Hi! This is my first story, so please leave a review to tell me how I'm doing - It'd help alot. I hope you like it. (:
S~P~E~C~T~R~U~M~
"And this of course brings us to The Great Merge," the greying haired woman dragged on, her thin glasses barley gripping to the tip of her wrinkled nose. "Who can tell me about The Great Merge?"
Who couldn't? The beginning of the new world, the discovery of life on other planets, etc. It was pretty much the law to know the basics.
"You!" Without even looking, the black haired beauty knew at once she was being called upon. She had well grown familiar with the disgusted tone used whenever being referred to. A sad life, indeed.
Clearing her throat just a little, Iris locked eyes with Mrs. Bronwyn, of course met with one hell of a glare. They hated her. They all hated her."The Great Merge was the title given to an event that occurred almost exactly sixteen years ago tomorrow," she said flatly, completely uninterested. This, apparently according to the rather unattractive expression her teacher now wore, was the wrong answer. Not that anything was specified in the first place.
"You know nothing of The Great Merge but the date it happened, Miss Chatzi?" Mrs. Bronwyn replied tantalizingly "That doesn't really count, since that's also your birthday, which is the only reason you remember, I'm sure."
Iris' Alci flared it's brilliant black, grey and white fur in annoyance.
"Miss Chatzi! Are you going to elaborate, or go throw a tantrum in the Principles office?" That got a good chuckle out of the class. Thirty pairs of eyes watched the teenage girl in mocking anticipation.
Education, Iris thought desperately to herself. I'm here for the education.
Three deep breaths had her, and her Alci, as good as new.
"On June 6th, 2025, the world encountered extraterrestrial life for the first time in history. Two different alien races arrived on Earth at exactly 12:00am, immediately requesting contact with our world leaders. The UN came to an agreement with leaders of both races, after a publicized discussion confirming both worlds had torn through their sources. They were to inhabit Earth, peacefully and without causing harm to the planet, and hence the creation of The Great Merge."
Is that enough fucking information for you? the young girl screamed in her head.
"And who can tell me details about the two alien races, which Miss Chatzi so ignorantly left out?" Mrs. Bronwyn announced sternly.
Apparently not.
Several hands raised into the air, and as politely as could be, the withered woman picked a blonde up front.
"They're from like, really far away?" Fucking idiot.
Her teacher clapped her hands together with pride. "Good Chastity!" she cried. "Would anyone else like to add to that?"
"Good" was an insult to life. Chastity was an imbecile, Mary Bronwyn a bitter hag. It was almost unbelievable.
Almost.
I don't belong here, Iris thought to herself. I don't belong with these people, and I sure as hell don't belong in this school.
It had gone unnoticed that her instructor had picked yet another student.
"One's called Alcines," the boy with dog ears drooping from the top of his brunette mop snowballed.
Well done, smart stuff. Since you are an Alcine, I almost thought you'd get it wrong.
Sarcasm.
"Amazing! And the other race? You, at the back!" the prideful teacher sang, so pleased with her star pupils.
"Atmotanians!" a purple haired girl called out, a know-it-all grin plastered across her pale face. Another question asked to someone who couldn't possibly have said any different, being an Atmotanian herself. Well done, Mrs. Bronwyn. Well done.
"Marvellous Catriona, marvellous!" Smoothing out her plain old skirt and perching an her plain old desk, Mary Bronwyn looked as if she ruled the world. "And who, for a gold star, can tell me how you can tell an Alcine or Atmotanian from a human?"
Apparently everyone wanted that pointless, irrelevant sticker, because every hand shot into the air - Except for Iris', of course. Everybody in that class was almost, if not at least, sixteen years of age. Who honestly still squirmed in their seat for a chance in the classroom spotlight? A bunch of idiots, that's who.
A boy with eyes the brightest shade of orange stationed near the front would be the lucky student. "Alcines have animal ears and tails and a little animal thing," better described as 'characteristics' and an 'Alci' idiot, "and Atmotanians have bright hair and eyes!"
Fucking well done.
"Brilliant Brandon! Absolutely fantastic! You can come get your star as soon as the bell sounds, which should be right around..."
It was almost deafening The high school really needed to get the volume on those things sorted. Nonetheless, their cry meant freedom, being all Iris craved.
She rose from her seat faster than anyone else, and was half way out the door when, to Iris' absolute dismay, Mrs. Bronwyn wailed her name. "Iris, a 300 word essay on my desk tomorrow, detailing the events of The Great Merge.You obviously haven't been listening at all."
