Copyright © 2025 by Brittany Noelle
AN HOUR LATER, FIREFIGHTERS save the shop. At least half of it. Where Bridget stands at the corner, arms hugging around her middle, she tries to contain the storm inside. The smoke has partially dissipated, revealing the neon green and blue lined underside of the District Eight deck above where SkyCurrent wires through the City. Still, the thick shadows of her destruction hang over the bakery. She wanted darkness, right?
In front of the shop, Drew and Nate speak with the firefighters a long time. When sobs finally ease their shaking of Drew’s body, she finds Bridget across the street. Her blonde ponytail too loose, frizzy bits of hair sticking up everywhere. Her eyes are lost, not fully reaching her friend’s. Spark gone. Extinguished like the flames.
Finally, Drew leaves Nate and crosses the street. Slow. “Most of the appliances… aren’t salvageable,” she lets out in a struggled whisper.
Bridget’s gut quakes, but she holds herself tighter, tries to speak without choking on tears. “Drew, I’m so sorry—”
“It’s fine,” she says, a ghost of herself. “The Guild will… cover something…”
After speaking with another fireman, Nate joins them on the corner, pulling at his beard hairs, eyebrows knitted together. “Let’s go, babe.”
“We have to call… the festival…” Drew is muttering, gaze elsewhere.
Nate hugs her close and she clings back, using him to stay upright. Over her shoulder, Nate’s angry glare finds Bridget. “You should go.”
Bridget’s arms seize around her middle. “I want to help—”
“You’ve helped enough. You’re lucky we’re not pressing charges.”
Bridget’s throat closes. Just as a cold droplet tumbles onto the tip of her nose.
All three share confused stares, then look above. And between the alternating decks of the districts and through the rising black smoke, Bridget can just make out a sliver of sky… the dark gray, cloud-ridden sky. Darkness filtering across the heavens?
She at once searches to the mountainous horizon to the North off the District Seven deck, rushing down the street to the fenced off drop-off. So high from desert ground surrounding the City, she sways, but gapes at the gray clouds, the dark sky. A flash of silver cuts the sky in two, but only for a moment. Followed by the hurtling groan of rainfall.
A storm.
Drew joins her friend at the fence, both leaning toward the edge as droplets spill over the towering City. Drew balks back, but Bridget lets out a disbelieving laugh, hand outstretching through the fence to catch as many raindrops as she can.
It hasn’t stormed over New Sky City in years.
“It’s a sign,” Nate whispers, pulling Drew close to his chest.
And sure enough, the nearest shinescreen blinks away from the District Seven Shine Charts to a new image of a white cloud emitting a golden lightning bolt. It glitters and chimes as a new message box overlaps.
Inspiration Storm!
The Sun has blessed us this day!
What a perfect lead up to the Sunrise Festival!
“We’ll try harder,” Nate promises his fiancé. “Come back brighter.”
Drew’s teary eyes blink as she nods. “Yes, yes we’ll… but the festival. We won’t be ready in time—”
“We will,” Nate promises, kissing her forehead. “The Sun wills it.”
Drew hugs him tight. “The Sun wills it.”
Their belief in the Sun seems to lighten their frowns as they clutch each other in the rain. Bridget bites her lip, unsure how to fix any of this in a real tangible way. Inspiration won’t bring back the ovens, the icing stencils, the photo of the couple on their opening day. Behind them, the bakery’s sign sags from the heat, cupcake logo melted and warped. Even if they can repair the interior, some clients won’t come back. Certainly not that terrible woman from before. The success Drew built from the ground up can’t be recovered by the time of the Sunrise Festival. There’s no way.
Bridget opens her mouth, but Nate’s glare shuts her up at once.
He’s right.
She’ll only make things worse.
Without another word, Bridget hurries back toward the escalator hill, running back toward home. What else can she do? She knew this would happen. She shouldn’t have left the apartment at all.
The home she won’t have in seven days.
Throat hot and crackling, she holds back a cry. What is she supposed to do?
Rain showers her from above, spilling off the edges of the higher districts in sheets. She keeps running over the sunstone, splashing where puddles gather, holding herself as tight as she can until she can’t stand it. A crack of lightning splits the sky in the distance, thunder shakes the deck. Her first sob is painful, clawing up her throat. And it doesn’t let up, doesn’t let her breathe. The storm above draws out the one inside. She leans back against a wall between two shinescreens, both praising the Sun for this Inspiration Storm, and sinks down the wet ground to hide in her knees.
“Calm down, calm down,” she hisses at herself. “There’s time. I’ll figure it out. I’ll find a job. I’ll… I’ll… Ugh, what the fuck is wrong with me?”
“Well, you’re sitting in a puddle for one.”
Bridget startles upright, blinks against the rain.
Above her stands a tall someone wrapped up in a dark hood. Just like her. He offers a pale hand, smile soft. But his face is shrouded in shadow by the hood.
Bridget hesitates. Then stands on her own, pants leaking. “Thanks,” she mutters, before returning to her path.
Footfalls keep up at her side, and she glances back to find the hooded guy two paces behind. He’s limping a bit but says, “You’re Bridget, right?”
She skids. Nearly ends up on the puddles again.
He grins. “Thought so.”
“What do you want? Are you with the Baker’s Guild? Cause I didn’t mean to—”
“No, no, nothing like that.” Up close, he’s a good half foot taller than her. Eyes shrouded but shining. A headband curls his light hair back, but it’s hard to make out many details around that shiny smile. “Heard you need a job.”
A glint catches Bridget’s eye, the nearest shinescreen glitching under the rain droplets sliding down its front. But the Sunrise Festival advertisement flickers into being, the Phoenix boy band smirking at her with those flirting eyes and dazzling smiles.
The same smile directed down at her right now.
“Wait, you’re—”
His teeth seem to flash, as striking as the lightning of the storm. “Nix. Singer, dancer, employer.” He bends in a deep bow right there on the street, pelted with raindrops, but gracefully righting himself and holding out a pale hand of invitation. “All around triple threat, at your service. Well, you’ll be at mine. If you join us.”
“Us? Join? Wait, what?”
Nix pulls out a card from his pocket. Holds it out between two fingers right before her nose.
Bridget grimaces, but takes it, not knowing what else to do. Not sure what to think, what to feel, what to do.
His smile persists as he steps back and says with firm certainty, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” The musical star hurries back the way he came, taking a quick limping jog across the wet sunstone street to join a crowd of hurrying citizens as they duck out of the rain’s path.
“Wait, but…” Bridget leans over the card in her hand to shield it from the rain. The front only reads PHOENIX in shiny, red and gold letters. On the back of the card scribbles an address and time.
District Ten
Y. Shine Tower
Nine o’clock
She looks back up, searching for the boy band leader in the crowd. “…Why me?”
The shinescreen beside her glows with Nix’s smile, his intense, heavy-lidded eyes. At the bottom of the sign, fire-lined words spell out their most famous lyric:
From the Ashes, We Rise