A Missing Sheep Part IX
Then suddenly everything froze and all sound stopped. At least that’s how it felt for Arthema. The imitac in front of her floated in midair and her stone had not even left her hand. Rain drops hung all around her like tiny insects made out of marbles.
She stood completely still but at the same time she was somehow moving. She felt like she was everywhere; touching every stone and every blade of grass. Caressing every flower and shaking every tree. She felt a streaming through her clothes and roughing up her hair. She even felt the fur of the imitacs.
Something inside her wanted to give that feeling a name. It gnawed and itched at her mind. It shimmered just outside her field of view. It was like a long forgotten memory, waiting to get dug up again. Like… Like what? She reached out deeper in her mind, like she was searching for something inside her jam-full cabinet at home in her room. It was like…
And then, as if it had always been there, it occurred to her: She was the wind.
A stream of energy rushed through her body. With a deafening bang, time moved again. The stone vanished but so did the imitac before her. It exploded in blood and gore as the stone shot through its body with a speed too fast for a human eye to follow. The remains of the poor creature and its unconscious or dead siblings on the ground followed the stone. So did the rain, the grass, the branches and the small stones. In half a dozen feet radius in front of Arthema everything got blast away in all directions.
Not that Arthema could have seen all that because the shockwave of the wind magic she just released, propelled her a dozen feet backwards where she crashed through several bushes and against a lonely tree. The air was pressed out of her lungs and her head slammed hard against the tree trunk. The last thing she saw before blackness took her were three bright stars in the distance, coming closer.
