I can feel just the flimsiest thing, and I can act. Maybe it’s not as sure as you think it is.”

“I would… say,” said Saera, tapping toes forward, finding her footing, “It should be something that motivates serious action. Real action.”

“Real action. What defines real action?”

Saera seemed to flinch, for maybe the first time Terry had known her.

“I suppose…”

She did not finish.

“Is there fake action? What makes one action real, and the other fake?”

“A level of… decision…” said Saera. “A level of certainty.”

“So we know when we take a real action if we’re certain about it? So a certain action requires certainty.” Heavy chuckles wracked him and his pale, jacket-clad form. “We’re right back where we started.”

“You’re right,” said Saera, who felt as though Terry had invaded her room, had charged in and laid waste and conquered her and her space and her ideas. She sharply pulled the chair out from her desk and sat down in it, crossing her legs and crossing her arms and pressing her lips tightly together.

Terry glanced at her, from the corner of his eye. Copper brown met silver white. Metals mixed and clashed. Terry sighed. Saera breathed out.

“Sorry.”

“It is not a problem.”

“But… have I just found a problem?” Terry turned up his palms and gestured, as though he were balancing something between them. “Am I undermining us?”

“No… or, I don’t think so,” said Saera. She was crossed less tightly now, her legs and arms loosening their grip around her own body. Her light blonde eyebrows crossed, and Terry somehow felt something strange, a sense that something was off about Saera’s brows, off about her hair, as though she did not look the way she ought to look—which was very odd, since she’d looked this way from the moment he’d come to know her.

“What do we want?” asked Terry.

“Here you go,” said Aemilia, coming into the room with two tall, fizzy glasses of sparkling lemonade.

“Oh, thank you, Mama,” said Saera, springing up lightly from her seat and crossing to take a glass off the tray.

“Thank you, Ms. Alhimov,” said Terry, picking up the other glass.

“Don’t mention it,” said Aemilia, smiling brightly at them. “How’s it coming?”

“Not bad,” said Terry.

“We are coming to some conclusions,” said Saera.

“Well, good. Sweetie, you mentioned that you might want to go for a walk later, right?”

“Yes, mama.”

“It’s a very nice day. I’m sure you’d get some good thinking done!” Aemilia beamed at them. “Just let me know if you need anything.” And with that, she slowly shut the door.

“Your mom really is super nice,” said Terry.

“Yes,” said Saera. “Although she might bug us a bit, the longer we stay in here.”

“Hmm?”

Saera raised her glass of sparkling lemonade to her lips. “She might want to make sure we’re not fooling around in here.” She sipped the drink slowly as she watched Terry’s eyebrows rise and his face contort.

“O-Oh, I mean—”

Saera gave him one of those crooked, mischievous smiles. “I am just saying.”

“You did that on purpose.”

“I suppose.”

Terry sipped his sparkling lemonade again. “But, I do think we were on to something. With knowledge that inspires action. You don’t act on something you aren’t sure about.” He swirled the sparkling liquid in the glass. “I just can’t help but think that maybe we’ve switched our… our targets, you know? Like maybe we’re just shuffling words around. Is ‘knowledge that inspires action’ another way to say ‘certainty’? Are we just saying equivalent things, the same things, without really clarifying?”

“So…” said Saera, careful, quiet, “what inspires action? What inspires us?”

Terry glanced her way. “Us?”

“I keep thinking about us, the four of us.”

“That’s not really relevant to our assignment.”

“Is it not?” Saera’s pale blonde brows went furrowed, silver eyes were bent in thought. “I am certain.”

“Huh?”

“I am certain, about the four of us.” Saera swiveled in her chair, and Terry felt her gaze upon him, felt those eyes, so silver-white, stare in, bore in, really fix him seriously, in a way that made his spine tingle. “I am certain we are friends, you and me and Marin and Ardo, in a way that feels more certain than any other specific thing I can immediately think of.”

“You…” Terry’s copper eyes were glinting, as he bent, and sat in thought. “You really are making a really big deal about this, aren’t you?”

“I cannot help it. It is a thing I know I must do. I feel this. I’m certain about this.” Saera took a big gulp of her lemonade. “So, then, if the four of us are a thing I’m certain about, then we have an example. A test case. We can work backwards from it. Or, at least, I shall attempt to try.”

“Hmm,” said Terry. “Okay, yeah, I get that. And I—”

Saera twitched her head and her blonde eyebrows, silently staring at him, a whisper, a breeze.

