Book-Reading Solarflare
Featuring Mirage

Her neighbors were working again; Alina sighed and tried to shove the buds of her Walkman deeper into her ears to drown out the sounds of construction. She and the Walters had an affable relationship, but their tendency to constantly upgrade their abode was the one straining point – at least for her. Curling up on her side in her lawn chair, the young woman picked her book up once more, pulled the pen from behind her ear and set about reading.

“Ever stop?” a low, cultured voice whispered before her.

Alina’s skin twitched, about all the reaction Mirage would get out of her these days. Before, he would nearly scare her shitless, with his disembodied voice, or sudden emergence from whatever plane he inhabited while invisible. Now, she had come to accept his presence as an every day occurrence, because that was what it was.

By the fence where the construction was coming from, plants rippled and swayed; the grass flatted itself as a large, bulky body sat down.

“What, reading?” she replied, completely unfazed as to be addressing the air. “Not in my line of work.”

The Autobot spy Mirage ripped into the visible spectrum: first the edge of his blue shoulder, followed by his pharaonic head, down to his lean chest and beyond. He was sitting cross-legged as usual, body tilted to keep his head low from prying eyes over the fence. It didn’t hurt that Alina had several creeping vines and tall, dense trees on her border.

“What is it?” he asked, shifting to get more comfortable.

“This?” She turned the small volume in her hand. “Paradise Lost.”

He quirked his grey lip components, reaching out and plucking it from her grasp. Peering myopically at it, the spy turned it around, then handed it back to her. “Doesn’t seem particularly enlightening.”

She smiled. “That’s because it deals with an Earth religion. You should read it sometime. I think you’d like it.”

The spy chuckled low. “Maybe. We’ll see.”