Fire Dance
The cloaked figure walks it’s way through the large crowd under the midday sun. The cheers, songs, and strong smells assault the figures senses as they make their way through the crowd.
After several minutes, the figure sees their target sitting up on the higher wooden platform covered by a large purple curtain to keep the sun away. The fat king sitting in between his young ditsy queen and his small 9-year old princess, drinking and laughing more than the town wine-o. The only thing keeping him from joining in the celebrations is a fence made of arm-width spikes creating a neck-high fence.
The figure made her way to the stage area that was facing towards the royal party. A hand on the figure’s shoulder stopped the figure movements.
“Are you sure you want to do this? It probably won’t end well,” says a muscular man dressed in the uniform of a guard.
“I have to,” the figure said. “No one else will. Besides, who else do you know that can pull this off?” A smile spreads across the figures face. “I love you, brother.”
The guard nodded his head. “I love you too, but I’m not your brother anymore,” he says walking through the crowds and disappearing from sight.
The figure walks up the steps of the stage and walks right into the center portion of the stage in front of the drunken, poorly playing musicians. They stopped playing and stared at the cloaked figure, which lead to the rest of the crowd looking for why the music stopped. Within minutes, the crowd was dead silent.
“There once was a young girl,” the figure said in a loud voice for all to hear. “She was born in a little house, in a little village, in a little kingdom. The mother and father wept and wept for their child. She did not cry, she did not scream, she stared at them in silence. They wept their tears over her, hoping they would wash away the red skin and purple hair, but to no avail. So one day, she ran away and began her song and dance.”
The other cloaked figures fly forward from their hiding places behind the stage and take the instruments from the musicians, letting their cloaks fall. The main hooded figure grabbed the cloak around them and swirled it off revealing a young woman with red hued skin and purple hair wearing a matching purple dancer’s outfit showing off her legs, stomach, and cleavage. She swirled the cloak above her and fire surrounded it turning into a sheer red silk scarf.
The woman began to dance with the scarf as the gypsy-clothed people who had taken the instruments began to play a fast and heated tune. She wrapped the scarf around herself before whipping it into the crowd entrancing men with her beauty and otherworldliness.
She then makes her way to one of the flag posts that are flying the king’s banner and she swings around the base of it, launching herself spinning towards that next closest banner. She catches herself on the next banner and uses the momentum to keep swinging and launching again and again moving higher and closer to the royal tent. When she was close enough, she pushes off as hard as she can and somersaults through the air until she lands on her hand with her feet curled above her head with the one hand supporting her on one of the posts that make up the royal fence. She looks at the shocked king and queen before giving a wink to the princess with a smile across her face.
A loud crash resounds through the area as several nearby home doors are slammed open and people begin pouring out of the nearby doors. They rush forward with weapons in hand and begin attacking the people celebrating and running their way towards the King’s tent. They rush forward faster than most can react and slam into the fence causing the red woman too fall forward into the tent.
The people start climbing over the top as well as banging onto the fence to start breaking it down. A few of the peasants get over and advance towards the guards who moved in front of their king, but even they are overwhelmed.
The woman stood up and saw a peasant running towards the princess who had been pushed to the side by the guards backs who are too busy fighting to notice. The woman ran over and lowers her torso and runs her elbow into the side of the peasant’s torso and throws them against the fence with a loud “RRAGH!”
A second peasant joins the first and advances towards the woman, but she grabs onto him first and pulls his face to meet with the heel of her wrist and uses her knee to push him back from his stomach.
More and more peasants climb over the walls and begin to surround the two until the princess is pushed up against her back.
The woman turned around and wraps her arms around the princess before running and jumping over as many peasants as possible away from the guards and nobility. The woman hits the ground and crouches down to cover the princess and a tornado of fire swirls up and around them, forming into the head and neck of a howling dragon of fire.
The peasants see this and begin running from the beast and retreat away from the guards and run towards and past the edge of town.
The fire weakens and disappears leaving traces of smoke on the ground around the crouched forms of the females. The queen runs past the guards and hugs the princess as the woman releases her.
“How can we ever repay you, miss, for saving our daughter?” asks the queen.
The woman turns and looks towards the king who is standing and staring in awe. The woman says “Could I have a talk with my father?”
Intertwined Souls
The scent of heavy incense hangs in the air as the sounds of bells and chants fill the room, creating a hypnotizing rhythm. One man steps forward toward the throne, lowering his hood so the candlelight glimmers off of his grey and silver skin, as the vivid memory of her sits in the gilded chair, watching his actions. He reaches his hands toward the orb, filled with swirling magical energy, and begins transferring his memories into it, letting them collect in the clouded ball.
The memories of her finding the house he had been banished to, asking him to come on her journey to save her kingdom, trying to explain to her about the demon realm and why he was cast out from it, her striking the final blow against the sion of an old god, and finally, her slumping over at her coronation and dying from what the old god had infected her with during that final battle. Elamros begins to cry as he remembers his lover’s death.
