Fiction, Writing
A short scene I wrote for a YA story about genies, a series a partner and I dreamed up but never got around to finishing.
The wind was screaming at her, so shrill and angry that Kallan had to stick her fingers in her ears. Below the wind, the ocean was howling in pain and clawing at her with big, salty, hard waves.
“What’s wrong?” she wanted to scream back, but she knew better than to draw attention to herself. It was best to keep going until she could find him.
She bent her knees and crouched down, gaining speed in the water with her invisible surfboard. Her long dark hair whipped her face in protest. The faster she went, the more it stung, but Kallan didn’t care. She had no choice. Instead, she closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, counting to ten. It was a trick her caretaker had taught her long ago, when she first learned she was a genie, and it always helped her when she needed to calm down.
“Ca-caw! Ca-caw!” the piercing sound of a bird in distress broke Kallan’s meditation. She looked up, in time to see thousands of black birds falling out of the sky, about to plunge into the ocean. All around her were wide red eyes, eyes of creatures clearly not ready to die, but there was nothing she could do.
Then, in the midst of all the red eyes, was a pair of blue ones. “Bo!” Kallan called out. His eyes were glazed over, his wings broken and hung limp as he fell, but Kallan recognized her lost pet immediately.
Anger and adrenaline pumped through Kallan’s veins, and she lost feeling in the rest of her body. The ends of her hair began to freeze, and it spread all the way to the top of her head, so that her dark locks had become icicles, sharp and ready to attack.
Kallan lost control of herself, and all she could see was Bo. Who would do such a thing? Hurting innocent birds? She wouldn’t let Bo die. He was her first real friend, and she had always suspected that story that he chose to leave her without saying good-bye was untrue.
A blast of power propelled Kallan and her surfboard, and she held out her arms for Bo, ignoring the pricks and cuts from the beaks of the other birds as they bounced off her and crashed into the water. She would figure out what happened later. For now, all that mattered was Bo.
“Gotcha!” she said, catching Bo and jetting as far away from the birds as possible. Cradling her bird in her arms, Kallan forgot to look where she was going. Her surfboard was still moving at full speed when they reached the beach. Sand didn’t slow it down, and they ran right into a tall palm tree. Kallan felt a sharp pain in her left temple, and then everything went black.