Ricci Schwarzler - Siren / Enchanter

The mist crept into the valley. But not like it usually did.

A young woman was sitting in her favourite tree house, looking out down the valley, into the gorge and across the escarpment. She usually felt like she was in the clouds, but not today.

The mist was there. It usually felt ethereal, and she usually felt like she had summoned it, and that she was the Enchanter. But not today.

Today it was a dark green mist and that wasn’t normal she thought to herself. Parts of the mist grew darker until they were almost black. The sun still shone above, but that mist was definitely NOT normal. 

The cockatoos were screeching across the sunny sky as they normally did. Nature’s Sirens. She loved that noise. So rasping, so loud, and so creepy if you didn’t know what it was.

The chickens were clucking away under the treehouse, chatting to themselves as they pecked at the grass. The dogs lay on the rich, green grass in the sun, absorbing its warmth. The cockatoos still swooping and diving, rolling and screeching, came to land in the eucalypts in front of the treehouse. Now and then the cicadas would join in with their warning siren song.

It was a day like any other…except for that mist. She tried to ignore it. But it crept its way up the valley sides. Closer and closer.

She relaxed back against the old timber wall with her legs dangling over the edge, trying hard to ignore the weird feeling the mist was giving her. Life went on.

After a few minutes she opened her eyes and the mist had crawled its way above the hills and into the sky. She looked up, as did the cockatoos, the chooks, the dogs. It was dark. The sky became darker, and darker. No sun. No sound of life. It was as if everything was frozen still, a unanimous intake of breath. Nobody said a word. The cockatoos stopped screeching and flying. No time to fly anywhere else. They sat still, staring. The chooks, stopped. They didn’t utter a cluck. They didn’t flee. Still as statues. The dogs sat up, staring, hackles raised but no utterance of a bark. Even the cicadas’ who call when scared, were silent. She could feel the united dread.

Everyone waited. But for what? Nobody knew. It had been a day like any other.

Then in an instance, as if from hell itself, dark grey, gargoyle-like creatures projected themselves from the mist. Growling with mouths wide open and teeth like razors. They were hurtling from the mist and coming closer, sharp claws, tattered wings, exposed broken bones. Long skinny arms and legs. Golem like faces with grey skin falling from their cheeks.

Frozen. Everything on earth stared. In a nanosecond her brain told her to flee, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know what was happening. It had been a normal day!

They were within metres of everyone, millions of them, as if every puff of mist produced a creature. Then as one, from who knows where, when each misty creature was about to kill every living thing on earth, earth’s creatures pushed their necks forwards, pushed their heads upwards, their mouths opened bigger than anyone or anything thought possible and fanglike teeth protruded from every living things mouth with a ferocity and noise that had never been heard on Earth before. Without exception every one of Earth’s creatures united in a single deafening shriek.

The dark mist creatures stopped instantly, their arms flailing backwards. Their eyes widened to three times their current size and then their mouths folded back around their heads and they somehow consumed themselves. The puffs of mist they came from shot back into the darkest mist. Then the mist imploded into itself and left nothing.

The dogs lay back down in the sun, the chooks pecked and clucked, the cicadas relaxed and the cockatoos took to the skies, screeching like normal, sending the cicadas into their siren song. The white soft mist lapped the edges of the valley.

The young woman lay back against the old timber wall, closed her eyes, listened to the sounds of the Earth’s creatures and kicked her legs. I wonder what that was all about, she said to herself as she opened her eyes and watched the white mist curl around the valley to be slowly evaporated by the sun.

Back to normal.