The storm began to rage and she held the glass-like flower close to her chest. Her red hair whipped around her, blocking her vision where it wasnt already blocked by the constant and larger torrential rain. Tears fell harder and her breathing was erratic. Lightning flashed in what seemed to be a tornado forming on top of her.
A voice called out, more distinct and human than the last, “Hold the flower up!”
She lifted her head to see no one but the dirt, rain, and her hair.
“Hold it up and show it who’s in control!”
She barely deciphered the words and clutched the flower in her hands. Magic seemed to be coursing through the smooth and stiff-yet-flimsy plant. She took a few deep breaths and stood up, yelling with the flower raised above her head.
Lightning crawled in slow moving veins along the wind tunnel around her and all at once struck the flower at twelve different angles. She ducked her head and squeezed her eyes shut against the purple enveloping light. Power streamed through her arm and into her body and she felt a new bond to the flower. In that moment, the wind died down. The storm faded.
“Yes!” A woman ran to her as she began to unfold from her defensive flinching position.
When she looked around, she noticed the storm, cloud, everything was gone. Sure there were still nearly single cloud storms throughout the land still, but around her was calm and clear. She looked at the flower and noticed it had changed.
It was now stiff like a dagger, with a yellow ball spiked in pink in the center of vines that came together in a point.
“You conquered it! You’ve done better than I!” The woman praised before her.
“I’ve… I’m sorry? I need to find my husband. Do you… who are you?”
“I might ask you the same thing.” The woman nodded at her with eyes of query. “But you’ve got that, so I think I’d prefer to trust you for now! It’s certainly not very safe without one, anyway!”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, it didn’t look like you would.” The woman frowned at her. “Better hold on to it anyway. Mind if I tag along?”
There was a numbness as she realized that she hadn’t yet come to terms with the fact that the first person she encountered here was not her husband’s living soul. She clutched the odd dagger closer to herself. “Okay,” she spoke quietly, “but I should tell you, I’m not really sure where to go next.”
“Well, that makes it easy! If you don’t know where you’re going, any road you take will get you there!” The woman’s optimistic personality was starting to get on her nerves.
“I mean, I know where I’m going,” she said softly to herself as she started walking hopefully toward the sunset. “I just don’t know how to get there.”
N. K. Valek: Author 