An Artist's Not-so Perfect World

Chapter One Part1: introduction

An Artist's not-so Perfect World

Chapter One: Storm Brewing

          The branch was bare. Again. This meant that the raccoons had stolen the bird feeder for the second time this week. The young teenage girl sighed and pulled her boots on, heading outside. It wasn't that she was annoyed with the animals as much as she just wasn't in the mood to face the cold October air that awaited her outside of her house.

      She ignored the frigid atmosphere and walked to the top of a rise, scanning the area below for the missing feeder. An early-evening wind stirred her blond, curly hair. She looked around, only to find no sign of the bird feeder. Something on the ground caught her eye. It was glowing an unnatural green-blue color. She shook her head to clear the illusion, but it remained. The girl drew nearer and nearer out of her impulsive curiosity. She peered at the thing. The light in the center was so bright it was impossible to tell if it was coming from an object or an open void. She grabbed a nearby stick and cautiously prodded the light source. She couldn't feel anything solid behind it. Long tendrils of light suddenly sprang out of the thing, rapidly lacing themselves up the stick and her arm. The girl dropped the stick and tried to leap away from the light, but the vine-like things had spread across her whole body in a matter of seconds. Their source, the glowing patch, tugged at the tendrils and pulled the girl closter. She was mesmerized, and despite her small, weak struggle, she was pulled into the puddle of light and found herself falling down into a bright abyss.

     The world lurched and spun. The bright shades of blue-green filling the empty expanse the girl was falling through changed to a blinding white. She closed her eyes as she plummeted towards a blurry ground. The girl was submerged head-and-arms-first into something soft yet hard that she didn't have enough time to identify.

    Dark. Cold. She couldn't see or hear a thing. The upper half of her body was buried in the cold substance. The girl strained to remember the last few moments. White, cold, was she buried in snow? She flailed her legs and found purchase on the ground, struggling to free the rest of her body. In a sudden burst of energy, her arms, head, and chest exploded from a thick pile of snow, proving her suspicions right. She panted for breath and sat down, staring at the ground while she caught her breath. Something wasn't right. Her hands, which were in front of her, were... canine paws. She twisted her head around and noticed that she had a tail. She stood up and turned in a circle, realizing that her whole body was infact a wolf body. Most people would be horrified by this new discovery, but this particular girl was an artist. Like many young artists, she had a fascination with animals, the outdoors, and drawing them. She had made and drawn several of her own characters, carefully sculpting and planning their personalities through detailed backstories. She looked around. She was in a snowy evergreen forest, mostly made up of trees that resembled Christmas trees. The dark green branches were sagged with snow, as if it had snowed recently. The girl's plunge into the snow had revealed that at least some of the deep snow had been there for several days, maybe even weeks.

     She ran around the small clearing, testing out her new body. She wondered if this was a dream. It it was, it certainly was a good one. She trotted over to look at one of the trees closter.

     All of the sudden her paw slipped on a slick patch of ice. Her whole body flew forward. The girl tried to stop herself, but she was uncoordinated as a wolf, and she slammed forward, head first, into the tree trunk. The world once again spun, and being weak from her fall into the strange light and snow, she quickly lost consciousness. However, if the girl had still be awake, she would have seen three shadowy figures slip out of the woods.