“I… kind of feel like you,” said Terry. “Maybe I just needed to hear someone else say it. Maybe I just needed clarity, I guess?” He haphazardly gulped his lemonade down, trying not to spill. “But I do feel really sure about us as friends. If I had to define what it meant to have a friend, I’d pick you, and Marin too. And I’d definitely pick Ardo, also.”

“So we have our example,” said Saera. “We need merely describe its qualities.”

“Well, let’s go back to your idea,” said Terry. “Something that inspires action. Would you say that describes us?”

“Yes.”

“How so?”

“We… move each other.” Saera had finished her lemonade, gulped it down. “Our connection to each other makes us… move. It makes us act. Our friendship makes us act.”

“But why?”

“Is that what we are trying to find out?”

“Isn’t it?”

Terry was sipping his lemonade far more slowly. He took a long pull, and watched Saera as he did. He considered that it was often she who watched him, and Marin, and Ardo, all of them. So he watched her, as she did not speak, as the lovely sunshine dappled through the windows, and splayed across the desk, as she sat in the chair banked up against it. She was tensed, poised, drawn taut like some tight string. Her legs and arms, long for her age, were alive in tension, stretched out or pulled against the arms of the chair. She closed her eyes—until she opened them, staring ahead, not at him, not at anything, those strange eyes, so unlike any he’d ever seen… but so were Marin’s. And Ardo’s. And his.

“You’re really making a big deal about this thing with the four of us, aren’t you?” asked Terry.

“Am I?”

“Yes. Yeah, you are. When we met out at my house, the first thing we talked about wasn’t our assignment, it was the four of us. And I didn’t even say anything. You just brought it up.”

Saera bent forward, and her long fingers met tip-to-tip as she pressed her hands together.

“Why?”

Saera blinked very slowly, eyes crawling closed and then open again. “Because I have been thinking about the four of us since this assignment began.”

“Really?” Terry took a sip of his lemonade.

“Because the minute, the instant, that we were given this assignment, that I started to think about how to define ‘certainty,’ my mind instantly thought of the four of us. And that was a thing I did not plan, and it’s bothered me ever since.”

“So this was just some idea you had.”

“An idea I had without even meaning to have it. I should never have thought of the four of us when I went searching for examples of ‘certainty in knowledge.’ But my mind instantly made the connection.”

“What if your mind is wrong?”

“It could be, but I feel it isn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“So you have faith?”

Pale blonde eyebrows rose. “Faith?”

“I mean, uh,” said Terry. “I-I mean, that seems like what you’re describing.”

“W-We,” Saera abruptly shot up from her chair, “We should go for a walk.”

“Okay,” said Terry. He tipped back his glass and drank the last of his lemonade. Without pushing off the ground he rose, using his legs alone to bring himself to his feet. Saera noiselessly whispered out of her seat, rising and slipping her shoes on at the frame of her bedroom’s door.

“Mama,” said Saera, walking into the kitchen, Terry in her wake. Aemilia was writing something down on her phone. “We are going for a walk now,” she said.

“Sure, sweetie, have fun. Text me if you’re going to be more than half an hour.”

“We shall.”

And with that, they swept out through the front door without another word. Though the day was again warm, the chill north breeze that hearkened winter blew, ruffling their hair and blowing red and orange and brown and yellow leaves from off the trees. The sun shone, though, and the chill of the breeze was cut by the warmth of its rays. It was, all told, a lovely day.

“Faith,” said Saera, kicking along, pushing her toes in front of her, walking, staring down at her pretty white tennis shoes.

“What is it?” Terry asked.

“That word,” said Saera. “I didn’t think about it before. But maybe that is the key.”

“Faith?”

“Yes,” she said. “That word. How to determine certainty in knowledge. What if it’s ‘faith’?”

“But certainty isn’t faith,” said Terry. “Faith is… a blind jump. That’s what I always heard.”

“Is that right?” asked Saera.

Both of them met each others’ eyes. Then they both pulled out their phones.

“Complete trust or confidence in someone or something,” said Saera. Her silver eyes sparkled. “Haha, certainty in knowledge. I am correct.”

“But there’s also…”

“Hmm?” Saera turned as the sun glinted off her blonde hair.

“O-Oh, the secondary definition,” said Terry, “is, strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.” He twisted up his fingers as he put his phone away. “Is that a good basis for a paper for class? Do we want to use a word like ‘faith’?”

