Distant Elemental

Skye yawned and stretched her arms toward the ceiling, checking her watch occasionally as she sat in class and doodled on a spare piece of paper.
“Hey Lily, what time does the bell go?”
Her three friends sat around her, only one girl, Ash, concentrating on her work. Lily and Bianca also scribbled notes to one another or fiddled with their pencil cases and threw bits of paper at each other. Skye was considered popular at school, but no-one could know that her amazing intuition was actually her empathic power, and Skye was going to keep that a secret. Everything else about her life, however, was hers to tell.
“Okay, so I was having this really weird dream last night about raindrops going upwards...”
Her story trailed off as the clanging of a bell sounded just outside their classroom door. Skye and her friends waited around for Ash to pack up before heading straight off to the canteen.

As they reached the opening to the canteen, Skye accidentally bumped into a girl in her class with long brown hair who she didn’t know very well, some girl with a weird name like Alexandra. Andromeda bounced off in another direction, nearly crashing into a wall. Skye walked by, unaware of the incident, and stood in the canteen line, chatting animatedly to her friends. She didn’t hear Andromeda mutter an oath under her breath, nor see the intensity of the gaze Andromeda was sending at her. It wasn’t until she went to take a step that she realised something was wrong. Skye shifted her weight to her right foot and went to take a step with her left when she realised, to her horror, that she couldn’t move her foot. It felt like lead! Skye started straining her leg in an effort to get her foot to move, pulling her muscles to their furthest extent, when suddenly, her foot felt weightless, and she went flying forward, crashing into the girls in front of her before toppling to the ground. The canteen rang with hearty laughter as Skye stood, red-faced with eyes downcast when suddenly she looked straight across at Andromeda, sensing the immense satisfaction that resonated from her. Skye gasped in shock as she stared into pools of black with sparkling specks of colour twirling like a vortex. Andromeda’s eyes shone with amazing colours, a mixture of blues, greens, purples, gold, silver and white in a black background. The effect was stunning, as though the depth of those fathomless eyes was the size and appearance of a galaxy. Andromeda blinked quickly, and her eyes faded almost instantly to a chocolate brown. The two girls shared a horrified glance before Andromeda pivoted on her feet and hurried from the canteen, her heart beating furiously. Skye could feel the spike of fear in the air.

Autumn was walking down to the corner shop to buy some bread when a strange noise made her pause. She thought she could hear some sort of shuffling noise in the next street across, and was just about to go and investigate when a high-pitched scream filled the air. Autumn clapped her hands to her ears, intensifying the sound of her suddenly fast breathing, and ran across the road to the gap between two houses. She raced in between the fences of the houses, along an ill-used pavement strip, until she met a scene which had her tripping backwards. The only word she could think of at the time to describe the atrocity before her was monster. The thing bellowed a deep-throated roar and swung odd appendages around in a haphazard manner. The beast was coloured soot black and stood, taller than three humans standing one on top of the other. It had two short legs and two long arms with fists the size of monster truck wheels and a small head, reminiscent of a troll with a vacant expression, distorted at the moment with something like anger written across its face. The surrounding neighbourhood were just now waking up to the monster in their street and one girl had already run, screaming, from the monster; the girl Autumn had heard. It almost seemed as though the monster was in pain as it writhed back and forward, shrieking and rasping for breath. Autumn stood still, paralysed with shock and unable to think of what to do. It wasn’t until the monster started stumbling forward towards her that she knew she had to do something unless she wanted to resemble a pancake.

Autumn motioned to the ground in front of her and a huge root from a nearby tree burst from the soil, growing rapidly every second. As the monster loomed above her, she caused the root to wrap around the ankle of the monster while she backed away quickly, instinct initiating her moves. The monster roared and fell over, five metres from Autumn, and raised a massive paw to the root, trying to pull it from around its ankle. People had come from behind their doors to watch the scene unfold and now stared at the beautiful girl with long curls of black hair and vivid, forest green eyes. The monster thrashed around, tearing at the thickening root. A reddish black flash suddenly illuminated the street. A figure appeared. His clothing was a navy colour and his eyes were just discernible behind the mask he wore. As the monster swung its mighty arm, a glowing red portal with a black centre appeared and seemed to swallow the arm whole. Another portal appeared and the arm shot out, right next to the monsters flank. Autumn quickly shielded her eyes, not wanting to watch the monster impale itself with its own arm.
BOOM
A sudden blast of noise sent everyone tumbling backwards like leaves before the wind, except for the young man who stood, arms raised in anticipation. Autumn looked up and saw black particles swirling in the air. The beast had disappeared. The particles shimmered for a second in the air before vanishing into the breeze.

Autumn took another couple of steps backwards as the root that had entwined the beast slowly sucked back into the ground, leaving a gaping hole in the pavement it had burst through. The guy turned to look at her, staring into her eyes as they slowly shifted their colour back to caramel.
“The Earth Elemental.”
Autumn could do nothing but shake her head slowly from left to right as though in fear. She turned suddenly and ran back down the pathway between the houses as more and more people appeared. The guy made a movement as though to reach out for her as she turned to leave, but seemed to think better of it and let her go. He disappeared.