Fading Spots

Leah's dreams were horrible that night.

She dreamed about when she was a kid, when she still had her parents. How disappointed her father was because she wasn't a shapeshifting bird, like her parents. She woke with the memories fresh on her mind.

"A cheetah? She can shift into a cheetah? Not a hawk, not an eagle, but a lousy freaking cheetah?"
That was her dad's voice, sharp with disappointment. The only memories she had of him were fuzzy, and all they were about was his disappointment.
"Cheetahs aren't useful to the People," her father hissed. "Birds are. I'd be happy if she was a blue jay, for crying out loud. I'd be happy if she was a hummingbird. But not a cheetah."
"Dear, a cheetah's good. She'll be fast, she'll be a spy. She'll be the only cheetah in the People. Come on. This is good." Leah's mother always had tried to make things up for him.

Leah remembered the day that she had refused to join the People. Her mother was pulling at her shirt, growling impatiently, "Come on."
Leah shook her head. She was fourteen at this time. "I won't go. I hate the People. They kill humans. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them!"
Her mother looked shocked. "But you are part of the People. It's in your blood. Your father won't see you, won't speak to you until you're an official member. Don't you want to make Daddy proud?"
"I hate my father. He left when I was three because I was a cheetah, instead of a precious hawk like you or an eagle like him." Leah tore herself free, shifted, and ran as a cheetah.

Next was when she had gotten excepted into Elizabeth's gang. She had been petrified. She was only fifteen at the time.
"Look," Elizabeth was saying. "The first person to bring me back the SCG wins."
Leah still didn't know what SCG stood for. She just ran as fast as she could, got something, brought it back. She remembered how happy Elizabeth had been, jumping up and down like a child, taking Leah to meet the other members of the gang, Mist and Sparrow, the two witch sisters, and Sara, the startlingly beautiful member. Leah had been surprised by Sara's beauty, even though she was a vampire.

Leah mentally shoved the memories into a small, dark corner of her brain. She was going on a top-secret mission. She ran outside, her hair flowing out behind her, and met Elizabeth and Mist standing by the meeting place.
Leah was surprised that Sara, usually the earliest riser, wasn't already out here. "Where's Sara?" she asked.
Sparrow came running. Suddenly she was beside Leah, her eyes huge and scared. "Where's Sara?" she echoed.
Mist and Elizabeth both sighed at once.
"Sara's the reason we're on this mission," Elizabeth murmured. "She's been taken by the People."

Kalaeha

I was reading this book about vampires and shapeshifters and witches and werewolves and such, so I decided to start a series about a shapeshifting cheetah, the fastest four-legged animal on the planet. Her name's Kalaeha (Kah-lae-hah) but her nickname's Leah. Here it goes.

Kalaeha peered out from underneath the ferns. She knew that her golden coat stood out so badly against the green. Shapeshifting cheetahs were always a brighter gold than regular cheetahs. Even so, she hoped that the vampire hunter wouldn't see her as she stalked him through the woods.

This guy, this vampire hunter, was following Leah's boss and best friend. Elizabeth was a vampire, yes, but she was a good vampire that was a Dark Knight. And this person- this stupid person, this stupid vampire hunter who was a vampire- was trying to kill her. Trying to kill Elizabeth.

He wasn't a vampire hunter, Leah realized. He was part of the People. A growl rose in her throat, but she swallowed it and crawled after the vampire.

Leah was sixteen, seventeen next fall. Not that ages mattered. She would stay at nineteen forever. Every shapeshifter stopped aging once they reached a certain point. Her age from birth was nineteen. When she was in human form, Leah's dark read hair fell to her waist. Her burning green eyes didn't look human. Proably because she wasn't human. She was the only cheetah she knew with such green eyes. In human form, she was tall, slender, and fast. She didn't know if her speed and being so agile came from being a cheetah or if they were just natural.

The vampire stopped and crouched down, his back still to Leah. She crept forward, placing each paw carefully, until she was only about three yards away. Up ahead, she could see Elizabeth, her blond hair tied up in a tight bun (as always), completely oblivious to the hunter and the weapon he was holding. He drew back his arm to throw.

Leah pounced.

She caught the hunter squarely in his broad shoulderd and sank her teeth into his neck. The vampire screamed. Elizabeth came running.

Leah's teeth were strong enough to kill vampires. That was what they were desinged for. Shapeshifters and vampires had been enemies until very recently, when the Dark Knights were formed.

The body beneath her went limp. Leah slipped into his mind to make sure he was really dead. She could feel his last thought running through his head. "I've failed the People."

"Kalaeha!"

Elizabeth only used Leah's full name when she was really upset about her. Leah sighed silently and shifted back. She was standing there in her jeans and T-shirt. The reason that they disappeared and appeared with her was because they were made out of the fur of other shifters.

"Kalaeha, you should have told me- that was too dangerous!" Elizabeth exclaimed.

Dangerous? Sure, he was a hunter, but they were the best of the best. They were the extreme Dark Knights. The spear wouldn't have killed Elizabeth, only wounded her, but they were going to be sent on a mission tomorrow. Without their leader, Elizabeth's gang was without their main fighter. Besides Leah, of course.

Elizabeth bent down and yanked something from the hunter's neck. Leah's stomach lurched. It was the People's way of ranking- by the color of the bead on the necklace. This guy's bead was dark red. Red alone was pretty high. Dark red was about as good as it got.

