The Awakened

Prologue

The fire in the women's hearth flickers out with an inaudible hiss, plunging the whole room into darkness. Unseen, the sent messenger swoops over the undulating sea of bowed corn heads, determined to complete another task. It lands with an unnatural gracefulness on the open window ledge. Not a scarlet feather seemed out of place on the form of the phoenix, it was barely ruffled by the sweet-smelling prairie wind that swayed budding trees. For a while, it just sits there, as if biding its time, until in hears it. The grandfather clock in the woman's living room strikes twelve, just as the clouds sail away, revealing the full moon's face that smiled down brightly, illuminating her face with an unearthly glow. She starts to stir, a disturbed, uneasy stir. The lady sits up with a muffled gasp, her eyes thoroughly skimming the whole room until it lands on the bird. And like that, they stare unblinkingly at each other for awhile, until a sharp pain in the woman's stomach interrupted her. If she had not broken their contact, she would have noticed how the phoenix's  eyes flickered blood red, how a bright blue aura surrounded it for just a second. The woman rubbed her eyes blearily, and in a blink, the bird was gone. She fell back into a dreamless sleep, oblivious to the fact that something had been planted inside her, like a time-ticking bomb. The messenger soars over the island, back to his creators, his saviors.