“Just a little more, hang in there,” says his lover’s oldest friend standing off to the side and out of the range of magic circling the crystal ball. Her other friends stand beside her holding onto her clothes and waiting to see what will happen. Others wait in the wings of the throne room, helping to prepare the ritual as much as they can without interfering.
The man shakes his head. “No, I need to focus,” he says under his breath. He closes his eyes and focuses all of his memories and magic power through his hands and into the crystal ball. He sees the swirling smoke inside the orb and uses his spectral form to wade through the heavy smog, until it begins to clear on it’s own. There in the break of the smog he can see her. She looks the same as when she died a year ago, but there are two people beside her. She is sitting with them and they are talking, but he cannot make out what they are saying. He has finally found her, after all this time.
He floats around to her back and reaches out his hands and grasps onto her around her stomach. She screams and thrashes at his touch. He has surprised her. Elamros closes his spirit form’s eyes and pulls with all of his might bringing body through where the physical realm is not welcome.
He brings her back through the fog and into the darkened throne room, causing everyone to gasp in shock. Elamros looks up to where his love is and sees he has brought more than he expected. She sits there looking around frantically as the two women she was sitting with before hug either side of her as they look around shocked and afraid.
“You’re here. I brought you back,” Elamros says. He smiles at her with tears still in his eyes as he begins to walk closer.
Before he can wraps his arms around her, she bolts upright and smashes her palm up an into his nose. He falls backwards in pain and covers his now bleeding nose. She grabs onto the hands of the other women
and yells, “Run!” The three of them race past Elamros and the rest of the small gathering and out of the main doorway before anyone has time to react.
The three race past the sets of guards stationed just inside what looks to be an entranceway and out through the large wooden doors leading outside. In front of them is a town with several citizens looking over to see the ruckus. All who see the young girl pulling the others are shocked and drop what they are doing, before racing towards her. The older of the women pulls the younger two off to their left and through a small alley that leads to a large grassy field outside of the town and to the left of what they now can see was the castle that they had run from.
Guards and townspeople run after the three, but what frightens the young girl the most is that the grey skinned man who had tried to touch her before, is now leading the charge. Guards from the nearby woods start to charge towards the commotion with their blades drawn, to handle any kind of attack. The women are quickly surrounded by the people, many of whom are armed with a cliff behind them that drops of into the sea, which the castle backs up to.
“Stop!” the grey skinned man yells. “Come back here!”
The young girl looks to the two other women. “What do we do?” she asks. “We’re surrounded. What do they want?”
“I don’t know,” says the older woman. “But the swords don’t look good.”
“Why did he look at you like that?” The older of the young girls asks. “It looked like he was about to eat you!”
The guards, now all with swords and weapons in hand, and the robed figures start to approach the women causing them to back up to the cliff. “I think it’s time we made our escape,” the oldest woman said. “And you both know what I mean.”
The two others look to her with sad looks in their eyes, knowing what she is talking about. The three of them turn and hug one another, surprising the approaching group. The youngest of the three says, “Ok, remember, our instincts will kick in and we probably won’t see each other for a while. So, whoever turns back first has to find the others.”
“We don’t even know if we can turn back,” says the second oldest.
The oldest looks her in the eyes and says, “We won’t know until we do it. I love you both.”
“We love you, too,” the others say together.
The oldest is the first to break away and she runs towards the cliff. Before she reaches it, she spreads out her arms as they lengthen and feathers begin to sprout from her skin. Her clothes are ripped as her body grows and morphs until her now eagle form flies off past the back of the castle and towards the east.
The second oldest gives one last squeeze to the youngest before running towards the cliff and jumping as high as she can, letting her clothes fall of her form as her skin becomes slick and her feet join to gather to create her fin, letting her dolphin body fall into the sea below the cliff and swimming frantically to the south.
The youngest watches them leave with tears in her eyes, before she turns back to the crowd with an angry glare before she begins to shrink and fold herself into her falling clothing as fur grows all around her small body and her fox form darts out of the pile before slipping under a guards legs and into the trees of the forest to the west.
The crowd looks towards each of the animals as they vanish from sight in the respective directions. One of the robed figures runs up to the grey skinned man, who is staring at the woods, grabs the collar of his clothing and yells, “What did you do, Elamros!?”
He continues to stare after the small fox form, though he can no longer see it. “I just wanted her back,” he says.
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Thank you for reading my collection of stories. I greatly appreciate that. If you liked these stories, then please read through some of my other stories or leave a review at your leisure.
Erika Kocher
About Erika Kocher
Erika Kocher grew up in a small, southern Illinois town with her mother and sister. She has always loved writing stories about the characters that she would read about or see on TV. Eventually she grew tired of writing about the same characters time and time again and so began creating her own characters and worlds to enjoy. She is currently living in her hometown caring for her family while she finishes her degree is Creative writing for Entertainment and writing longer novelization projects.
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