That was it.
"No." Iris stopped in her path. Students, locked in shock, cleared a path from her to the teachers desk. "No, I will not do your pathetic essay!"
The air unsettled around the girl with dazzling grey eyes, but she did not stop. In fact, her fury grew. Turning, clenched fists, Iris took one step towards Mary Bronwyn, who's jaw hung lower down than her saggy boobs. "What have I ever done wrong to anyone! What, because I'm not human yet I don't have fucking sheep ears like an Alcine, or bright green hair like an Atmotanian, I'm not allowed a normal existence? Well you know what?"
Everything dispersed at once.
Every window broken.
Every chair and desk tossed aside like paper.
The sound was blood curdling.
"FUCK YOU!" Iris cried. Surrounded by streaks of black, white and grey, she lost control.
Classmates ran frantically out the only door, clawing desperately past each other for escape. The purple haired girl, Catriona, whimpered under a fallen desk, only able to watch as Iris was consumed in her own power. She, nobody, had ever seen anything like it. This girl, wrapped in pure energy, was no Alcine - Yet she had an Alci, the physical manifestation of an Alcine's soul. Her eyes, unlike any others, were the iciest grey - Glowing as her abilities took over. The eyes, the power, both Atmotanian traits. What was she?
Mr. Harold, the Elemental Abilities professor, was first on the scene. An Atmotanian, he had great power over electricity, third stage - But it was no use. His thunder couldn't even get close to Iris, cocooned in the most immense amount of energy he had ever seen. Mr. Harold worked at a school designed for Atmotanians, Alcines and humans alike - The balding man had seen alot. Yet he was rendered powerless against this teenage girl.
"T-Tell her you're sorry!" the blonde idiot from before cried, crouching behind the door frame. Students and staff piled outside the classroom, craning to get a glimpse of the scene. "Mrs. Bronwyn, s-say you're, like, sorry!"
The human history teacher, cowering in the corner of her plain old classroom, stared wide eyed at the glowing silhouette before her, suspended and airborne. Iris' long, black had sprawled in the air, creating a menacing, shadowed mane.
"I-I-I'm sorry!" she screamed into the flurrying light. "I-I'm sorry f-for everything Iris, I am!"
For a moment, the hysterical woman saw only Iris' Alci - A beautiful silver fox, black with grey and white on the end of it's tail and paws - in the concentration of power. And as abruptly as it had begun, the terror was over. Iris' energy retracted, seeping back into her Alci instead. Her feet lightly touched back down onto the wooden floor.
All stared as her hair faded from silver to once again black.
"No, you're not."
Iris exited the school, unopposed by anyone.
S~P~E~C~T~R~U~M~
Home. Home enough, that was. Iris lived in a beautiful Shrine, perched at the top of a tall hill, with her foster mother and father whom she loved very much. They were good to her, accepting unlike anyone else. They seemed to understand that Iris tried very hard to be the best she could be for them. She was always home on time - It wasn't hard, since she didn't have a single friend. She was kind to her parents, and showed them nothing but respect. Iris constantly strived to be the same way towards her peers and instructors, but to no avail.
To them, she was the girl with no place to belong. She was lost. She was classed as an outcast in a world that should no longer even have classes in the first place. She was alien, and that day, she had finally had enough.
"Iris.." her mother said softly as her foster daughter entered the kitchen. The air smelled of sweet raspberries and freshly baked bread. "You're home."
"I..-"
"The school already called, dear."
Iris, exhausted from her experience, looked down to the wooden floor beneath her feet. Never before had anything like this happened. She had never lost control.
Iris had let her parents down. The only pair who treated her with any normality or compassion. Top grades, finished chores, early nights. It all meant nothing now.
A prolonged silence filled the air.
"I... I'm sorry, mom." Not as soon as the words had left her lips, Iris was wrapped in her mother's warm brace. She let it out. Iris let it all out.
She cried and cried into her carer's arms, gripping tightly onto the spring green dress she was now staining with her tears.
"It's okay sweetheart. It's alright."
"I-I didn't mean to, she just, Mrs. Bronwyn just..-" The teenage girl couldn't get a full sentence out. She sobbed and crumbled to the floor, the blonde haired woman still wrapped tightly around her daughter as she followed downwards.
"Ssh baby girl, I got you. Mamma's got you. I know, my dear," Isabella Chatzi cooed.
Iris cried through the night.
