- Uh….. hi….. – whispered Carlos to the stranger who looked like a young lad, probably 16 years old.
This person raised his arm gesturing Carlos to get closer.
- Can you see it? – asked the boy suddenly.
- What? – said Carlos focusing his sight on the dark see ahead.
- I saw him yesterday when I came to pick coral but nobody believed me so I decided to come back today in case it showed up again.
It was very dark and Carlos was trying his best to adapt his sight to the dim light, when suddenly he saw a shadow that leapt out of the water and then it dived once again seconds later.
- What is that? – asked Carlos to himself trying to accommodate his sight better.
Lyle became impatient and paced a few steps close to the two young people staring the sea as they were fools.
- You are here….. – murmured Lyle making the boy turn around. When he saw Lyle he yelled and jittered.
- What the hell is that? – he yelled nervously.
- Hey, calm down….. they are friends of mine. – said Carlos grabbing the boys arm.
At that moment, they heard the water splashing behind them. Upon turning around they saw that the shadow they had seen before had emerged and that it was swimming to the shore.
Finally, with the dim light of the camp fire they saw how a strange creature crawled out of the water. His body resembled that of a seal, but his head was quite bigger. His ears looked like straight paper cut outs that waved back and forth with the wind. His eyes were green in color and deep and over his head along the center he had a little red Mohawk. He dragged himself using his forelegs that had huge dark claws that pointed forward, and the rest of his body was smaller and had tiny and rounded hind feet. Around his eyes he had purple markings and in the forelegs he also had similar markings shaped as polygons. He stopped a few feet away from the three people present and stared at them.
Then, he dragged himself close to the camp fire and tried to tilt a container close to it.
- Hey you! – yelled the boy. – That's what I fished today!! – lectured the boy approaching the critter who frightened, crouched and began to shake in fear. His gaze looked confused and sad.
- There, there….. calm down.. – said the boy kneeling forward to reach him slowly.
The critter smiled like he had found someone who he had lost when he saw Lyle and Luis. The boy sat slowly next to him and began patting his back. The creature looked pleased with this and snuggled next to him-
- You are cute. I'll call you Hank.
- And What's your name? – asked Carlos.
- I am Hector, pleased to meet you. – answered the boy.
They sat around the camp fire and Carlos explained everything that had happened so far. After that, hector looked at the whole group in disbelief.
- To the United States? Ha. With the storm that's coming I wouldn't dare to even waddle close to the shore.
The drizzling rain had stopped, but the wind was getting stronger as more clouds gathered in the sky.
Darkness was pierced by a search light coming from afar. Silence was replaced by the wailing sounds of sirens approaching. Suddenly, a helicopter flied by sweeping its search light across the beach.
- This is the Police! Stay where you are!! I repeat, Stay where you are!! – said the voice coming from a bullhorn coming out from the helicopter.
Carlos could see that on the other side of the beach, black SUVs were driving into the sand approaching them.
Carlos said a bad word making Aurora cover her ears. - …..They caught us!!!
Aurora feared that they would take Lyle away, so she grabbed him holding on to him strongly.
- I don't want them to take you!!!!, I don't want them to take you away.!!! – she shouted with tears on her eyes.
Lyle felt great woe inside of him. She had been caring towards him and some stranger was coming to separate them. He felt great anger and helplessness to the extent that he felt that those feeling were building up inside of him to the point he was going to explode. He closed his eyes to banish reality. He wished he could fly away and escape from all this taking Aurora with him.
Then, he opened his eyes and realized that his body had grown. His wings were enormous and his had height increased to about 15 feet. Down below, he could see a jaw opened Aurora staring at him in shock. His head had also grown a couple of curved horns.
- Get on top of me!!! – he said at that moment.
Men holding flashlights were getting closer to the camp site. When everybody saw this, they followed Lyle instructions without hesitation.
Once on board, Lyle flapped his wings twice, putting out the camp fire in an instant and forming a sand storm around that place almost burying the approaching men. He flapped his wings twice once again to gain some altitude and after that he curved his wings flapping strongly which propelled him forward as a bullet into the dark sea with all his friends on top of him.
