Child of Earth

21

I was standing on what would be considered a sand dune in this new world, being that everything else was just... flat. It went on for as far as I could see in every direction except for what was lying dead ahead of me.

About five kilometres away was a huge mountain, and when I say huge I mean huge, like three or four times the size of Mount Everest.

Even though I couldn't see the very top of the mountain I could tell that it was only a few metres above the clouds, but here the clouds were hundreds of kilometres above where Earth's were and they were coloured blood red, like cotton balls dipped in red dye.

The sun here was egg white and was half covered by the mountain, like a disk protruding out of a gaming console. But it was huge too, either it was somehow bigger than Earth's sun or it was sitting a lot closer.

The ground itself was covered in red/orange sand and very flat like the Sahara Desert.

I was thinking of telling the others about the seemingly alien planet we'd ended up on when I noticed something fly by me, or wait... two somethings.

Two glowing orbs of light were floating along at eye level. I watched them bob in the thick desert air for a while before one, the small bright pink orb, shifted its shape.

Instead of a small orb floating around, there was a young girl age eight or nine. She was in full colour with long, blonde curls that rested behind her back, blue eyes and a pretty face. Wearing a white summer dress and white flowery sandals.

The little girl turned to the blue orb, smiled and started to run away from it. Then the blue orb transformed into a boy who looked to be my age.

Tall and had pale skinned, unlike the girl. He had long black hair that covered his left eye but he had the same blue eyes as her making me assume that they were siblings.

He was wearing a black tank top and black skinny jeans with very formidable looking combat boots. He chased after the little and when he caught her he spun her around in a circle and popped her onto his shoulders.

He noticed me and turned to smile, the little girl waved at me and after a second's hesitation, I waved back.

The boy whispered something to me that I couldn't hear and turned around heading for the mountain in front of us.

I looked around and I saw that there were many other spirits in both orb and human version.

Oh my Gods! Does that mean that those kids were dead...? That's so sad...

How could someone die so young? How was that fair?

I started tearing up when I noticed that all the other spirits were floating for the mountain, which was riddled with caves of different sizes and colours, it was too far to see what was in them but I could see multiple spirts in orb and human form climbing the mountain's rocky paths.

One man had about ten chains around his legs and hands, and as I watched his progress I realised that he refused to change.

Maybe if you have chains you can't change form...

I averted my gaze to look somewhere else when I saw that he had slipped of the path.

I put my hand over my mouth and almost screamed when instead of hitting the ground a hole opened underneath him and he fell through screaming silently.

I realised that none of the spirits made a noise but rather talked to each other in inaudible whispers.

They could touch things without going through them and they could obviously communicate with each other fairly well but I couldn't hear them...