It was just like any other normal day in Warrior Village. The sun was shining; it was summer, July, the houses of wooden planks, sticks, mud and straws stood cold in the warm weather. I was sitting in a bedroom built into a cliff under our house. It had bookshelf's standing up against the walls filled with, not only books, but also stuffed plush toys, paper laying in piles next to the old sticks cut out to fit the amount of pencils in them; a fern grew from one of the corners and filled up quite a lot of space. A little chest on one of the shelf's was colored with purple paint with golden markings showing of the edges of the box.
At that time, I was only four or five. My big sister Athena and my dad still lived with me and my mother; Marry. My little sister Mira was barely even thought to be yet.
Athena had just arrived home from her hunt and dad was meant to be home in the evening from his hunt. Athena's long blond hair only went to her hip, and were sat in a ponytail. Her red fur on the chest was a top that ended under her breasts and her fur (unlike every other girl in our family) on the legs was short and started in a yellow belt around her hip. On the right leg, did the red fur end under her knee and a tribal-swirly like pattern that were filled up with orange and on the other did the red color stop at the same length as my dress.
"Hi mom, where's Niku?" Athena asked mom as she came in the front entrance and took out her long blond ponytail and shock her hair.
"Oh you know, inside her room isolating herself with her drawings and some wild animals in the window probably." Marry said smiling while cleaning the table from yesterday's meat. Her hair was blond and sat up in a red rubber band at the lower part of her back, her eyes were blue/green and she had a golden ring around her neck as a collar. Just under the elbow, a yellow ring marked the start of light blue fur that was a bit longer. The blue fur on her chest was shaped almost just like Athena's and had a little yellow lightning mark on the left side. It stopped under the ribs in a yellow ring. Her 'dress' started again on the hip in a yellow ring and was by far longer behind her than in the front and had yellow markings on it. A yellow ring marked the ending of her dress.
"Yeah... Why did I even ask? It's just so much her." Athena said as she sat her hair back into a ponytail. "Maybe I should go down and see what she's doing." Athena said somewhat to herself with her hands sliding through her hair. My dog Shokyo sat in front of her and began wagging with his tail as Athena looked in his direction. Most of his fur was a sandy orange but he a brown stripe going from an arrow in his forehead and down his entire back and finally into the long fur on his tail. He looked at Athena with his big triangular green and turquoise eyes and his large ears standing up.
"Maybe you should, yes. After all, you are one of the few that she actually talks to." Marry said.
"Yeah..." Athena said looking down into the ground.
I was down inside the room downstairs with two windows pointing out towards the forest. I was sitting under the left window when you come from the staircase, and looking into a book that my mom had given me for my birthday the year before. The sun was shining from a clear blue sky and hit both the book and me. The sun's rays made the hand drawn pictures pop out of the pages even more than usual. It was a book with a lot different dragons throughout our region, and I was looking at a drawing of Birdra sitting on a stick. I heard Athena come but I did not pull anything of it.
"Looking through that book again, eh?" Athena said as she walked towards me, sat down and looked in the book with me.
"Of cause. It's the closest I can come to the dragons that this village hates so much." I said and switched the pages without looking at Athena. My red and green hair was shorter and so was the long fur on my arms, a pink dress that ended in a thick yellow line. The sun's light reflected in my yellow eyes and made them seem to glow slightly.
"Hmhmm." Athena said. "That blue one there is really beautiful." She pointed on one of the pages. The dragon she pointed on was long and blue all over, sleek with four legs, no wings and a really long tail. It had long "antenna's" on it lower jaw that was half the length of the dragon itself and over each of these there was two semi-long, skin colored horns.
"That's a sky dragon." I said dry and looked at Athena with big eyes.
"It's really pretty." Athena said.
"I like this better." I said and switched the page to a big green Asian dragon with a big fluffy brown mane, two set of large black horns, dark green underside where the dark green ended before the tail that was half the total length, blue swirling markings along the side with red gems here and there and two hand-like front feet.
"You and your Asian dragons." Athena said with a little laugh.
"But it's cool." I said and looked at her like a kid.
"Athena, can you come up here for a moment?" Mom asked as she stood in the stairway with a paper in her hand. It was the envelope of a letter.
"Well, guess I gotta go." Athena said and petted me on top of my head as she stood up and walked over towards mom. I looked after her as she did so and they walked up into the living room.
"So what's the matter?" Athena said sitting on the tabletop in the kitchen.
"This letter." Marry said as she waved with the paper in her hand and laid it next to Athena. "It's from Blake. He says that he has been injured and won't come back home before tomorrow."
"Isn't that also fair enough?" Athena asked. Without them noticing, I was looking behind the wall to the stairs to the basement and listening. Only my mother's big Birdra noticed it and tired glimpsed at me.
"It would be if it was his handwriting." Marry said and had a dangerous look in her eyes. Athena met Marry's eyes with the same look her eyes.
"Give me that." Athena said, took the letter, jumped down the table and walked a step or two away as she read the letter.
"Nope. Definitely not his handwriting. It's all to pretty." She said after a moment and threw the letter where she had been sitting on the table. "So what are we going to do?" she asked.
"Just have to wait, I guess..." Marry said sort of quiet with her face towards the dishes in the hole in the wooden table that was meant to be the sink.
"Wha... What? We... We can't just let something happen..." Athena said somewhat sad.
"Do we have any other choice?" Marry said and looked at Athena. Marry's voice was quiet and calm but you could clearly hear the worry that came over her.
"... No." Athena said with a sigh and looked into the ground.
I also looked towards the ground, then I went down into my room again to look at the next page in my book. It was a four-legged dragon with two wings, a red comb with 5 large spikes on the head and a bit down the neck. It had those two antennas on each side of the comb just above the eyes, a blue upper side and most of its legs, a yellow underside and yellow feet with high socks on the hind legs. Half of the tail was yellow and the dragon had four, sort of like, plates on the tail tip that got smaller as the tail came closer to an end. The drawing was made so that its purple eyes looked at whoever looked at the drawing. My hand gently slid over the page as I read the text under the picture.
Dragco Maicus. Ruler of Friendship.
Dad never returned.
YOU ARE READING
The Days Family Split Apart
Fantasy"Niku's family had always been split to every corner of the world, but nothing had ever prepared her for what happened next. Two of her remaining family members disappear with only a few years in between and then something happens that really leave...
