Air: An Elemental Story

2

Astrid and Jackson decided to play the age old game of slapjack. The tops of their hands were stinging and bright red from smacking each other and they were laughing and eating junk food. "You will not defeat me the next round!" Astrid shouted, shaking her fist in the air.

Jackson laughed, "The battle has already been lost, you fool!" Their laughter filled the apartment but was suddenly silenced with three loud knocks. The joy that had just been in the air was an echo in the quiet, they both just sat there on the floor for what seemed like an eternity before Jackson decided to speak.

"Are the cops here?" He whispered.

"I don't see why they would be." Astrid whispered back.

"Should we answer it?" He asked nervously in a hushed tone.

"Let's just stay quiet. Maybe they will go away." Directly after she spoke, there three loud knocks again, making them both jump as the door vibrated with with each defining bang.

"I'm just going to answer it." Jackson said, his face seemed more pale than usual. He got up and started toward the door, but before he opened it, he reached over to where his replica of Darth Vader's lightsaber was mounted on the wall. He pushed the button at the bottom of the hilt and the red glow sprung up making a schvrmmmm sound. Jackson took a deep breath and unlocked the bolt. With the lightsaber held up high like a bat, ready to strike, he opened the door.

Astrid had followed him and was now standing behind the door, ready to slam it shut if it was necessary. Then a deep male voice snapped, "I've come to thank you for the cookies."

Her fear evaporated and was instantly replaced with anger. Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm her racing heart. Maybe he had a hearing problem and he lived his life doing things a bit louder than everyone else so he could hear what he was happening around him. But that didn't give him the right to come down to their apartment at eleven o'clock at night beating the hell out of their door. Who did he think he was? "Jesus Christ! Are you deaf or something?"

"No ma'am, I am not." He said with a clipped tone.

Ma'am? He did not just call her ma'am! "Well it sounds like it to me." She said through clenched teeth. "That teaches me to never be nice to the people living around me." How could she have thought it was a good idea to be nice to her weird neighbor. Now that she was thinking about it, she had had a bad feeling about it to begin with. Why didn't she listen to her gut? She decided she would just tell him to go away and never bother them again, then they could all put it behind them and never look at eachother again. She stepped around the door to tell him just that, But the look on his face when he saw her snatched the words from her mind. The same look that his friend had was in his eyes, but instead of just the shock of seeing a ghost, his eyes held an odd mix of despair and hope.

The storm that had just pushed over a tree came to a sudden and silent halt. There was no sound. It was eerie and strange. She had never seen or heard of anything like it before. "Well that is weird." Jackson said with as much confusion as she felt. "It just stopped."

Her eyes moved from the fallen tree, back to the man that was standing in her doorway. He looked around twenty five years old, had sandy blond hair that was cut short and it looked like he was constantly running his hands through it, because it was a mess. His eyebrows were straight, but currently laced together in a confused frown. He had high cheekbones and a strong, square jawline. His nose was perfectly straight. In fact his whole face was so perfect that all she wanted to do was have him sit in front of her while she sketched and memorized every plane on his face.

But it was his eyes that captivated her the most, a swirling grey blue. They reminded her of the sky just before a heavy rain. The color rolled around his pupil like a strong wind that promised a storm so great that it would either destroy everything, or refresh the world.