Run From The Darkness

A Memory of Old

"Good. That one was much bigger." I said to Jackie. We had been up all night throwing around ice blades. Some were big, some small, but every time we made a new blade, we improved the quality. A couple times I made little throwing knives and hit the dummy right in the head.

This fight was gonna be big. I don't know how big. I don't know how many people we would be up against. I don't even know how to kill these people. All I know is that it's gonna be hard. If we can get one more person trained and on our team, we might have better odds.

"Should I go again? I can go again if you want." she said to me, drips of sweat falling from her head. There was only a couple hours till morning, and she needed to get some sleep before we pack up and leave.

"Why don't you go to bed and get some rest. I'll stay up and make sure we are all safe. How does that sound?" I said to the little girl dying of exhaustion in front of me. It turns out, the younger you are, the more energy it takes to produce element.

"Okay. Can you tell me a story before I go to sleep?" she asked me. I had never told a bedtime story. It was hard for me to think of anything to tell. I just wasn't the creative type.

"Okay sweetheart. I'll see what I can do." I really didn't know what else to say. It's not like I could deny a little girl the right to a story before bed. She layed down on the little blanket that she brought and I sat down next to her. "Okay. Do you want a happy story, or a battle story?" I asked, not knowing what she was into.

"I want a happy story. One with love. One with puppies." she said, cuddling up in the thick blanket.

She was really odd. Puppies and love? I haven't heard a story like that since I was 10. I thought for a second and had an idea. "Once upon a time in a world where no one could control an element, there were two young students. They both went to school, learning science and math. But one day, they couldn't go to these classes. It had snowed so much the day before that they could never make it on time. They did, however, live close enough to each other to be with one another for this day out of class. They first went to a park. they played frisbee and had lunch on a blanket. The girl picked up a grape. She put it in his mouth and laughed. He did the same to her, but when he did this, he couldn't stop looking at her lips. He was still holding on to the grape in her mouth. He leaned in and took the grape from her with his own mouth. He pulled away and ate the grape. He smiled with red cheeks and they kept eating and playing in the park until the next day when they ate lunch together again at school. The end."

"Where's the puppies?" she said.

"Maybe there will be puppies in tomorrow's story." I said as she drifted of to sleep. I got up and walked to the dummies that I had made that night. I sat there and thought about why this was happening. I didn't do anything to deserve all this. I was good. I did what I was asked and trained like I was supposed to. Little plants started forming at the base of the dummies. It was weird to watch something that usually takes so long happen in seconds. All of a sudden I had a big man sitting next to me watching the plants grow.

"Why are you up so late?" he asked. He looked tired, but he sat next to me and waited for me to respond.

I sat and thought about what to say. Suddenly the image of jackie falling into the water appeared in my head. "I saw something today. when I was teaching Jackie to make things out of ice, she created a memory out of frost. It was like I could see into her head."

"Okay, so why is this bad?" Radwan asked.

"It's not that I saw something that's bad, it's what I saw. I can't be positive, but I saw her fall into the frozen lake and it looked like she was crying." I said, still looking out into nowhere.

"I don't know what it means, but I don't think either of us should interfere. It's her journey. I mean, nobody interfered with mine or yours." Radwan said. He was really against me butting in I guess.

"I guess you're right. Well you should probably get some sleep. Gonna keep training. I need the extra time." By the time our conversation was over, there was so much foliage around the new battle dummies for them to be twenty years old.

There were 4 dummies and each one was used for a different element. The easiest thing to use was earth, considering it was all around me. For about an hour I trained with earth. Some of it was with a sword I made from some stones on the ground, the rest of it was while making rocks fly.

Again I spent about an hour on wind. It wasn't necessarily hard, but there wasn't much I could do with it. I tried out a couple different techniques, and ended up staying with a whip like thing. I sorta just let the air fly around me with some influence of direction.

With fire, I only spent 20 minutes. When I first started training months ago, fire was my favorite. I could attack quick and destroy everything. After a while I got bored with it. I was tedious repatriation every day in training. Now, when I train for a real battle, all I can think is that fire is bad and uncontrollably. It seems that as I mature, so does my judgment.

I spent over two hours practicing my skills with water. As you already know, water is my favorite. I also have the least practice with water, so spending time on that sounded like the most sensible thing to do. I like that you can do almost anything with water. I make a sword, a whip, and threw chunks of ice at high speeds. It's always fun to hear the whistle of things going at 200 miks an hour. I ended up making a dummy ice block and shattering it with more ice.

After a long night of training against fake people, I ended up passing out right there in front of the remains of my workout.

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I jolted awake in a straw bed, tucked in tight with fluffy blankets. Were was I? The room I was in had stained wood walls and nice marble tiles on the floor. There were a lot of weird pictures on the walls. They seemed old fashioned, but brand new at the same time. I turned to see a woman next to me. She was young. Older than me, but not old enough to be my mom. She was still asleep and curled up under the sheets.

I turned to get out of bed and check out the rest of the house I was in. I looked down and saw a pair of nice fur slippers. I slipped them on and walked over to the door.

I walked out into a hall and opened the door on my right. It was a small bathroom with just a tub and a sink. The water had already been heated, so I got undressed and was about to get in the tub when I saw my reflection.

It's weird. I felt like me, and almost all of my body looked like me, including my mark, but my face was different. It was subtle differences, but I could tell. My eyes were a different shade of green and my ears and nose were bigger. I had a widows peak and black hair instead of brown.

I was freaked out! I put all my clothes back on and ran through the house until I found an exit. It only took two minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

When I walked out the door there were about 70 people in very odd outfits that stiffened their bodies when I looked up. It was like an army at attention, waiting for commands.

"Good morning, sir. Glad to see you recovered well from last weeks battle." Said a man who looked like he was in charge. All of a sudden I couldn't move or talk. It was like the bookstore nightmare all over again.

"Well I have to get back out there as soon as possible. The battle is close, and I fear without me it will be lost." I felt my lips moving, but it wasn't my voice. It was close to mine, just like my face, but I could hear the difference.

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I jolted awake to the touch of small hands pushing my shoulder. I looked up, and ass my eyes adjusted to the bright sun, I saw Jackie standing over me.

"It's almost midday. We packed up camp, but thought we should let you rest. It looks like you had a long night." Jackie said. She sounded so grown up when she said those words.

"We leave as soon as Dom is ready." Fodjour said to everyone.

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Sorry about the long wait to those people who actually read my book. I've had a long summer and have had a hard time focusing on anything. I hope you enjoyed the new edition to my collection. Vote and leave comments!