Evelyn Earth Part 37

The Earth shook, one thunderous boom after another sent seismic waves throughout the area. My eyes would focus on one falling building before losing sight only to regain the vision of crumbling walls. Sounds swam in and out of my consciousness, voices, screams and gentle whispers. I couldn’t feel the sun on my skin anymore. The darkness churned inside me, restless, but unable to break free.

                My throat felt dry. I tried to swallow, but my tonsils were so swollen that only a rasp of air made it through. I summoned up as much saliva as I could and gulped it down only to choke. A coughing fit took hold of me and I clutched at my neck in pain.

                I felt a hand on my back and instinctively shied away from it. Where was I? It was dark and the ground I was lying on was freezing. I barked out the last remnants of air left within my lungs and inhaled deeply through my nose. The hand returned to stroke my back and I shrugged it off before rolling over. I was expecting to see stars, or feel a breeze on my skin, but a decaying ceiling stared back at me sending wafts of mould to overwhelm my senses.

               

Evelyn Earth Part 36

As the last remnants of his flesh evaporated into the wind my mind caught up with my body and I realised that there were still two guns trained on all of us. In that moment I knew that my reaction would have to be faster than the scavenger scum’s and for that I had to let go. So I did.

Two gunshots boomed mere metres away from me, but they sounded oceans away. I felt time stand still as my black dragon burst its way free out of my chest, thrusting my arms outwards and snapping my neck back almost to breaking point.

 Everything became still and quiet. I tried to open my eyes, but my lashes fluttered freely—it was simply pitch black.

“Is this death?” I whispered to myself. My voice broke the silence and I could hear Luiz’s wailing, diminished to a scared whimper, overshadowed by the rapid voices of frightened boys.

Five more gunshots fired off in quick succession. They sounded muffled and delayed, but there was no mistaking them for what they were. I felt each of them hit me, one after the other after the other. They entered the embodiment of my darkness and were swallowed up by it.  

Evelyn Earth Part 35

I needed to get back to Sebastian and tell him everything that I had learned. I knew that he would feel the same way about this as I did because as much power as we had within us and as much reverence as we held for the Earth we weren’t willing to begin a genocide of the human race. There were no two ways about it, if we started on the slippery slope of killing whoever was in our way then we would end up not caring about killing everyone. The fact that this was not only a possibility, but a probability made me shiver.

I relished the idea of being an Earth Warrior, but I didn’t want to lose my humanity in the process. I couldn’t just become a mindless destruction machine because the Mother had found me compatible with her ideals. It wasn’t who I was.

I stood up and brushed the chalk-like remnants of the rock from my fingers. All the boys were looking at me expectantly and I realised that they were counting on me to help them.

“I have to go and find my friends” I said pointlessly, they all stared back at me blank faced, waiting for me to do something, but it was bloody impossible to mime that out so I just turned and started walking away.

Evelyn Earth Part 34

After a moment’s pause though I realised that it would be useless to track down Sebastian and the others as they could be anywhere. Frankly it would take too long. My best option was to follow the group of men and find out what they were doing. It was my job after all. If they had ill intentions towards the Earth then I would need to neutralize them. How did you even determine such a thing though? It was all so confusing.

                I grumbled to myself as I paced up and down the roof of the shop. I really didn’t want to get into a fight, but my inner instincts were telling me to run after the men.

                “Dammit” I whispered before taking a step towards the edge. I concentrated a small mass of darkness in my legs and the balls of my feet and stepped off the barrier. I landed with a thud on the sidewalk and a rim of concrete dust billowed out around me. I left two size seven foot imprints behind me as I launched into a run.