Chapter One
Thunder sounded in the distance. Ignoring the oncoming storm, Kira Hazel spread her wide, shimmery white wings and gave them a little flap. A drop landed on her face, and she swiped it away. Her eyes scanned the sky, and she spotted a little knife protruding from a dark cloud. Fully aware of the danger, Kira spread her wings once more and took off. The wind whipped her back and forth, the heavy rain making her feathers stick together. But still, she flew. Flying dirt stung her eyes, and she covered her face with her thin black cloak. Kira gritted her teeth together as she flew closer to the tornado. She was immediately caught in the air current, and her body was whipped away. Never to be seen again.
Kira Hazel sat up in bed. Her blonde hair was messed up, sticking out everywhere. She smiles, yawned, and stretched. The smell of cinnamon filled the air. Kira inhaled sharply and stepped out of bed. Her feet found white fuzzy slippers, her silk nightgown swishing around her knees. Kira glanced around her huge room, with its Queen-size bed, enormous oriental carpet, sparkling chandelier, and single translucent door with ornate pastel designs. The little white desk in the corner. Kira headed over to it and opens the top drawer. There, on top of her old school books, was a battered beige notebook. She opened to a page near the end and writes;
Day #728,
Stick out your wings at the table.
Kira opened the door and steps out into the hallway. Her feet made soft swish sounds on the dark hardwood. She could hear her mother preparing breakfast in the kitchen, so she headed in that direction.
“Good morning, Ki!” her mother greeted Kira as she took a seat at their humongous, crystal table. Kira had twelve siblings, her being the fourth-to-youngest. The eldest was Mirriam, who had a husband and a one-year-old daughter. They took up the entire top floor of the Hazel’s seven-story house. Kira’s mother set a plate in front of her. It had a cupcake-like pastry on it. Except instead of the cake it was a cinnamon roll, and instead of icing it was this transparent jelly-like substance. Kira speared a piece of her breakfast and looked to her mother.
“Of course it’s fat free!” she said in a teasing tone. Lora Hazel’s brown hair was done up in a tight bun. Her lips had a pink sheen to them. Kira smiled gratefully and put the fork in her mouth. The jelly dissolved immediately, leaving a sweet taste in her mouth. Kira’s eyes widened, remembering her “challenge to be abnormal” for the day. She spread her white wings, gave them a little flap, and quickly tucked them back into her nightgown. Her mother gave her a look, and she smiled guiltily.
“Mother,” Kira said as she put her plate in the dish disposal, “I’m going to get ready.”
She turned, only to run into her brother, second-oldest sibling, oldest brother, Aristide. He grunted and moved past her. Kira chose a pale pink uniform- Wings Academy allowed their uniforms to be in a variety of colors- and got in the Rinser. It spritzed Kira with a warm wave of water, instructed her to put on the mask attached to the side, covered her from head-to-toe in soap, and rinsed her again. Kira decided to leave her hair down. It cascaded over her shoulders like the Golden Falls near the Monarch Palace. As Kira entered the kitchen once more, she found a majority of her siblings rushing around to get ready for school. She accidentally bumped into Erestelle, the fifth-to-youngest, and his orange juice spilled all over his uniform. Kira cringed, rushing to get towels.
“I’m so sorry, Erestelle!” she said as she hands the towels to him. “But I’ve volunteered to help Mr. Mindoz this morning!”
She hurried out the door. The air was damp, coating Kira’s face in a light mist that allowed it to shine, making her face seem even more angelic than it already is. All Angels were unnaturally beautiful. Kira stretched her half-formed wings sadly. They were not big enough to fly with, and they wouldn’t be for another few months.
A pair of metallic wings soon arrived- by air, of course-, and snapped around Kira’s wings. They were much too big, but they bent like real wings. She took off and soared through the air, artificial wings glinting in the scorching sunlight. Soon Wings Academy came into Kira’s peripheral vision, and she dropped down in front of the entrance. The metal wings immediately detached themselves and flew away to assist someone else. She stepped into the main lobby, which had blue chairs lining one wall, a huge chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and the small receptionist desk tucked away in the corner. Barely anyone was at the school, save for a few early students and teachers bustling about. No one was flying, flying was prohibited in Wings Academy. Plus, only the older students could fly.
“Mr. Mindoz!” Kira exclaimed as she spotted the lanky teacher across the room. Mr. Mindoz looked up from a folder he is reading and offered a wave and a smile. Wire glasses framed cerulean eyes, once-blonde hair grey and greased back.
