SciFi and Fantasy Stories: Bad Day

Sarah Dean flew from the foxhole, lead fire-wasps screaming after her. She didn’t look back, but flew straight as an arrow out towards the shore of crystal waters, fire-wasps stinging her all the while with their molten tongues. She kept on flying only because the pain of the stings drowned out the complaints of her muscles, and she kept from crying out in pain only because she lacked the breath to do so. The blue sands of the beach were below her now, and she could see the waters had a thin layer of ice, freezing them into perfect calm. She flew on, and finally her wings would hold her no longer, and she plummeted from the sky and shattered the thin veil of ice, and plunged into the crystal water. Some of the lead fire-wasps followed, but after the rest saw their fellows solidify and freeze they left, and droned off angrily to find a new target.

Sarah Dean drifted slowly down, sunbeams glittering around her, catching the fragments of ice still floating up. There was brightness above, but the promise of pain there made Sarah Dean drift ever downwards instead, her silver feathered wings drifting around her, her body at peace. The crystal waters were salve for her wounds, for she thought not of them, but only listened to the song of the perfect clams, rising from the depths.

"Is it an angel?" Voices came to her from below. "Is it real? What is it?" Many questions, but she could see no-one to ask them. "An angel?" More voices. As Sarah Dean looked around, bemused, the water took shape beside her, to something long and wriggly, like an eel. "Are you an angel?" It asked her.
"Glub" She replied, bubbles coming from her mouth. She could not make herself heard down here.
"You must be an angel," the water avatar decided, "for you have the golden eyes of angels. Come stay with us for a while. Oh!" It said suddenly "You are hurt!" It found a hand and grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her off through the water.
"Glub." Sarah Dean said with a shrug.

She was taken to a place somewhere under the frozen ice where towers of crystal rose from the rocky floor. More water avatars floated around, taking all manner of shapes. It was very difficult to see them as they were made out of water, but Sarah Dean didn’t care, for they were not what held her attention anyway. The glorious crystal towers glowed with an inner light, each a different colour from the other. They stretched in tall, graceful loops, not bound by pragmatism or usefulness in any way, seeming to exist only for beauty’s sake. There was no pain anymore. Shadows drifted past now, ready to take her away from the light that had caused her such pain. She reached out to them with welcoming arms, they wrapped her in warmth and darkness. Sarah Dean looked once more with her beautiful golden eyes that burned always with life, and then she closed them, and like the sun setting they looked no more.

"Is it dead?" A water avatar asked. Sarah Dean floated, her eyes closed, her lips curved in a perfect smile, not moving a muscle. The question went unanswered. Soon the water avatars were still, and could not be seen anymore, and the only creatures that were able to observe the scene were the perfect clams, singing, as always, their one perfect note. The crystal towers grew and grew, and wrapped Sarah Dean in tender frozen tendrils, and still she did not move. The crystal towers stopped growing, but who knows what drives them.

And then, one by one, the perfect clams shut, each turning to stillness and silence, closing as Sarah Dean’s eyes had. The only moving things now were the gently dancing sunbeams, and even they moved slowly here. Whoever else may have been watching, and whoever else may yet come to watch, saw the sweet smile on Sarah Dean’s lips, and the perfect stillness of the water avatars and the perfect clams, and perhaps smiled too, and left that place of peace forever.