“Well, I do not see why not.”

“I mean, do we want to talk about God?”

“God?” Saera said, and she twitched, her eyes flitting to the side. “God…” she said softly. A breeze blew, scattering the leaves in the street, billowing them, blowing them this way and that.

“Because that’s what the definition of ‘faith’ involves, kind of,” said Terry. “That’s what I always thought it would mean.” He stared. “Do you believe in God?”

“I,” said Saera, turning her feet inward. “I am not sure. My Mama doesn’t ever talk about that sort of thing. I’ve never really thought about it before. I don’t know if I believe or not.” She suddenly looked up, across at him. “Do you believe in God?”

“Yes,” said Terry, and as he spoke his eyes did that thing, that thing Ardo had told her about, that she herself had seen: that shift, that motion where they suddenly changed from being warm, reddish copper-brown to being sharp, goldish bronze-brown. “Y-Yes, yeah. I believe in God.” He huffily stuffed his hands in his pockets. “My dad doesn’t talk about it… my grandfather didn’t either. But I believe. Nobody talked to me about it. I just realized it on my own. I do believe in God.”

“Why?”

“I just do.” Terry bent his head, and a thousand feelings washed across his chest. But he found no answers in them. He turned, and he fixed Saera with his stare, and made her twitch in place. “I just felt, one day, that I really did believe. I know beyond knowing, you know?”

“Oh,” said Saera, a soft gasp.

“What?”

“Know beyond knowing,” she repeated, and smiled, a bright and happy smile, a satisfied smile. “Oh, to know beyond knowing! That’s certainty in knowledge. That is faith. That is knowledge that compels action.” She snapped her pale fingers. “We’ve got it.”

“Hmm,” said Terry, putting his fingers to his chin. “Hmm… when you know something beyond knowing… when you have faith… when you’re compelled to action… you’re certain about it.” He snapped his fingers as his mind went moving to and fro and churning back and forth. “Faith comes first. Faith is like… you understand something before understanding it.”

“You understand it completely before your rational mind fully grasps it. You do not comprehend it yet, but you know it,” said Saera.

“Yes,” said Terry. “It’s not just knowing beyond knowing, it’s knowing before knowing. It’s like there’s some part of you… deep down… that fully knows something before the rest of your brain catches up. And all of a sudden, you know it perfectly.”

“And then because you know it, you act, even when you cannot justify that action,” said Saera.

“So it looks like you’re acting without thinking… acting without being certain…” Terry’s eyes glinted, copper brown and very bright. “But you really aren’t, because you’re actually more certain than some part of you… most of you… realizes. You know it, before you know it. You know it’s true even if the rest of your brain hasn’t realized that yet.”

“Correct,” said Saera. She beamed at him, silver eyes sparkling, lips pulled back in a really genuine, wide smile, a bigger smile than he was used to seeing from her. “That is our structure.”

“Do you think Mr. Nicodemus will be okay with that? Will he accuse us of dodging the question?”

“He did say that he was interested in seeing if we could follow our trains of thought to their conclusions,” said Saera. “I should say we have done that here.”

“Yeah.” Now it was Terry’s turn to smile. “Yeah. That’s it!” He barked a laugh. “Now we just have to write the dumb thing.”

“Well, that is easy,” said Saera. “I think we are both good typists?”

“I did pretty well on my typing classes in middle school,” said Terry.

“Good. Let us pick parts of the argument for each of us to write. Then we can look over each others’ work and make edits and suggestions. Then we—”

There came then a strange sound from off to their right. They turned, to behold a deep grove of trees. It actually was the outskirts of a wood, one that stretched its arm into the reaches of Saera’s neighborhood before venturing back into depths that spanned through the midst of Atlanta.

Now, as they listened, there was a faint noise. Faint, and yet not so faint. The heavy creak of trees, of something they could not see. The shift of… something. As if something were moving, just out of sight. Something rather large.

But it stopped, and though a few birds flew overhead from out of the woods, no more sound was heard, save the much gentler creakings of the trees as they blew in the north wind. Saera peered with her silver eyes deep into the depths of the trees. Did she see anything? Could she? Something was making her skin prick. She had a sinking feeling.

“ What is it?”

“I do not think… I thought there might be something there, but it appears there isn’t.”

“S-So, then,” said Terry, a strange note in his voice. “I think we have our plans, right?”

