Defiance: Perfect by Nature

Chapter Eight: A New Era Begins

Chapter Eight: A New Era Begins

The night was cold and unnervingly dark. Two young women, dressed in thin frilly dresses, crunched through the slippery snow as if they were unaware of just how cold it was around them. The alien world around them crackled with unnatural life and an unknown creature howled in the distance, as if calling for a moon to appear though there was none.

Everything in this odd place felt raw and powerful, like some deep and powerful magic lingered. Every sound, every touch, every sight was sharpened in the purest contrast, and with each breath the women took the resonating power filled them as they walked aimlessly around. Every once in a while they would stop to look at something that interested them, but they would quickly move on in search of something else. They never seemed to find exactly what they were looking for, and the pained expressions on their faces betrayed their outward appearance.

A few of the outlandish creatures could swear the women had just appeared out of now where. A brilliant flash of gold and silver light and then suddenly the woman were there. The creatures weren’t intelligent enough to know that this was supposed to be physically impossible, but they knew what they saw. What was even stranger than their arrival was the fact that the creatures that inhabited the land felt strangely compelled to them, like two magnets drawn together. It wasn’t their blatant physical beauty that attracted them though, rather a deeply seeded power that washed off them in waves. You wouldn’t guess it by looking at them, but these women could easily raze the world if they deemed it worthy of their time.

They seemed to have no interest in destroying what they saw though, and the continued to walk in silence as their gold and silver eyes roamed over every leaf and stone. In fact, they looked mildly impressed with what they saw. One lucky creature, no bigger than a ferret, was actually blessed enough to be pet by the woman with silver eyes, and once she had moved on to touch a tree the creature rushed off to brag to his kind. It was a pretty big day for him. He probably should have watched where he was going though, because he strayed towards a predator and became a tasty midnight snack.

The two women took no notice of the sudden disappearance of the little guy and promptly resumed their search/curious wander. They had been there a while, even though time seemed to move differently, and the fear that they weren’t going to find what they had come there for could be smelled by predators miles away. They had been searching for so long and still had nothing to show for it. They didn’t exactly need to sleep or eat, but still, the search was wearing them down mentally. They felt like they would never catch a break.

“They’re not here,” the pretty woman with golden eyes and short red hair whispered. She had stopped to wait for her friend who had taken a moment to pick up a stone and weigh it in her hands.

“The power is so strong though,” the smaller one, with silver eyes, answered with a hint of desperation in her voice. She put the stone back in the exact place she had found it and then stood back up once again, looking at her friend with hopeful eyes.

“I’ll admit that this is the closest we have gotten, Gabriella; but we still have no idea where they might have gone. What if they don’t want to be found?”

Gabriella cocked her head to the side and peered at her friend for a long moment. The small smattering of stars high above them twinkled and flashed like they were bursting for someone to notice their existence. “We must find them, Anna; we have to find out what happened.”

“We know what happened to us, Gabby,” Anna sighed, “so why must we keep looking?”

“We think we know what we have become, but not how it happened.”