The Priestess of Byakko
A dark room, complete and total blackness where silence seemed to fill the air. A girl sat in the middle, looking around for some form of tangible item. Just when she thought the silence was going to drive her insane, a voice seemed to call out from right where she was sitting.
"Wo ai ni."
"Huh?" the girl became almost frantic, searching for the origin of the voice. "What the hell is going on!"
Thunk. Opening her eyes, the girl found herself on the cold, tile floor of her high school Latin classroom. Looking around, she saw the faces of her bewildered classmates.
"Are you alright, Kat?"
"Huh?" Kate looked up, brushing her short red hair out of her face and squinting her green eyes at the fluorescent lights above. Her friend in the next seat seemed to be torn between worry and extreme laughter. Laughter seemed to be winning.
Grasping her bearings, Kate stood up and shook her head. "Yea, I'm fine." Sitting back down in her chair, she sighed and looked at the teacher.
"Now see?" the teacher said with a cocky smile. "The Gods are punishing you for sleeping in class. Now, passive periphrastic…"
"Wo ai ni?"
"Yea. How weird is that?"
Kat and her friend were sitting outside of Kat's house, talking about their day. Her friend was lying down on the grass, looking up at the sky with Kat sitting next to her.
"Wo ai ni…"
Kat flopped down next to her friend. "What do you think it means, Kate?"
Kate frowned and moved a piece of dark brown hair out of her equally brown eyes, looking at a particular cloud that looked like a chicken. "I don't know. It sounds Chinese-ish."
"Japanese?"
"No, not Japanese. One of the other Asian countries." Kate said in a matter-of-fact voice.
"Well aren't you a three-legged chicken!" Kate said, waving her head back and forth.
Kate laughed and rolled over on her stomach. "Three-legged chicken, huh?"
"Yes! That's what I said! A three-legged chicken!"
"Right…." Kate sighed and closed her eyes. "I need to go into the library tomorrow. I don't feel like doing my chemistry homework tonight."
"Yea, me neither."
"Fwa…"
The nest day, Kat and Kate were in the school library during their lunch period, pouring over their chemistry homework. Well, it was more like Kat was pouring over her homework and Kate was copying Kat pour over her homework. Kate sighed and stood up, dropping her pencil on the table. Kate looked up as her friend was walking into the back video room.
"Where are you going?" Kat put down her pencil and stood up, chasing her friend.
"I'm going to see if they have any videos on chemistry. I'm just not getting this cr-AAHHHH!" Kate fell to the ground, apparently having tripped over something.
Kat ran up to her friend, blinking at her grounded friend. "What happened?"
"I tripped over this stupid book! What's a book doing here!" Kate angrily stood up, holding a dark-red leather bound book.
"Well, this is a library…" Kat said sarcastically.
"Shut up." Kate looked the book over in her hands, examining it. "The Universe of the Four Gods…Must be one of those stupid military-ish books with a weird name. Like Rainbow 6."
"It looks to old to be something like that." Kat grabbed the book from Kate and looked over its ripped and frayed edges. She carefully opened up the front cover, wincing at the sound of stiff pages. She read it silently for a minute, looking confused. "Oh…it's some weird fantasy book."
Kate grabbed the book back and began reading the story out loud.
"'Herein contains the tale of a young lady and her quest to gather the seven constellations of Byakko together.' I wonder what that means." Kate looked over at Kat, who was reading over her shoulder.
"I dunno. 'And if you, the esteemed reader, should read to the stories end, the spell contained within this book shall bestow upon you the powers of the heroine, and grant you your wish.'"
Suddenly their reading was interrupted by the school bell announcing the beginning of class. "Crap!' Kat ran out of the room to get her stuff from the main library, but Kate continued to read.
"'For indeed the moment the page is turned, the story will become reality…'" Kate slowly turned the page and the room filled with a bright red light. Kat, seeing the light, ran back into the room, looking for Kate amidst the blinding light. Suddenly, as if on cue, the light turned glaring white when Kat came close to the book. As the light faded and the room came into focus, the only thing there was an open book, with words seeming to appear on its pages.