The Tale of Tara and Emiko

Prologue

Cliff stared at his feet, waiting for the two stern guards to let the horde of people into the building and anticipating how the day would end. He'd always been a planner, and his favorite thing to do was think ahead. Sometimes, he'd think too much, coming up with silly 'what-ifs' that had no real chance of happening in real life.

Luckily, I was there to remind him otherwise.

"Cheer up."

Cliff stared at me incredulously. "How? This is the day every kid either looks forward to their whole life or has dreaded from the moment they were born, and there's no way I'm the first option. I could end up as something boring like an earth snake or a leaf squirrel, and you could be something incredibly awesome like a mist tiger or an ice axolotl! Or vice versa! Or-or we could both be Unknowns! There are thousands of horrible, terrible, awful things that could happen today, and I'm thinking of them all, so don't try telling me to cheer up!"

I stared at him back.

Then I laughed.

You can't hate the kid. Cliff, my younger twin brother, was an avid overthinker with a runaway imagination. And what better day than today, the day of the Awakening, for his thoughts to finally get the better of him?

My name is Kailey Lumin, and I live in a world of spirits. At the age of 10, every child is brought to a hidden location where they interact for the first (and hopefully only) time with the Shard, awakening their Spirit, which is made of two components: an element and an animal. The element represents how others see you and is usually one of the four main ones: earth, fire, water, or air, but some lucky souls end up being Healers or gaining the ability to control Ice or Time. The animal part represents how you see yourself, and as the name suggests, is your Spirit animal. Animals range in rarity from the more common cats, dragonflies, and sharks, to the slightly rarer pangolins and red pandas, all the way to mythics: dragons, unicorns, and other beasts that only exist in fables and fairy tales. Our mom was an air sparrow, so we didn't have high expectations since your Spirit is usually influenced by genetics. Usually.

"Don't be such a worrywart!" I smirked at Cliff as the crowd quieted.

Suddenly, the gates were open and I finally got to take a look at the beautiful inside of the building. From the outside, it wasn't colorful at all but still elegant, with brick-built towers and sweeping turrets in sand green and gray-blue. However, the inside seemed like it was specifically designed to shock you. Jewels sparkled from every corner, nook, and cranny: peridot, garnet, sapphire, aquamarine. Beautiful murals showcased the Ancients, the first beings to harness the powers of the elements: the sunny bunny, the lovely little lynx, the sneaky, sly, slippery snake, and the most well-known of all, the incredible elemental dragon. People of all ages used the gravity currents that lined the tall towers to get to their destinations. I've read about these things called "elevators" in some of the books I've collected. Maybe if I end up with a high enough level Spirit I could join that one extracurricular where students get to travel to fictional worlds and see one for myself!

Sadly, I didn't get to use any of the currents; our room was on the first floor. Cliff and I got pulled into separate rooms. We'd been in situations like this before because of our birthdays. It really wasn't fair, but the one time we tried protesting about it we were faced with the question of which sibling would go with the other. So apart we stayed.

The woman who had led me to the room started calling kids out one by one to a separate room where I assumed our Shard was. Thanks to my mom's decision to homeschool me and Cliff, I didn't know anyone, and the awkwardness rose the fewer people there were in the room.

"Kailey Lumin?"

I slowly made my way into the room.

The Shard stood on a marble podium. It was one of many pieces of a massive crystal that contained the power of the Ancients: creatures that were neither man, animal, nor god. They existed before the time of the dinosaurs and chose to pass on their incredible power to the people of tomorrow, sealing it away in a crystal that shattered into thousands of pieces, one of which was sitting in front of me.