The Angelnots

Chapter One

Chapter One

The breeze tasted like warm apples. The season was at that mesmerizing stage where the crisp chill of early autumn trickled into the warm air of summer's end. Through the cinnamon-scented zephyr and scrambling leaves was a quaint village tucked between the distant cities of Jubilan and Gainazaleko. Bizi-Herri was where the Angelnots lived; it was a small and seemingly insignificant parish where history was often made and miracles were always born.

"I can't get my Opari to work! I can never get it to work!" Alazne shouted to her sister while banging two fists together in a blast of frustration. Slick sweat bathed across her face in tiny droplets like badges exhibiting her hard work. Fatigue blushed her face like rouge and her breaths were sharp and quick. She lost track of how many hours she and her sister had been training in the maze of golden, shedding trees.

After a few more tries of thumping her hands and wrists together, Alazne's face fell a little. She muttered under her breath, "Sometimes I wonder if I even have Opari..."

"Oh just deal with it later—we have work to do!" Olivia's voice bounced between the blackening trunks of the carroty trees. Alazne didn't have the patience to deal with her Opari right now (or her sister's lack of attention for that matter). Olivia's talents had always come so easily to her; she never had any problem honing her Opari and using them to her advantage, but the talents Alazne was given at birth, or Opari, left much to be desired.

Even Olivia's outward appearance gave her a mystical presence that Alazne always envied. With locks of a mutated gene passed down through generations, Olivia's bouncing hair resembled the deep color of winter-frosted plums. This looked especially striking against her iridescent, emerald eyes. And although she looked like a true sorceress any girl in Bizi-Herri would be jealous of, she never seemed to pay any mind to it. She wore her hair in a messy mop twisted into a bun on the top of her head, and the only ounce of color she added to her face unnaturally was the opaque color of murky liquid she dipped her eyelashes into every morning.

Alazne, on the other hand, was one of the village's most intellectual Angelnots. She possessed a mind much keener than even that of her sister's, who was also known to have an acute mind and a nose always stuck within a book. Unlike her Olivia, however, Alazne's beauty was a little more subtle. From a distance, she looked plain—average, most would say—but her beauty magnified immensely the closer you studied her uniquely sculpted features and listened to her insightful mind.

Her eyes were tinted a hue of green between the shades of evergreen and mint, and mixed within the celadon spirals were flakes of chocolate curled almost madly inside. Her hair was a curly mess of many bad hair days but radiated in an unidentifiable dusty mixture somewhere where blonde and brown came together.

Both girls were lean but strongly built—most likely from working hard in the forest and village their entire lives—and stood a little taller than average. Being only ten months apart, the two naturally got along in perfect malfunction and complete disarray.

"Really, Liv?" Her fury made it even harder to concentrate on getting her Opari just right. She waved her hands together, attempting to spark them up one last time. It was to no avail, though; Alazne couldn't muster energy to do just about anything anymore. So, she just slapped her fists together in feverishness instead.

The air was beginning to smell of dusky sunset; Alazne knew her time was slipping away, at least for today. She couldn't bear the thought of another day gone and wasted without so little as a spark of talent radiating from her like everyone else had by the time they were her age.

With her head still filled with blood and fury, Alazne threw her arms down and jolted towards Olivia.

Olivia's eyebrows flickered; she looked back to see her sister speeding towards her in blind angst. A sly smile crept along her lips as she crossed her arms to match, which made her look like a taunting cat awaiting the presence of its prey.