Violent storms brewed as Thunder scoured the skies, his anger and doubts turning into hurricanes, his tears into tsunamis, and his heartbreak into earthquakes. The People Below the Skies no longer revered him as a god but saw him as something to be destroyed. And so, the two Kingdoms Below the Skies continued their war. Eventually, when the storms ebbed and the lands dried up, the People Below the Skies stopped telling stories of the titans, outlawing even a mention of the forbidden, unnatural love that tore them, the two warring kingdoms, and the lands apart.

Until one day, many years later, a Prince was journeying home after a quest for a new water source. He happened upon a lone Knight from the rival kingdom in the woods. The Prince was curious about this Knight, captivated by his handsome beauty in a way he hadn’t been by any maiden or princess before, and stopped to talk to him.

Hours passed, and he found the Knight to be beguiling, mesmerizing. Before long, night fell, and the Prince had to return home. Upon his arrival, he was supposed to marry a princess. As the Prince and the Knight parted, the two shook hands, and a jolt traveled between them.

As the Prince walked away, he looked down at his hand and gasped. For in his palm, there was but a tiny spark dancing around his fingers.

8

On the day of the flip-book presentations, the class is held in our new, state-of-the-art animation studio. We are surrounded by a group of twenty junior animation majors. By the end of class today, I’ll be paired with two of them.

Of course, Leila volunteers to go first. She is poised and polished in her business-ready blazer, the one she always wears when she wants people to take her seriously. She plays her flip animation for the third time, and the characters she created come to life. Sort of.

Here’s the thing. I’m not being judgy—I swear—but they’re literally two eggs in a carton inside a refrigerator, personified with googly eyes and wiggly mouths. They’re having a conversation where one egg is saying how it can’t wait to be chosen for the Great Scrambling, while the other talks about how it feels the weight of its yolky dream that there’s something more to life than waiting to be eaten. This egg wants to hatch and become a chick, so it devises a plan to escape the clutches of the carton.

“So,” Professor McPherson says. Her hand rests on her temple as she leans back in her chair. “Explain to us what’s happening here?”

“Food as sustenance,” Leila begins. “I’ve named him Eggbért. And Eggbért and all the other eggs in the fridge are, like, so conditioned to believe that The Great Scrambling, which represents our collective gluttony and consumerism, is all there is to their lives. So this is a story of Eggbért rejecting that predetermined path and choosing the one of most resistance. I’m thinking a grand journey to a city-like farm, you know, like in A Bug’s Life—it’s a metaphor, obviously. There, all his notions about his sense of self will be challenged … and end in flames. I call it Unscramblé a Flambé.”