the Fallen Star (ABANDONED)

CHAPTER 10 - PUNCH, SLAP, SIGH, FAINT

****DARCY’S P.O.V.****

I stood on the lawn for a minute and then just decided to walk into the forest and see if I crossed her footprints. Almost immediately I found her footprints, bare feet that were pushed into the dirt showed which way she went. I followed them at a steady pace.

I followed them pretty deep into the forest when they suddenly halted. I searched around for the continuation of them, but found nothing. I went back to the last set of feet. They were standing next to each other so she had stopped. I searched the ground and then saw the faint prints of her hands.

I took a step back and then saw that around them the ground was lined in a circle. The wind had created a small tornado around her. When I realized this, I almost immediately remembered her first change. She had been surrounded by a small tornado and it seemed like the same had happened here. I guessed that that always happened when she changed, because at her weekly changes I never saw her change. She would always come to me after she had shifted and then I’d take her to a safe spot.

Now that she had shifted, I searched the ground for a different set of prints. And I found them too. They were different from anything I had ever seen before, but somehow I knew them. They were from a jaguar. 

I followed them again. The sky darkened by I took no notice for some reason. Something was going to happen, I could feel it. I feared for Audrey but thought nothing of my current situation. I sped up and was slightly surprised that I could still make out the prints. 

I noticed the change in prints and braked to see that she had shifted back to normal. I ran after them and then heard her in front of me. I slowed down and walked into the opening. She sat on a rock and was looking at the moon with her back to me.

“I knew you’d come,” she said without looking back. “Do you feel it too?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I feel it too.”

“I think it’s the fourteenth,” she suggested. 

I just nodded and sat down next to her, gazing up at the stars. We sat I silence for what felt like hours. I saw the horizon lit up first.

“Wow, we sat here the whole night. Look, the sun’s rising,” I pointed.

“No, it’s not the sun. It’s around ten pm,” she said.

I looked at her wrists. No watch. “And how do you know that?”

“Instinct,” she smiled. “Animals have a better idea what time it is than humans.”

I rolled my eyes and then widened them as the sky grew brighter. And hotter.

“Run!” I screamed.

Audrey got up and ran for the trees. I followed her and then together we watched the sky fall down on the rock where we were sitting just two seconds ago. Dust flew up and the air thickened, making it hard, almost impossible to breathe.

Audrey coughed next to me, but I couldn’t see her. “It’s it. The fourteenth.”

I walked forward and wished the dust would settle or clear. The wind picked up almost immediately and the dust blew away. It revealed Audrey’s shocked face.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Nothing! Really! I just wished the dust would clear.”

Her mouth fell open. “I change into animals. You control the wind. That star wasn’t normal. That liquid did something to us. I think it may have-”

“Changed our DNA,” I finished. “We’re freaks. We don’t fit here.”

“Well, everybody already thought we were freaks, so that doesn’t change,” Audrey said matter-of-factly.