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CICADA SERENADE I:
Their song was majestic. Mesmerizing. I loved to lie spread-eagled in the grass beneath the speckled maples, oaks and willows in the fields, listening to their hypnotic hum, feeling the buzz electrify my freckled skin and ignite the fuzzy blonde hairs on my lanky arms.
It was early May of 2038 and the pharaoh cicadas were sprouting all across the Eastern United States for the first time in seventeen years. Where I lived, a little fisherman-style village called the Wharf in Reston, Virginia, was one of the older neighborhoods in the area, lending itself to a particularly hearty emergence of Brood X. It was astounding to think that these tomato-eyed, jewel-winged, dopey-flying, outspoken little critters were older than me by an entire year. For all but the last six or so weeks of their lives, they tunneled underground as tiny nymphs, feeding on the sap of tree roots. Then, suddenly, in the spring of their seventeenth year, when the soil-temperature reached sixty-four degrees, they surfaced all at once, by the millions, just to sing, mate and die, in rapid succession.
It was wonderfully-tragic in a sort of Shakespearean way, how suddenly their lives blossomed then ceased. They spent nearly two decades waiting, waiting, waiting in the dark, not only silent and blind but virtually alone, for a mere blink of glory at the end—for a single season in the sun, spreading their orange-laced wings for the inaugural time, singing louder than lawnmowers, mating singularly and monogamously, laying eggs in the treetops… then, quite literally dropping dead, falling to the bases of the same saplings that provided their sustenance, giving their bodies back to the soil from which they emerged, fertilizing their home-base for the next generation.
How beautifully heartbreaking it was, yet poignant with purpose. Cicadas never had to wonder what their goals were—it was wired in their instincts. Cicadas didn’t have to worry about dating and breaking up, dating and breaking up, over and over and over again until your heart was nothing but bleeding carnage lying in the dirt. Their paths were simple, clear, obvious. They were guaranteed to find their soulmate in a timely fashion, without the painful rigmarole that plagued the lonely teens of South Lakes High School. Courting was straightforward for them: the males sang their one-hundred-decibel magicicada septendecim chorus, interested females would approach and flick their wings in consent, and that was that—they were a couple. While some cicadas mated more than once, roughly ninety percent stayed loyal to their one true love. It was a real-live Hallmark movie.
It was this awkward, shy, sixteen-year-old, eleventh-grade musician’s dream come true.
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CICADA SERENADE II: Of Song & Silence:
In 2055, summer comes without rain—and with it, the fear that Brood X will not return.
Seventeen years after the events of Cicada Serenade, Ness Prime and Cidney Cader are married, rooted and quietly committed to the fragile ecology of their hometown of Reston, Virginia. As drought tightens its grip, the soil hardens, wells run shallow, and the long-anticipated cicada emergence falters. The town responds with rationing, listening and care... until spectacle intervenes.
Walter 'Wasp' Washington, heir to a sprawling media conglomerate, emerges with cameras, contracts and a promise of abundance that ignore the laws of the land. As corporate water flows where none should, the town fractures over who controls sound, story and survival.
Lyrical and intimate, Cicada Serenade II: Of Sound & Silence traces a season of scarcity and moral reckoning, asking what it means to listen—to each other, to the land, and to histories buried just out of reach.
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CICADA SERENADE III: Of Chirps & Cherry Blossoms:
The seasons are no longer keeping time.
In Reston in the year 2072, young Cici Prime watches February fracture: cherry blossoms bloom too soon, cicadas rise from frozen ground, and the natural rhythms that once held the world together begin to fall apart.
Most people call it strange weather. Cici hears something deeper.
With long curly blonde hair, sparkly red glasses, and a gift for listening to patterns others miss, Cici senses that the world has not merely changed—it has slipped out of rhythm. Bees emerge too late. Birds nest too early. Blossoms wither before they can be pollinated. And beneath it all, the cicadas sing a song that sounds less like summer than warning.
Raised by Ness and Cidney to trust both science and wonder, Cici begins a quiet experiment: not to control nature, but to help it remember how to answer itself. What starts in her own backyard soon grows into a community effort to restore timing, attention, and hope.
Lyrical and atmospheric, Cicada Serenade III: Of Chirps and Cherry Blossoms is a story of climate, connection, and one girl’s belief that even a broken world may still carry music... if someone is brave enough to listen.
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CICADA SERENADE IV: Before The Song (The 2004 Prequel):
It's summer 2004 in Reston, Virginia and sixteen-year-old Amanda Mena expects another ordinary season filled with scooter rides, library books, neighborhood adventures, thunderstorms, and trips to the community pool. But when an unfamiliar chorus rises from the maple trees, curiosity leads her to one of nature's greatest miracles: the emergence of the seventeen-year Brood X cicadas.
While most people brush the insects aside—or complain about the noise—Amanda sees something entirely different. She watches a cicada emerge from its shell, learns that it has spent nearly seventeen years beneath the earth, and realizes with astonishment that she and these remarkable creatures have somehow shared the same lifespan. As she fills notebooks with observations, builds a tiny museum of natural treasures in her room, and slowly inspires her neighbors to see the world through new eyes, one unforgettable summer quietly changes the course of her life.
Rich with early-2000s nostalgia, Cicada Serenade IV: Before the Song captures a world before smartphones, when friendships were measured in outdoor play, disposable cameras, library cards, dial-up, Slurpees, porch swings, and evenings spent chasing fireflies beneath singing trees.
Tender, humorous, and deeply reflective, The 2004 Prequel is a coming-of-age story about wonder, memory, and the fleeting beauty of childhood... because sometimes the stories that stay with us forever begin with nothing more than stopping long enough to listen.
Genre for Series: Imaginative Literary Fiction
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