Tales From Creative Writing

Penni and Auris

“The sun feels so nice today,” Penni smiled as she laid starfish-style on the grass, and rubbed the grass blades with her fingers.

“You’ll get ants in your hair,” Auris said from a nearby rock.

“I didn’t see any ants, I’ll be fine.” Penni waved her arms and legs to make a grass angel, and jumped up to view her handiwork as she brushed itchy grass bits and soil off her arms and back. Where she lay before, an imprint remained in the flattened grass.

“Ready to go now?”

“Yeah!” Penni snatched up her traveler’s pack, Indiana Jones-style hat, and bow and quiver from beside the rock as Auris stood up as well, about a head and a half taller than Penni. Deftly, she strapped the bow and quiver to her back and secured her hat on her head. “C’mon, we’re burning daylight!”

Auris unlooped his mahogany walking stick from his belt and tapped it on the dirt path. “Don’t rush. I don’t think we’re getting there before nightfall.”

From an open pocket on her pack, Penni pulled out a map annotated to the brim with waypoints, notes with excessive amounts of punctuation, and color-coded circles and arrows. She taps one of the circles: just one stop on their grand adventure. “We could totally get there if we run. I can hold your walking stick for you, and you just follow along!” she beams at Auris.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” But his lips curled up in an amused smile. “Come on, then.” Auris walked ahead, and Penni followed with a bounce in her step. Under a cloudless, cerulean sky, the afternoon sun shone down on the lone pair, not another soul as far as they could see.

But Penni was enough to fill an entire world as she commented on every little squirrel, bird, and butterfly along the way, as she kicked and shuffled along the dirt with her well-worn shoes to improvise a beat, singing along without rhythm or rhyme. She’d unintentionally put distance between her and Auris, and bounce in place waiting for him to catch up, and he’d break into a light jog so she could resume whatever she was doing before.

In exchange for his sight, Auris had the mystical ability to see what others couldn’t: the soul. The aura. Most often presented as a sphere in place of a person’s heart, it would change colors depending on the person’s mental and emotional state. It was an ability specific to the axolotl tritons, all of whom were born with feelers resembling their animal counterpart’s. Aura Seers, they were called, had feelers sensitive enough to pick up on the subtleties of emotions, and in return, were blinded to the physical world.

Penni’s aura was consistently bright and happy. She often described the color as yellow, so that’s what Auris called it. The soul followed movement, and Penni’s was currently bouncing along as they walked the path to their next destination. Auris adjusted his backpack, which was becoming lighter by the day– hopefully that’d be soon.

“Auris! There’s bees here!”

Crouched down next to a daffodil patch, Penni intently watched the bumblebees crawl inside the flowers, pollen sticking to their striped fur. She grinned up at Auris. “They sound like tiny helicopters.”

“Mhm.”

“What do y’ think they’re thinking about?”

“Hm?” Auris thought about it for a moment. “Probably about doing their work? Getting pollen back to their hive?”

“What about, ‘what are these giant creatures doing watching us’?” Penni held her finger up to a flower. “Can you see their aura?”

“Yeah. They’re focused, but content.”

“Hm… I’m thinking orange- Oh-! I got one!” Penni grinned in awe at the bumblebee wandering around her finger, inspecting the insect from all angles. “It’s on my finger!”