My Exploding Cat

Just stories and drawings really, no actual fissile felines.

Chapter 14

Toby turned out to be a young blue dragon who had not found his place in the world quite yet. According to the elders, each dragon would be involved somehow in a battle and Toby hadn’t yet. Of course, neither had Leo, and it was that oh-so-special time again…

After meeting Toby and the old man again, some random dragon hurried them out of the forest and made them go to Faerie land, because there was serious magic to be done here. The dragons did not recognize Lila, Maya or Leo. To them, the party were simply passers-by. Tourists. The dragons didn’t like tourists. They took too many pictures.

The group didn’t argue. Toby wanted to go with them to Faerie Land, but faeries are territorial and liked other creatures that weren’t fairies as much as the dragons liked photography (or anyone who used it). Photography, as they saw it, was purposeless. You had already seen the place, so why bother to take a picture? Anyone who wanted to see that place could just go there. Duh. And anyway, Toby was needed for his share of magic.

So they left in the tree without a word. Lila cast the spell that kept people and things without wings from falling through the cloud on Maya. She didn’t like doing magic much, but it was occasionally useful.

Well, so hey. The day ended up like a game of Ping-Pong. They immediately ran into Cherry, who was flying in quite a hurry.

“It’s been thirty years! The mermaids and Nykxis tell me that she’s at it again!”

Nobody had any idea what she was talking about, so naturally the party followed. Cherry stood on the edge of the cloud, overlooking the forest below and the riverbank of the Mississippi.

She was silent for a few minutes, then started a spell. It had sort of an echo to it, though Cherry only said the words once:

“The crown, the crown
Is being, is being
Passed down, passed down
To Meijing, to Meijing…”

At which point the echoing stopped and everything came alive in an indescribable way; clouds seemed to whirl in the sky, and the sky itself changed color; blue to periwinkle to pink to orange to red to purple to very light pink to yellow and then blue again. The branches of the trees ruffled their leaves, causing them to fall and make a sort of shower. For three seconds it poured. One second the sky was sunny, the next second rain was coming down in buckets. Then it stopped as abruptly as it had started. It alternated, every 60 seconds it would be a three-second shower. Then something strange happened – it was during the three-second rain shower – every raindrop turned into ice. Cherry shouted the spell louder, cupping her hands to magnify it, ignoring the hail.

“It matters not in the swampy mire!
The battle between ice and fire
Will always continue, forever more!
Tell what fate will have in store
Tell me EXACTLY what’s happening!
When the crown is passed down to Meijing!”

“Meijing! Meijing! Meijing! Meijing!” echoed the mountains.

In a split second, everything stopped. Everything. The air suddenly became thick with magic. Then it started to hail again.

“NO MORE STORMS!” Cherry screamed, casting her hands up. The storms stopped.

“And no more games. I wish safe travel upon all.”

The air was still thick with magic. Cherry whirled on her heels. “Today,” she said, “is going to be rather interesting. Leave for the dragon forest. Now. Not later. Now.”

She spread her wide red wings and grabbed the points, then jumped. For a few seconds, she seemed to be in free-fall, but then pulled the tips of her wings forward and glided away. The rest muttered, “To each his own. Coulda come with us.” They climbed into the tree and were there in a few minutes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Leo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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