S~P~E~C~T~R~U~M~
The next morning, Iris did not go to the school with the rest of her classmates. Her father, after arriving home from work late the night before, had agreed with his wife that it might be a good idea if Iris leave Saint Chelsea's for a while. Paul Chatzi and Principle Franks had a very long chat that night.
Iris, though having nowhere to go that day or the next, woke just as early as she normally would, if not earlier. Even earlier than her parents. Brushing through her soft, loose curls all the way down to her waist Iris, for the first time in her life, broke. She was broken.
Happy Birthday to me, she thought absent mindedly to herself. Sixteen years on planet Earth. The young girl didn't know where she came from, who her real family were, what she was - Nothing. And for sixteen years she found herself asking the same question over and over. "Who am I?"
She would today find peace in her Wonderland, her sanctuary. Behind her house, a beautiful, towering tree watched over Iris and her home, said centuries old. Still dressed in her school uniform, a black pleated skirt reaching high up on her lightly tanned legs, a grey blouse with a black and white sailor tie and long black socks, climbing to her mid-thigh with plain black shoes, Iris travelled out into the peach morning light, taking with her a journal she found in her closet when the Chatzi's had first arrived. Sitting down softly against the tree, Iris picked up where she last left off.
He is wonderful, a treasure to my soul. But he loves someone else. Kikyou, beautiful and strong, holds his heart, firm and loving. I wish to be the subject of his affection. I wish to be Kikyou herself. But I, Kagome Higurashi, will never be anything but her reincarnation that fell down a well. The arrow scar in The Sacred Tree not only marks the end of Inuyasha and Kikyou, but the beginning of him and I. But there is not him and I, is there? And there is no end to Inuyasha and Kikyou. Not to him.
I hope to one day find the courage to tell him, my hanyou Inuyasha, that I cannot let him go.
The girl was heart broken. Absolutely and irrevocably in love with this 'Inuyasha'. I hope he realized what a wonder he falling at his feet, Iris thought quietly to herself.
She closed the journal, leaving it at the base of The Sacred Tree for the next time she'd indulge in the life of someone else.
At first, Iris planned to walk away and find comfort in The Shrine. But something had caught her attention. The Sacred Tree...
And that was when she saw it. A small indent, an imperfection on the tree's surface. An arrow scar...
The well. She had fell down a well, Kagome Higurashi had written. Did she mean The Bone Eaters Well?
Iris Chatzi was overwhelmed with curiosity. She came to the entrance of the Shrine, a stone well sitting dormant and unused within it's walls. As a child, Iris would go there and practice using her apparent Atmontanian abilities on the surrounding landscape. The leaves caught in a Summers breeze, the soil beneath her feet. Iris was the only one on record that could influence more then one of the Eight Elements, adding to the list of mysteries that separated her from the rest of the word. Still, everyday after school she would go out back, perfecting her brilliant and unique talents. Her parents, having adopted her after Isabella Chatzi was found infertile, would watch in awe, filled with pride.
They loved her.
But today, the young girl would use no special ability to pass her time. She had had enough of her "gifts" to last a lifetime. No, on this day Iris would wait out her Birthday in the closure of her Shrine, isolating herself from a cruel world.
S~P~E~C~T~R~U~M~
It was dark inside the Shrine that morning. Very, very dark. The sun hadn't yet made it very far above the horizon, so no light was seeping through any crevices in the roof or walls. That was okay, though. Iris couldn't have felt safer.
Her Alci prowled in first, almost a ghost of what a real fox would be, faded and not quite full in mass. Still, it exuded confidence - A reflection of exactly how Iris was feeling. She closed the Shrine door behind her, the wood swollen with years of fending off wind and rain, blocking off the last drip of light. And in the centre of that dull, stone structure sat a well. The Bone Eaters Well.
The well Kagome Higurashi may have fallen down.
For the first time in her life, Iris approached the well, slow and curious. Her Alci floated soundlessly at her side, intangible to the physical world, gravitating towards the stone well. A wooden cap closed off the top, blocking Iris' view to the bottom. With one great big shove, the already decaying piece came crashing onto the clay floor.
Carefully, she brushed herself off, and peered down the well.
It all happened at once.
A brilliant glow erupted from the centre of Iris' body, and her Alci's, pulsing, radiating. The sixteen year old girl was lifted into the air by a force unknown, left propelled directly above an endless, black abyss.
The gravitational phenomenon holding her body suddenly retreated, and Iris Chatzi plummeted down The Bone Eaters Well...
S~P~E~C~T~R~U~M~
What did you think? There's the first chapter, but I'll do my best to update soon!