Beauty that lies Within

Chapter 5 - On arrival (Sophie)

When Sophie finally awoke prior blacking out, she opened her eyes and thought that she would pass out again from the sight.

Sophie found herself half-submerged in thick black sludge. She looked around and was threateningly close to fainting once again; she had only just noticed that the thick black sludge was a moat filled-to-the-brim with the stuff - and worse the pungent smell  that emitted from the surface. Sophie didn't even want to think of what could be the cause for it so decided it was a good idea to try and get out of the moat as quickly as possible.

She looked around for an exit only to be welcomed with the sight of a densy grey wall of cloud surrounding the moat. She tried to stand up - only to quickly realise too late that the sludge went deeper than she anticipated and go fully under and swallow mouthfuls of sludge. Sophie hacked, almost vomiting at the taste of bile that came out of her throat. 

As the sludge stung her eyes and caused short-term blindness, she doggy-paddled feebly around for a second before smacking into something hard. Sighing with relief for the first time since being dropped there, Sophie clung onto what she assumed was a floating piece of wood like a life-boat. When Sophie managed to open her eyes, she gasped in horror when she saw she had been holding onto a half-eaten goat's carcass.

Well that explains the smell. Sophie backed away in horror, trying to swim properly now and well-away from the dead goat. She couldn't see anything in front of her face, but looked up after she hearing screams echo above. 

The clouds shifted slightly, before going still. Then streaks of motion - the clouds burst apart as dozens of bony birds ripped through the clouds, identical-looking to the one that mixed her and Agatha up in the wrong schools, as they dropped shrieking children into the bay like hail in a rainstorm. 

But while Sophie looked on in mixed fascination and pure horror, Sophie found one of the stupid birds dive directly at her. Sophie swerved just in the nick of time (they MUST be blind! she fumed) but had to duck into the slimy waters before receiving a kind splash of slime at her face as she resurfaced. 

Scowling, Sophie wiped globs of slime off her face for the second  time (or was it third now?) in one day. This shouldn't be happening to me. Sophie moped miserably. I'm a princess! Princesses don't get mixed up in the wrong school, get kidnapped by an ugly bird, dropped into a disgusting sludge-filled lake (if you could call that a lake, Sophie sniffed as a pig's ribcage floated by her) and splashed with slime! Twice!

But just as Sophie thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, Sophie turned to find herself face-to-face with a boy. Normally she would be happy but on this occasion she was faced with a pale skinny boy with no shirt, a without-the-hope-of-any-muscle body, small head, jutting nose and spiky teeth paired with black hair drooping dismally over beady black eyes.

"The bird ate my shirt." He said. "Can I touch your hair?" 

Apparently without any manner so too Sophie thought in horror, backing away rapidly from the sinsiter-weasel looking boy. 

"They don't usually make villains with princess-like hair," he said, pathetically but slowly dog-paddling towards her. 

Oh Lord - Sophie panicked, desperately looking for a weapon, any weapon: a stick, a stone, even the dead goat -  

"Maybe we could be bunk mates or best mates or some kind of mates," he said, the distance between them rapidly disappearing. It was like Radley turned rodent with courage.

As his scrawny hand reached out to touch her hair, Sophie readied her fist to punch him when a screaming child bombarded right between the pair. She took off in the opposite direction and it was only then after Sophie finally slowed down, huffing  and puffing for air, did she deem it safe enough distance to turn around and check. Weasel Boy was long gone.