On ground level many men rose on the beach completely covered by sand. One of them spoke angrily through the radio.
- Red 1 to base! Red one to base. Where is the object headed?
- This is base. We lost contact on the radar.
- What?!! But they were here a few seconds ago.
- They must be flying really low.
- Damn it!! – said the husky man dressed in back who walked back to his SUV. He left the radio aside while he took of his shoes to shake the sand out.
- Come in Red 1, this is Delta 7. – voiced the radio in another frequency.
- This is red 1, I copy. – answered the man finishing to shake the sand of his clothes.
- We have the first analysis of the samples taken at the field next to the airport. Over.
- What did you find? Over.
- We found a weapon shaped like boomerang. At first sight it looks like an bent sword, but on the microscope we saw fibers that make us think it's actually a feather.
- A feather? – answered the man wiping the sweat of his forehead very surprised
- I have never seen something like this. What we have gathered so far is that it's made of polymer like material mixed with organic tissue and other unknown components. The arrangement of the fibers gave shape to the feather.
- Send that to the lab for further analysis. Is there anything else?
- No sir. We can only say that we saw that fly away too. Our guess is that is headed north.
- Ok. Notify all airports in neighbor countries. It's likely that they might be heading to the United States, so notify their coast guard.
- We contacted them, but they told us it's impossible for them to keep watch of air traffic right now.
- Why?
- They said they received reports from the coasts of Miami that a sea creature is attacking sailing boats in the area. They have their hands busy.
- And they won't be able to handle it. I suspect these animals are probably not affected by human weapons.
- What do we do then?
- We will have to continue the search on American soil.
- We arranged for that already sir. A chopper is ready to airlift you to Fort Lauderdale.
- I'm on my way. Over and Out. – said the man switching the radio off.
Lyle glided the skies close to the dark sea. Luckily, they flew past the incoming storm. Aurora was hugging his enormous neck tenderly, since she knew this had happened because he didn't want anything to split them apart.
The rest of the group grabbed on to the body of the giant eagle in fear of falling over at any instant.
After a few minutes, Lyle steadied his flight, making the others feel safer on his back.
- That was close!! – screamed Carlos at Hector who was on the opposite side close to the right wing.
- Yeah! They almost caught us.
Being all settled down, they could regroup at the center of the back of the huge flying animal.
- Now what? – asked Aurora.
- We have to go on……..I guess. – said Carlos.
- What will happen with the coastguard when we reach Miami. – asked Hector.
- I don't know. – replied Carlos in a concerned tone.
- It's late, I think we should sleep……. – said Hector looking around him.
- I don't think we'll be able…… - said Carlos trying not to look down.
After a while, Carlos, Hector and Aurora were gathered one against the other back to back, snoring. Luis and Hank were close to the back part of Lyle talking.
- What is our destiny? – asked Hank looking at the sky above.
- I don't know. Maybe is the same as Lyle's. – answered Luis looking toward the group of humans. – protect them.
Suddenly, they felt a strange sensation. They walked ahead close to Lyle's neck.
- Hey Lyle! Did you feel that?
- I sensed it……… but it's still way ahead.
- I feel it too. – whispered Hank.
Time went by and dawn came over the huge sea. Hank and Luis could see down below how the blue color of it became evident.
- What is this place? – asked Luis. – It's beautiful and blue.
- Look! – said Hank pointing with his foreclaw. – Those creatures can dive in there and move around like I did.
- Now that you mention it…….- Luis interrupted. – Do you remember where did you come from?
- No. I only know I showed up at a tower near the shore where they had lots of machines and I couldn't resist the temptation of touching them. I couldn't speak and I was confused when suddenly a surge made me feel dizzy so I dove into the water realizing I was able to speak.
Carlos, Hector and Aurora had woken up at that moment. Everybody was astonished by the view. Behind them, they could see the black clouds being left behind and in front of them, they could see the pale dawn mixed with the few scattered clouds giving the sky an orange tint.