Birds of Shadow

CHAPTER TWO

AUTHORS NOTE - hi guys, I know that this is a short chapter and I apologize. Inspiration has been scarce lately, but hopefully the next chapter will be better! thank you for reading :)

-Aspen♡

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I immediately closed my eyes in a reflexive response to the pair's cold stares, but I knew that they had already seen that I was awake.  I could hear their footsteps coming closer to my cot.

"Excuse me." A tight voice to my right said. "How long have you been awake?" I opened my eyes and barely suppressed a gasp as I found the girls face just inches from my own.

"Um - a few minutes?" Up close I could see that her eyes were a deep blue, mixed with a dark purple that looked almost black. They were cold and intimidating, and made my voice quiver much more then I would have liked. 

She gave me a haughty and suspicious look, but said while gesturing to her and her partner, who had stayed behind, "You didn't happen to catch any of our conversation then, did you?" She said the last part with a note of challenge in her voice, which surprisingly gave me courage instead of fear.

"No, I didn't. Care to fill me in?" It came out much sassier then I had meant it to, but she seemed satisfied. Maybe even pleased.

"Alright then newbie. I'll call Nova down to fill you in on this place." She said the words with a hint of kindness behind them, and I had the feeling that I had just made a new friend. She turned and strode off, stopping to say something that I couldn't quite catch to the man with the striking green eyes. He glanced at me once, locking my eyes with his and I felt heat spread across my face. But then he was gone, striding through a door at the end of the room with the girl. 

I had waited for maybe two minutes, watching as the nurses broke up their conversation and began moving through the rows, checking on the motionless figures in the beds. The silence is deafening, but just as it was becoming unbearable, a small girl comes through the door that the other two vanished into. She looks to be about 19 years old from her face, but that's the only way that you can tell. Her hair is a white-blonde wave, with shocking orange tips and purple roots. Her shirt is a bright green with the slogan, "Cute, but Psycho."  Underneath that she's wearing normal black leggings, thank god, but underneath that she has on a pair of blazing neon yellow combat boots that look similar to rain boots. She stops at the foot of my bed, smiling with teeth so shiny I have the impression that I've gone temporarily blind. 

"Hi! I'm Nova, resident CFO. I'm here to tell you the basics about where you are, who we are, and what the hell you're doing here." Her voice is overly bubbly, which I suppose matches the rest of her personality, and wardrobe choices. 

"Lets start with where you are - we are currently in southern Africa, in Namibia's Fish River Canyon - the largest canyon on the continent." My brain froze. I had never even been outside of the United States, let alone crossed it from coast to coast. What the hell was I doing here?

My shock must have shone clearly on my face because Nova quickly reassure me, "I guess I should move on the the 'who we are' part. We brought you here because you where in danger. A group of mercenaries that call themselves the....the..." All of a sudden her face has gone deadly serious and her cheerful tone deteriorated into one of tension and fear. "The Irokar." 

Something stirred in the back of my mind, itching my memories. Why did that word feel so familiar?

"The Irokar are a cruel, exceptionally skilled group of solders who are hired to hunt us down and kill every last one of us, the Xeno's." Nova gestures to the room that I'm confined in. "Xeno's are born with an extraordinary ability passed down through generations. We have something called a Pradian inside of us. Its an arcane substance, kind of like a raw power source."

Here I interrupt her, feeling that she won't mind. "Power source for what?"

Nova shoots me a sideways look and a grin lights up her face. Instead of answering me, she lifts her wrist to her mouth and murmurs into a thin silver bracelet encircling her wrist, "As fire hungers and the earth sleeps, those born of the wind soar." 

The same thing happens when she says this phrase. A tingling in the back of my mind tells me that I've heard this before, but where?

A few seconds pass after Nova whispered the words, and she's simply standing there with an expectant look on her face. I'm about to ask what she's waiting for but a strangled gasp comes out of my mouth instead. 

A low humming sound fills my ears and Nova's body starts contorting, her nose changing shape and enlarging, and sharp feathery things sprouting out of her pores. It feels as though I'm looking at her through a soap bubble, watching her skin bulge and writhe in unnatural directions. 

In the span of a few seconds, Nova has shrunken and disappear from my view. I crane my neck to see a small, gorgeous emerald spotted wood dove nestled on the concrete floor beside my cot, exactly where Nova had been standing.

What. The. Hell.