Guardian of the Forest

8

 The next day Nic came over almost immediately to ask if I could play, I could so we went for a walk in the woods. I noticed that some of his cuts had healed and some more bruises had appeared but they all looked like they were getting better. Nic was more jittery this morning, he kept twisting his hands in his shirt and didn't make as many hand gestures as he had the day before. His mind seemed to be elsewhere. Overhead, a squirrel screeched then skittered over branches above. The back of my neck began to tingle and itch, was Isla coming? A shadow covered me from above, before I could look up Nic shouted,

"Bennett! Move!" Oh no! What kind of weird magic had the squirrel done? I looked up to see what was above me, and saw dirt. A giant, moist, pile of dirt. And it was going to land right on top of me! What did Nic think of this? No time to think about that! It was too late to run so I crouched down and stuck my mouth and nose in the top of my t-shirt and closed my eyes waiting for the mountain of dirt to cover me. I waited, nothing happened. Had I misjudged? I peeked my eyes open and saw that I was just crouching in the middle of an ordinary forest path. I heard Isla meow, she walked over to me and started rubbing her dirty body on me. Had Isla opened a portal? It better not have gone into the house, Mom would have a cow! And what would Nic have thought? Everything was crumbling down around me. Not wasting a second more, I launched myself out of the way of the giant pile of dirt. Once I was clear, I faced my fear and looked up. The dirt was sitting in a pile on a semi-transparent disc that was an orange yellow color. It looked like a hologram but was clearly solid, a force field? What animal can create a force field? The trees? I looked around for Nic, I had some explaining to do. My friend stood off to the side of the trail with his hands up in the air like he was warding off the dirt pile, did he know that it wouldn't touch him way over there? His eyes were slightly widened with shock as he stared at the floating pile of dirt. I started walking towards him and stepped on a twig, snapping it under my tennis shoes. Nic jerked his eyes away from the dirt and onto me, his hands moved a little with his sudden movement. His face paled and his eyes widened even more as if just realizing I was there. I heard a thud and felt a whoosh of earthy smelling air on the side of my face, the dirt had fallen. Nic folded his arms across his chest in protection,

"Did you see that Bennett?" I nodded regretfully,

"The pile of dirt and the force field thing? Yeah, I saw that too." I sat down on the ground in exhaustion and reached out to pet Isla, she came forward with a meow. I tried to pat her head but she glitched and disappeared, a clone. Nic's eyes widened impossibly more and he took a step back, his mouth moving but no sounds coming out. I dropped my still outstretched arm and sighed.