Soaring Over The World (Soaring Saga #2)

**Chapter Nine~Going Down!**

"HOLY--" I screamed as the manticore toppled the girl, and they both went down on the wet ground. She yelped as it slashed its claws along the side of her stomach and onto her wing, but she somehow managed to roll out from under it and with a flash, out of what seemed like nowhere, pulled a golden-tipped wooden spear and stabbed the manticore. It fell over, hitting the pavement, and breaking into dust the minute it crashed.

"What... the... haaaaaayyyyyyyyy..." Raina breathed.

"She needs help!" Neil yelped, leaping up and running towards the girl. I was about to, but then looked back at Ari with the cut across the top of his nose. He was holding his sleeve up to it to try and slow the bleeding. I realized how deep and long it looked, and thought it might even need those butterfly bandages or even stitches.

"Don't worry about me, get her!" he told me, seeing me watch him, "She's hurt way more than I am!"

     I thought for a moment, the turned to the girl. This was the first time I'd gotten a good look at her. She looked about thirteen or fourteen, and had long, straight red hair, except it wasn't normal red hair colour. It was, like, actually dark red, like a cranberry or maple leaf. She had a small braid down by her face on the one side, and had tan skin just lighter than mine. Even though she kept squinting as Neil and Audra tried to help her up, I could she had heterochromia: one eye was silvery-blue, one was light brown. This girl was getting more interesting by the second! She also had an aqua-coloured dress with a golden jacket coat over top, and a cool charm bracelet on her wrist

"Are you okay?!" Audra asked, helping the girl sit up, then turned to us, "Can one of you get the first-aid kit?!"

     River rushed his backpack over and pulled out the kit he'd brought. He began to pull stuff out for the girl as Audra kept talking.

"What's your name?" she started with.

"Shienna," the girl replied, I noticed instantly that she had a nice Spanish accent, "And who are you?" then looked at River, "What are you doing?"

"Trying to help you," he replied, not looking up, "Listen, that manticore could've killed us. You're lucky it didn't kill you. Thank you for that, and you can trust us, because we know what we're doing... sort of."

     He went to touch her wing, but she pulled it in quickly, wincing. she glared at River.

"Why would I let people like you anywhere near me?" she said. She looked like she was trying to be fierce, but inside she was panicking. 

"Shienna, please," River said quietly, "We're Avians too. You can't go to the hospitals here, it'll risk them seeing your wings. We can help, but do you want it or not?" He then slid the top of his pajama shirt down to show a bit of his bluejay wings, and also slid his tail out. Shienna's eyes widened.

"Oh!" she exclaimed quietly. 

"Yeah. My name's River, that's Audra, that's Cirocco, that's Neil, that's my sister Raina, and that's Ari."

"How'd you pull your spear out of no where?" Neil cut in excitedly, doing a bunch of hand motions, "I want to do that! The monster would be like 'ha, got you!' and I'd be like 'BOOM not today sucka!' and pull out my spear and it'll be like SHING! and the monster would be like 'holy shoot, what the??' and I'd just go all POW and destroy the monster--" 

"'Kay, you Goofy Eagle, we get it. You want to do what she does, and I sort of do too," Ari cut in, his nose bleeding slower now, "Buuuut I doubt the manticore would've killed me, 'cuz I've got Saka over here." He clumsily spun his sword, dropped it, but then picked it back up and acted like it was part of the show.