"Huh," Leah said in a level tone, trying not to let her surprise show. "Didn't put up much of a fight for being dark red."

Elizabeth frowned. "But don't you see? If he'd caught you, you would have died!"

Leah wanted to say "But he didn't catch me." Instead she murmured, "I'm sorry, boss."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and threw her arms around Leah's neck, standing on her toes to do so. She had stopped ageing at fifteen, but she was really around thirty. And she was small for her age. She had a bloodthirsty and dangerous look in her eyes, though, and then people wondered why she was so good at fighting. One only had to look into those pretty silver eyes to find out.

"I really am sorry," Leah mumbled, hugging her back. She wasn't very good at emotional things. "Really, really sorry. But he was going to kill you- I saw his mind. He was sent here by the People to kill you."

Elizabeth let go of Leah's neck and half-smiled. "Fine, fine. And at least he didn't hurt you. Now let's go get some sleep, and then we'll go on our mission."

Frisky

Frisky was my cat. She was black and white. One day she went into the woods and never came back. This is a story about where she went.

Waiting. Waiting. I looked up at the stars and moon. They seemed to be calling to me. "Shadow, Shadow." How annoying that the stars and moon knew my secret name. They can be very annoying, you know. Always chattering.
Most cats are magical. That's an understatement. But some cats are more magical than others. I'm one of them.
Have you ever looked into a fire and seen a wavy part right above it? That's a doorway between the world of the not magical and the world of the magical. It's a doorway between my home and this place where I was held captive.
My people wouldn't mind if I left. Sure, they'd be sad for a while. But they'd get over it. Maybe not for twenty years, but eventually.
I ran to the doorway that was in the house- the washing machine. I popped the door open and jumped inside- straight through the doorway.
I landed in a field hard. Ouch- I'd forgotten how rough the journey was. It had been fifty years since I'd been here, if you counted in human years. In cat years, it had been... six months? Maybe a year. I doubted it.
Huge stone walls rose up on either side of the field. A small hole was in one side. Only a small cat like me could fit through it. I squeezed myself out of the field and into the open air. Magic air is so much better than non-magic air. I filled my lungs and took off running faster than a non-magic cheetah could. I streaked over the land, my paws barely touching the ground, until I saw it.
Gold City. My home.
I ran, slower this time, to the gates. The guards let me inside.
"SHADOW!!!!!!!!"
It was Isabel's voice. I spun around and rushed over to her. "Isabel!"
Isabel was smiling as only a cat can. "I thought that you'd decided to stay in that place! How could you stand being there for eight months?"
Eight months. I had been close.
"I had very nice people. I thought that I was content there. But last night the moon ans stars called me. I had to come back."
Isabel purred. I looked around, and that's when I noticed that we were the only cats in sight. Everybody else was a different animal, mostly... dogs.

Shadows of the Sea

I've decided to abandon my Black Sun series- it's just not going in the direction a want it to. So this is a short story about an underwater paradise. Every little detail may not be correct because I don't have my ocean book with me! I know that Shadows on the Sea is a name of a book but I really don't care because this is just a short story on my blog.

Where there is water, there is life.
Snorkeling was so fun, Samantha never wanted to get out of the water. She smiled the best she could at her mom, who smiled back. The coral reef was absolutely teeming with life. Bright, colorful fish darted this way and that while they swam through the underwater paradise.
Sam could swear that the clownfish was giving her the evil eye when she almost ran into him. She used to have a clownfish as a pet. That is, until Dad had knocked its tank over and the stupid raccoon- what type of person keeps a raccoon as a pet?- had eaten him.
Something small and bright swam just a few feet away. Sam reached out to touch it, but suddenly it was gone. That was one fast swimmer. She twisted around, trying to find it, but it was hidden from sight.
Oh well. There were plenty of other things to look at. Such as the bright blue fish, looking a lot like Dori in Finding Nemo, that kept circling her mom, wondering what these huge, ugly creatures were and why they were invading its home.
While Sam's mom twirled around in the water, Sam looked around again for the bright thing. There it was! It was floating lazily near a fish. The fish snapped at it, but it swam away faster than Sam thought possible.
Leaving her mom, and ignoring what always happening in horror movies when one person goes off alone, Sam swam after it. After about fifteen minutes it disappeared, leaving Sam stranded in an underwater cave.
A shadow came toward her.
A shadow.
A shadow.
A submarine.
That was the last thing that Sam remembered.

School's STILL not over?

IT'S JUNE!!!!!!!!! And yet I'm still trapped in school, watching movies and wasting the day by going outside. Like I couldn't go outside well enough on my own, at my house, relaxing, doing absolutely nothing at all!
Field day and DARE graduation and Pet Sharing Day and all that junk is this week. But what ticks me off is that we have a half day a week from today. Why not just let Friday be the last day of school? Why stick another four hours on? Just so we can watch movies and play board games, or go outside and walk aimlessly around the track while the boys try to hit us with the football. Or maybe even have a lecture from Coach Murphy about not forgetting all of his previous lectures over the summer. I mean, please. Why can't those few people just stop cheating at dodgeball, for crying out loud, so that we don't have to waste PE time? Is it really that hard?
Since we have already done everything in PE so many times people groan when they walk in the gym, Coach lets us have Freeday Friday. Which basically means that I spent 30 minutes trying not to get pegged in the face with the tetherball (is that how you spell it?) that Jeana was swinging around. >:(
SO WHY CAN'T THE SCHOOL YEAR JUST END?!?!?!?!?!?!