The blood stains orange

Thomnum

Tallie:

A voice echoed around her mind. "Tallie, Tallie come on please what do you mean?" She recognized the voice who was it? Then she found a way to open her eyes and in the darkness seeing Axel trying to make communication.

"did I go to sleep?" she groaned with no recollection forming in her brain like after a night out having one to many drinks. She remembers with her friends laughing in the local pub about stupid inside jokes.

"no y y you fainted but you said that they came back what does that mean? and what's this scar on your head." he stroked the fresh cut that lay on Tallie's forehead and as the pain shot across her chest she remembered her sister wailing. Her mother's sleep. The word that would haunt her forever.

"Their back!" she said pushing his hand of her forehead and sitting up to face him. " Thomnum!"

"Thomnum. The country?"

"Yes the country you dummy!" She snapped.

"Ha, you must be joking Thonum haven't come here and especially attacked us in decades why now?" Tallie breathed heavily. She had to tell him.

"They were looking for." she stopped. Pinning her eyes on a mountain shape far in the distance that seemed like a drawing in the silky moon light. Her heart leaped in her tired chest. "The orange bloods."

Tallie's head drummed a familiar tune she couldn't quite place but was sang lightly in her nightmares.

"orange bloods?" Axel said, that startled Tallie she forgot of his eyes bearing down at her. She felt like a zoo animal being denied of privacy and serenity. Her hand started to shake again so Axel put his over to stop them. This made Tallie turn to face him.

"Around the world," she took a shaky breath. "there are people with blood that is orange not red. They can do things." Her hands began earth quaking.

"What type of things?" Axel's voice was slow and quiet.

"They sort of have magic. Like, they can do things with nature. Its said there's only 4. Earth. Fire. Water and Air." The word air echoed around her head.

"The 4 elements?" He asked confused

She ignored him and carried on. "They control the elements, if we didn't have them the elements would become out of control." Tallie stayed silent.

"So why do Thomnum want them?"

Tallie picked at the wet grass beneath her.

Everything went blurry her heart running away around her frail body. She tried thinking of anything else, anything except...

"If you kill a orange blood you become one and have their power. if you kill all of them well you become." She paused, "A God" Tallie said this so quietly that the grass hoppers out did her timed words with their violent hissing.

"And whoever the leader of Thomnum is they want this?" Axel had matched Tallie's pitch.

She nodded silently

He had leaned in as he murmured, "and what happened to you Tal?"

Tallie felt as if she had been lifted out of her body no longer communicating with brain and mouth and she spoke.

"They came into my house yesterday, I don't know how they knew one of us was their but they did. They took everything ,Axe, and." She stooped regaining her body she looked him dead in the eyes.

"Your family?"

She nodded again. Silence.

Tallie moved her gaze to the moon. It wasn't full yet but in a few days would be. It was slowly making its way behind a dark untransparent cloud . She whished she could be like the moon at this moment hide away into the darkness whenever she felt like it.

"Except my sister who is. was. An orange blood." The word was bounced off the thin walls of Tallie's head.

"She was bleeding to death so I had to." She looked Axel in his dark brown eyes again.

This time he nodded. Silence.

"So your now a orange blood." She confirmed his assumption with a gentle tilt of her head.

"Air" Tallie twirled her finger around and the wind picked up causing a chill on the back of her neck running down her spin stopping at her lower back. She breathed out heavily.

"I need somewhere to live where they can't find me." No more was said Axel helped Tallie up onto her shaky feet and they ran across back to the village.

She didn't remember much from that night but woke up in the morning in the castle. In Axels room. In his bed. He was on the floor on a mattress.

And there was a hurricane outside.