“Sorry, Miss Hazel. I had a few files to pick up from the office and got sidetracked,” he said, and holds up the folder.
“It’s okay!” Kira studied the stack of similar folders in his arms. “May I help carry something?”
“Oh, you’re such a sweetheart!” Mr. Mindoz handed over half of the stack. Kira stumbled a bit, but regained her balance.
“These are quite heavy!” She smiled and followed Mr. Mindoz as he began to walk. He taught History, so his classroom was filled from floor to ceiling with bookshelves filled with history books.
“You know what to do,” Mr. Mindoz instructed as he sat at his mahogany desk and began sorting through the files. Kira crouched in front of one of the bookshelves and began sorting them in alphabetical order by author. Kira soon spotted her father’s book, The Angel of Heart by Ermin Hazel. She smiled and put it in its proper place. Soon the bell rang, signalling the start of class. Kira told Mr. Mindoz goodbye and grabbed her white schoolbag. Her first class was the science of flying. Ms. Viomara spent the entire time ranting about how delicate insect wings were. Kira, ever bored, doodled on the margins of her notebook. Then math. Kira easily completed the project, where they had to figure out how fast and how high to fly to reach the Monarch Palace from Wings Academy. And then lunch. Kira met up with her best friend Amaryllis at their usual table, joined by Amaryllis’s boyfriend Milton.
“Hello,” Kira said as she picked at her plain salad, no dressing or anything. A majority of angels preferred to eat healthy. Kira, Amaryllis and Milton were no exception.
“Kira! You know who asked me about you today?” Amaryllis said excitedly. That was Amaryllis, right to the point.
“No. Who?” Kira replied, her brows furrowing as she took a bite of her salad.
“Vence Kaelester! My demon, you know who he is, don’t you?” Kira’s eyebrows shoot up. Vence Kaelester is two grades above her, and Kira has never spoken to him. So this comes as a huge shock to her.
“That’s odd.” She picked distractedly at her food and hums a near-silent tune to herself. The bell rang once more, and Kira quickly dumps her tray and heads off to Talent class. Each Angel is born with a Talent, though it usually activates around fifteen. Kira has not activated hers yet. But each Academy student is required to take Talent class to learn about the various Talents.
“Good morning, class,” Mr. Kewoski greeted his students once they are all there. Kira sits ready, pen at the ready, notebook open to a fresh page. “Today we are talking about Changers.”
Kira quickly scribbled Changer at the top of the page and wrote down notes as Mr. Kewoski spoke. Changers could change their appearance, so long as they have a piece of the person/animal, like a feather or a hair. Kira thought they were pretty cool. Though, if Kira had to choose, she would’ve chosen a Disappearer. They could just go invisible! Kira got distracted, thinking of the pranks she could pull on her three younger siblings when…
“Miss Hazel? Are you still with us?” Mr. Kewoski asked. Kira sat straight up in her chair and offered a quick nod.
“Yes, sir. I’m very sorry,” she said. Mr. Kewoski narrowed his eyes, but continued teaching. Near the end of the lesson, he held up a purple vial.
“This, ladies and gentlemen,” he began proudly, “is Enhancing Serum. It allows the person who drinks it to have an extra-strong Talent, or even develop new talents. This is one of two vials ever made. I’ll pass it around to let you see. Kira’s desk was in the back, closest to the door, so she was last. The bell rang, and after closely inspecting the vial, Kira set it on the edge of her desk. She crouched down to gather her books from beneath the desk when she heard a plop! Something had fallen into her open schoolbag. Kira searched around in it for a moment, but the warning bell rang, so she quickly shoved her books in and went to her next class. Mr. Mindoz talked about how the demons came to be trapped in The Hole. The Hole. A giant hole in the ground that led to where the demons lived. It was inside a giant building near the Golden Falls. The only people that went inside were the guards, and an occasional visit from the Monarch herself, Queen Ambeida. Mr. Mindoz smiled at the class as the bell rang and they left.
“Good afternoon, Mother!” Kira called as she entered the Hazel house. Her sister, Mirriam, greeted her instead, baby on hip.
“Hey, Ki!” she said. “How was school?”
“Good,” Kira responded. Jealousy threatened to overwhelm. Mirriam was the golden child, ever-successful with her new family. But Kira fought the hostile emotion aside. There was no room for envy in the Angel world. Everyone was equal. Queen Ambeida made sure of it.
“Got a boyfriend yet?” Mirriam sets baby Penelope in her feeding chair.
