Book 3
Fantasy
From Writers Exchange
“Doc?”
Daniel resisted the urge to yank on his guardian’s sleeve. He felt very small
and lost.
A
rocky mountainside spread around him, sloping downward to the foot of the
Silver Mountains reservation. This was where all the rangers and investigators
and scientists who had studied wind and rain directions and angle of descent
said he should have come through the mountains, that day he was found.
“Daniel?”
Khyber stood on his other side, bracketing him between her and their teacher. “Are
you okay?” she said, dropping to a whisper, and squeezed his shoulder. “You’re
white.”
He
shook his head, though now that she said it, he did feel a little queasy.
This
was wrong. Very wrong. He looked at a row of three trees and his mind told him
he should see a pile of boulders instead. He saw a gouge in the landscape where
water runoff had worn away softer soil between the bedrock of this slope --
memory said he should find slabs of moss in scarlet and purple, and a slight
mound instead of a gap in the rock. Daniel tried to remember the wind and rain
and flashes of lightning Khyber had described when she went through the same
storm only a few hundred yards away.
Nothing.
Something
did flicker at the back of his mind, a memory trying to surface, but he got
hazy images of sunshine and trees and emerald lawns and heard flickers of
laughter.
Those
shadowy creatures from his dreams were there, though. Big and black, towering
over him, only the jewel-toned eyes distinct in sapphire, emerald, and a deep
purple that made him think of snow-topped mountains at dusk.
Dr.
Harland linked their arms and drew him close. “What’s wrong?” He signaled the ranger
retracing the “scene of the crime” to stop.
“Sit
him down,” Khyber urged.
Daniel
grinned crookedly as he realized that the world was tilting. He leaned against
Dr. Harland while Khyber dabbed at his face with her red bandanna and the contents
of her canteen.
A
cat-like creature with green and silver fur peered through Khyber’s loose hair,
perched on her left shoulder, watching Daniel most solemnly.
That was enough. He shut his eyes tight and clenched his fists and wished the illusions to go away.
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