“Yes,” said Saera, a bit too quickly. “Let’s head back to my house. You can stay for lunch.”

She turned, and Terry smiled at her. “I’d like that,” he said.

Saera smiled herself, her unease banished in the warmth of his friendly gaze. She nodded. “Come. Let’s hurry back. My Mama is making some chicken.” She turned and skipped a bit, light on her feet, as the breeze blew. She walked briskly, excitedly, and Terry followed after her, thinking for perhaps the thousandth time that he had never been so lucky as the day he’d met her and Ardo and Marin.

They left. They were soon gone from that spot on the sidewalk, just on the outskirts of the trees. They left, and the breeze blew. Then the heavy creaking noise rose again on the air, louder this time, and the treetops shifted, deep in the woods. Amid the depths of the trees, almost impossible to see, there was a single great eye, vast and open, colored a gleaming neon red, with a pupil of empty black in its center. The cold red eye blinked, and something that could not be seen, something rather large, moved, deeper into the woods, until even the eye was gone, swallowed in the gloom of the trees.

Saera was typing her segment of their paper. She had been assigned the middle portion, where the broad definitions of ‘certainty’ were presented, and where ‘faith as a mode of action’ was put forth. She was very much enjoying herself. And she needed to send her portion to Terry soon, for him to look over; she had already reviewed his portions that he’d written. Their progress report a few days ago to Mr. Nicodemus had gone swimmingly, and now they were hard at work on the final paper.

Her phone twinkled.

>Gonna be down for doing hair and nails on Friday night?

Saera smiled at Marin’s text.

>Yes. I should be done with the paper by then.

>Awesome!

Saera hummed in pleasure, and put her phone aside, to resume typing. However, she had not gotten more than a few additional sentences typed before her phone chirped again—and this time, it was Terry.

>How’s it coming?

>It is going well.

A pause. And then another text came, one that, when she saw it, made Saera’s silver eyes widen:

>Do you have faith in our friendship? Do you have faith in the four of us?

Saera stared at her phone. She put a pale fist against her cheek. Her mind went searching, creeping, crawling, trying to decide how to answer. She still had not forgotten Terry’s talk about believing in God. It was, as she had mentioned, not a thing to which she had ever given much thought herself. But to hear him express it, to say he had faith, had haunted her thoughts for the past week.

She tapped with her thumbs.

>Yes. I do have faith.

>Even according to the definitions in our paper?

>Yes.

Saera’s prim, thin lips curled in a smile.

>I know beyond knowing that we are meant to be together. It propels me to act.

A pause.

>Act how?

That made her think. She paused herself, before responding.

>Act to bring us even closer together. Act to do whatever you or Marin or Ardo need. Act however I have to.

There was another pause. Then, her phone twinkled again. There was a smiley face on the screen. And then one final text:

>I’m glad you’re my friend.

Saera smiled. She’d learned what that meant to Terry.

>I am glad you’re my friend, too.

The next Monday, the two of them were sitting in Theory of Knowledge. Saera had taken her usual window seat, and Terry sat right next to her, both of them in the frontmost row.

They exchanged glances. Her silver eyes met his copper eyes. He grinned at her, surprising himself in doing so; she smiled at him daintily in turn. He was more overt than normal, she the same.

“All right,” came the call, and Mr. Nicodemus walked into the room. He immediately began tapping on the touchscreen of his desk. “Let’s go ahead and disperse papers.” He kept tapping. “Some of you did worse than others… some of you did better.” He paused, dramatically, and then strikingly pressed the glowing red button on the middle of his touchscreen.

Instantly twenty-five different desk screens lit up with digital documents. Saera and Terry glanced down at once. Their eyes widened.

“By the way,” said Mr. Nicodemus, “special praise goes out to Mr. Philips and Ms. Alhimov. They got the highest grades in the class. Well done, you two. Very interesting paper. Well-constructed and well-reasoned.”

The red lettering and marking on their paper bore out their teacher’s comments. Saera, finally, widened her lips, smiling more broadly and more vibrantly than she normally did. Terry turned to see her, and he’d never seen her smile this widely. She seemed enraptured, full of more joy than was typical of her.

“Hmm,” he hummed.

“Hmm?” said Saera, arching a platinum blonde eyebrow, turning his way.

“Just,” he said. He chuckled. “Faith, huh?”

Saera smiled again, radiating joy. “Faith.”

And the two of them grinned to themselves.