“No, not yet. Though Amaryllis seems to think that Vence Kaelester has a crush on me,” Kira admitted, setting her schoolbag down next to her usual chair at the table. It made a soft clink! noise. Kira tilted her head and opened the bag. Inside was a small purple vial.
“How did my sleep medicine get into my bag?” she wondered aloud.
Mirriam leaned in close to study the vial. She shrugged and fed Penelope a spoonful of green goo.
“I must’ve dropped it in,” Kira decided as she put it in her pocket. Kira did her homework; a math sheet, a paper on insect wings, a multiple-choice practice quiz on various abilities, and a description of what they’d learned about The Hole- so far. They were spending three days on the subject. Kira completed these assignments with ease. She was a good student, she excelled at all her classes. Kira told Mirriam she’d be in her room, none of her other siblings were home from school, and her parents were not off work yet. Her father was an author and spent most of his days cooped up in his office, not too far away, writing like mad. Her mother was a teacher for the grades before Wings Academy- it was thirteen and up. Kira set her bag down by the desk in her room and went to her bookshelf. Oddly curious about where the demons lived, she picked a book titled The Hole to Hell by Wagner Cerise and opened it to the first page. Three hours and four hundred sixty-nine pages later, and Kira knew all she could about demons and The Hole. The place where The Hole went was essentially a never-ending land of fire and lava. And the demons were these dark angels made of fire. No wonder they put them down there! Who knew what the demons were capable of? Kira shut The Hole out of her mind as her door opened. It was getting late, and all of her siblings and both her parents were home. It was Gianda, the eighth-oldest, telling Kira dinner was ready. All of her siblings gathered around their crystal dining table as their mother served dinner. Kira sat in her usual spot, on the right side next to Bellest- eleventh-oldest- and Erestelle.
“Pass the Meriden, will you, Trissy?” Oswald, seventh-oldest, asked. Trissy, sixth-oldest, obeyed. She had her light brown hair done in a braid, freckles obvious. She had taken more after their mother, while Kira looked more like their father, Ermin Hazel. She had blonde hair and bright blue eyes, while Trissy had green eyes.
“Berrin, be a dear and get me a mango juice from the kitchen, will you?” Kira’s mom asked. Berrin, third-oldest, went o the kitchen. He returned with an orange bottle of juice. “Thanks, honey.”
Everyone was mostly silent during dinner, other than the occasional “how was your day?”
When someone asked Kira the question, she told them what she’d learned about insect wings, Enhancing Serum, Changers, and The Hole. Most of her family listened with interest, though most of them all of it. The others continued eating their food and ignored her, Aristide one of them.
“I remember the good old days of Talent class,” her mother said, sighing dreamily. She snapped her fingers and her juice turned purple. Lora was a Changer, ironically, and she could change the flavor and appearance of any object that was not living. There were two types of Changers; those who changed their own appearance, and those who changed the appearance and/or flavor of an object. Kira’s mother was obviously the latter.
Soon dinner was over, and everyone headed back to their luxurious bedrooms. Kira quickly hopped in the Rinser and changed into a pastel yellow nightgown. She poured the purple vial- her sleep medicine (she often had trouble sleeping due to her constant nightmares)- into a glass of water and downed the drink in three gulps. Then Kira saw it. On her desk, a small purple vial labeled “Sleep Serum”. And then it clicked. What she had just drunk was not her sleep medicine, but the Enhancing Serum. Her eyes widened, and she buried herself under her thick comforter. She could not sleep, so she drank the Sleep Serum without water to dilute the power, and was asleep within minutes.
Fantasy
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Fun read interested to see the implications of drinking the serum. I don’t like to critique or be critical of anyone, so instead I’ll ask if the tense shifts in the second paragraph are part of a style or mayhap a mistake. “She smiles, yawned, and stretched”. Admittedly my knowledge of technical writing is very small but it may be more fluent to pick one and stick to it “She smiles, yawns, and stretches” Or “She smiled, yawned, and stretched”.
My apologies! The story started out in present tense and I had to convert it to past tense, so I might’ve missed a few words! My dad also pointed this out to me, but I’m glad you also noticed, because I had not!
Never need for an apology it happens all the time. I posted two rough drafts that I’ve already looked back on and cringe because of similar errors, non-sensical ramblings, and a great deal two many adverbs. Things that I would like to address on my own rewrites.
Thank you! My go-to is always to apologize for things. Even if they’re not my fault!