Luna Silver: Daughter of Artemis

Chapter One

I never expected how things would turn out after the field trip.

We were outside the Empire State Building after touring the place. It was quite tiring, and considering we haven't even reached the top, that's quite sad. Seriously, after eighty six floors, I was exausted. But it was mostly from Sister Ann's life-is-a-puzzle-but-you-can-figure-it-out speech. From the few days I've spent at the orphanage, it had already bored me out.

Anyway, we were strolling outside, and some of the kids were in shops with the nuns. Mitch and her group stayed as far away from us as possible. Everytime they happened to "accidently" step near us, I could hear them whispering "weirdos" or "freaks".

Sybil, Raina, and I took a seat on the stairs outside the entrance to eat lunch. Raina chewed thoughtfully on her sandwitch the nuns provided us with. "Do you think we'll ever be adopted?"

The question was so unexpected that I dropped my PB&J sandwitch on the sidewalk. So much for my lunch. "Why? I mean, the orphanage is fine enough, don't you think?"

Sybil glared at me. "Well, you've only been here two days. For us, though, we'd stayed here for almost two years by now! You wouldn't know anything about it. It's horrible!"

As soon as she'd said it, I felt compelled to believe every word. "Yes," I said, "it's horrible." I could feel both Sybil's and Raina's eyes trained on me, but my vision was growing hazy.

"Luna! Snap out of it," I heard Raina's voice shout. My vision snapped back to clarity, and I saw both of them looking at me with concern. "Are you feeling okay?" Sybil asked. "I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings or something..."

"No, no," I said quickly. "I'm fine; forget it." 

Just then, I heard some noise, that sounded suspiciously like a amplified growling. Frantically, I turned to Raina. "Am I going crazy, or did you hear a growl?"

To my horror, she nodded slowly. And not only her, Sybil was nodding too, with a frightened look on her face. I know from my previous experiences that this cannot be good.

I motioned to them to follow me, as I decended down the stairs and headed for the street corner where the noise had come from. I know, it was against the rules to seperate from the group, but that was the least of my concerns.

Then, all of a sudden, a big foot crept into view. And unfortunatley, the ugly foot was attached to an even uglier body. Looking up, I took in the view of the gigantic creature infront of me. I've seen worse, so this wasn't as intimidating as it would've been if this was new.

The creature was about eight feet tall, and had wild eyes. Suddenly, it slammed the ground with it's foot. The ground rumbled, as if it was an earthquake, and everyone started screaming and ducked behind objects for cover. I'll admit, I had the urge to do the same, but I held my ground. After a couple seconds, my fear had dissolved completely. Looking behind me, I saw that my friends have stayed in place as well.

I made a wild grab for the nearest object I could find - a state of the art toy gun. Chucking it at the monster, I reached for a baseball bat, which was at least better than the plastic gun. Running towards the creature, I quickly devised a plan. If I could distract the beast and draw it away from my friends, then it'll probably give them time to escape. As for me...well, to be honest, I wasn't sure. But I couldn't let it hurt my friends, and that's all that mattered.

But what took me by surprise was that the disgusting beast didn't bother looking at me. Instead, it appeared as if it were running away from something. Or someone.

After I took three paces towards it, the thing seemed to notice me for the first time. I cautioned myself and took a step back. My breathing slowed, and I repositioned the bat in my hand, so I had a firm grip. "Hey, ugly, wanna play?" I asked, and then without thinking, I charged.