Sparkly

Sea

The sea heaved restlessly as Torian, his mom, his little sisters, and his older brother tried to relax on a shore that seemed way too close to stormy.

It was their first vacation since the divorce. Things felt different without Dad around, but not having to hear him and Mom argue was definitely nice.

Since Torian's twin sisters had gotten their first phones, they were always chatting with their friends. His mom was near the point of banning phones from family vacations, but Torian knew they would just sulk the whole time if she did that.

Underneath the hurrying grey clouds on the dim beach was one other family. They were far enough away that Torian could just faintly hear the kids screaming about how bad the weather was.

Torian was glad the weather was too bad to get in the water- even if he wore a shirt into the water the gem attached to his chest would be visible when the shirt got wet.

He wished he could get rid of the gem, but as many times as he'd tried to channel the power into giving it to someone else or at least detach itself from him, it hadn't worked.

"Prina, Len, put down the phone." Mom said firmly. "We're having family time here."

"I'm here, I didn't complain about being dragged to the beach, why deprive me of my only source of entertainment?" Prina griped.

"We're your entertainment today." Brian said, poking Prina's head. "And you too, Len."

"Fine," Prina said, stuffing her phone into her pocket before it could be confiscated, since that was clearly where this was heading.

Len followed suit, grumbling, then plopped onto the sand.

"I'm so *bored.*" she said.

"Look at the beautiful sea. When I was your age I could sit in front of it for hours, never getting bored once. Kids these days really have no attention spans. It's those phones." Mom reminisced.

Torian stared at the sea, annoyed at the irritated energy swirling around. Why drag everyone on a family trip when they didn't want to be there? If they'd left Prina and Len at home, maybe hired a babysitter, this whole trip would have been way more fun.

Nobody was talking about anything interesting because all their attention was focused on making sure those two were paying attention.

"What's wrong with them being on their phones?" he mumbled, watching the heaving sea.

"They're not really here if they're doing that. This is a chance to look at something like this, and..."

Mom trailed off.

Yeah, a stormy sea under a blanket of grey clouds wasn't the most exciting sight, Torian though wryly.

Then he saw what she was looking at.

The sea spun in a massive whirlpool, then split as a huge form rose from it, shedding waterfalls of water to reveal a scaled blue head with monstrous red eyes.

Spikes and horns cascaded unevenly off the back of its skull, giving it the appearance of some kind of crazy murder knife.

"Whoa Jimlings, do you see that?" Torian heard one of the kids from the other family say.

Time seemed frozen as the massive creature emerged from the water, towering above them like a small skyscraper.

Then it fixed its eyes on the humans and opened its mouth, revealing rows and rows of jagged carnivorous teeth.

Its neck shot forward like a lightening bolt, a split tongue reaching for the humans like a dog on its way to lick up a treat.

Torian's body reacted before his mind had a chance to catch up.