Recruiting

I tapped the edge of the pencil against my notebook, drawing another blank. Saturday night and I couldn't believe I wasted half my day trying to binge watch NCIS. It would have been fine too, but above me directly was my parents room. I could hear them yelling at each other again. Sitting back against my desk chair I let my arms hang aimlessly and sighed. Nineteen years old, I didn't go to college, and finding a job was as hard as it was to get a kid to go to bed. I knew I wasn't the cause of my parents fighting, but it still was something I thought was immature. Over the stupidest things they'd yell at each other for, I was surprised they hadn't gotten a divorce yet. 

I listened as the source of yelling stopped, footsteps carried themselves from the upper bedroom down a flight and then I hear my dad pounding against my door. I stood up and dropped my pencil on the desk and swung open the door to my bedroom. Looking rather lazily at my dad. 

"Go clean the trash out of the backyard." without any room for arguement he stomped off. Huffing and puffing obviously over nothing. The first thing that came to my mind was.... it's nine o clock at night. There wasn't any sunlight, what the hell was he thinking asking me to clean the trash out of the backyard? I sighed, and headed towards the downstairs where the living room was.

At least the porch light would provide me with something. Grabbing a trash bag and some gloves I headed out side and started to clean up the at least obvious pieces of plastic trash or paper that had flown over from the neighbors yard or otherwise. Well, to think positive - he could have asked me to clean the kitchen or worse the bathroom. 

It was about halway through cleaning that I noticed something weird. There was something sticking out of the bushes lining the fence. Long, almost like a tail? The top was fuzzy and the lower half like a scaly lizard. The fur on top probably brown if I could tell from the dim light, and the scales almost black but having a blue tint to them. I on instinct reached out towards it and my heart dropped when it receeded into the bushes like a snake. Fear engulfed me so I swallowed and forced myself to look up. 

I couldn't exactly see it in the dark, but there was definitely something there. A long beast with front arms. If I didn't have any logic I would have screamed dragon from what it looked like. Frozen I let my jaw drop and I tried to back away as slow as I could. Well, there wouldn't be any harm done if it ate me.  I swallowed, turning around to bolt it back towards the house. Slamming the back screen door shut as I looked out.

I could see a human like figure to the left come flying in with some sort of weapon. The dragon thing wiggled about until it stopped from what I could assume was the human figure killing it. I tightened my grip on the screen door with my mouth open, I didn't know what it was but I wanted it to be real. So I didn't even try to lock the door or cover it. As the figure stepped on my porch then I leaned down and locked the door, not that it would do any good. Some magical thing with a sword no doubt could smash through the window no problem. 

I could see that it was a girl now, with short black hair and hazel eyes. For a second I thought they were lavender. She placed her sword into her sheath and walked straight up to the glass. Raising an eyebrow before knocking on the glass with a hand. 

"Do you have some water I can have?" the woman asked. I was half in awe but shook my head for a second to come back and removed myself.

"Uhmm... yeah, but who are you?" I wasn't going to let her in the house, but I could obviously spare some water. I moved to the kitchen grabbed some water and walked outside as she made space for me. 

"Shoe Rivers - you're Val Tint?" I handed the glass and tensed up. Was I dreaming or something? "I know this might seem strange, but I know your uncle. Have you heard about magic and stuff being reality." I placed a hand to my forehead as she continued. What the hell?

"Are you on some sort of drugs? Last I checked Uncle chuck was in a mental hospital to begin with!" So was this an escaped mental person? That didn't explain what I saw though, maybe I had just been tired and it was a dog that she had... sliced through with that sword. The bigger question was why I let the girl even know I saw her, I also had given her a glass of water.

"No, and I have all the proof I need so that's why I'm so confident. It took me a whole month to find you. Now it's your choice to label me as an insane stalker - but reality check to you. You're a mage." Shoe placed her hands together as she told me this. I was starting to get a headache. I wanted to flat out reject her, so without a word I stepped back into my house and locked the sliding glass door. 

"Proof or not you don't just spring it on someone.... you... you make friends stuff like that." I shooed her with my hands as she looked a bit unimpressed.

"I would have but I'm out of time.... Val - my country is in need of new leaders. So wouldn't just show up to offer you a new life of rainbows and puppies - I know about how s****y your home life is and this one might not be any better. But your uncle even asked me to tell you about this because it's better to have a choice." Shoe crossed her arms as I narrowed my eyes on her. "This human world is really harsh, a creative mind like you doesn't deserve to be wasted on it." creative mind? Now she was trying to flatter me. The sad thing was, I wanted so badly to actually believe her!

"You don't know how to make an arguement do you?" I asked as I had my hands on the glass. "Come back in the morning, actually show me you aren't lying. Maybe then I'll consider... I'm no hero, but you've caught my interest... crazy lady." I stuck my tongue out and headed back up to my room after flicking off the lights. I didn't even give Shoe a chance to argue against what I said. I slammed my door and crawled into bed, sitting there, knowing I probably wouldn't get any sleep tonight. 

Author's Note

Shoe isn't very good at recruiting people into her country from foreign lands, that she's never met.

Lol... a lots going on with her right now I guess. Meet val, she's new.

Reviews

[barleygirl]

The mechanics of your writing are pretty good, with only a small sprinkle of mistakes. The imagination of your storytelling is the strongest part of this piece -- good logical flow of action & good dialogue. I think your story is fine the way it is, but if I were tweaking on it a bit, I would add a little more description to your imaginative ideas. This is a good length of story for the average online attention span, but a little more embellishment would make this story even more compelling. I like a story that has quick pacing, not too long & drawn out with the descriptions. But this story seems to skip over things a little too quickly instead of giving the reader a chance to savor each moment of imagery a little longer.