Allamenea

HURRY

 I am at home.  Mom is in the kitchen.  She smiles at me.

 “You look worried, Natalie,” she says.  

 I sigh.  Everything is so peaceful here.  Looking out the window, I can see the beach.  I am back on Anna Maria.  Dad comes in through the front door.

 “Hey, pumpkin,” Dad greets me with a smile. “How are you?”

 I hug him.  I look at his face, trying to memorize it.  He has laugh lines, so when he smiles, his eyes crinkle.  I hug Mom, looking at her beautiful face.  I smile to myself at how, even though she is in a wheelchair, it doesn’t stop her from cooking and cleaning and everything else.

 Suddenly, though, things start to change.  The wind picks up outside and Moms says: “Wake up, pumpkin.”

 Then they are whisked away from me, out of reach, their smiling faces still in my mind.

 When I wake, I am back in the knarte.  Lexus is knocked out in front of me, and the most hideous, the scariest face I have ever seen is looking at me in the eyes.   I am so horrified that I just freeze.  My life is all over now.  This is the way I would perish.  The welerly growled, baring its teeth.

 The monster had drool dripping down its jaw. It had pointed teeth, the complexion of a dog and a wolf mixed together, and enormous dark black eyes.  The description may sound plain for a big, supposedly super scary monster, but there were other things as well.  For example, the long scars from many, many fights lined the welerly’s face, and its body was all like a dog’s, except that it had arms.  His arms were that of an apes’, long and able to grip things.  There was also the part that scared me most.

 This creature, this monster, had legs.  The welerly stood on both legs as he stared me square in the eyes. You may ask why the legs were the scary part, so I will tell you.  They were scary because they made the welerly ten times faster to hunt and outrun you.  There was no escape.  Tears streaming down my cheeks, I noticed Lexus waking up.  His eyes met mine for a split second, and he glances at the welerly, fear taking over his expression. But when I looked back to the welerly, it had bent down onto its knees and had stuck its face up close to mine.  

 With the loudest roar in the….well, in Allamenea, it lowered its head down, mouth open, for the kill.  I heard a great loud thunk and the welerly fell straight onto me, its eyes rolling back into its head.  I shudder, crying harder now.

 “Hurry, we need to go now!” Lexus screamed at me.  

 I struggled to lift the heavy welerly body off of me, whimpering as its breath warmed my face.  Lexus came over and helped shove it, and then we ran.