short writing from a book I have in mind

    The heavy snow blew violently across the lands causing blizzard conditions. Within just a few hours the snow had built up

and made travel a risky venture.  Kenya and her brother Milan were in the woods near their home playing games of hide and

seek when the storm blew in. Their father had told them to return home at the first sign of snow fall. They knew if they didn’t

listen to him, their rear ends would pay the price and neither of them were willing to sacrifice their bottom for a little extra

time of fun in the snow.

Kenya had taken her younger brother by the hand to lead him home. He was only six and didn’t know the woods very well at that age.  She was completely responsible for making sure he made it home safe. By the time she was sixteen she had spent enough time in the woods to know her way around. Her mother used to take her out all the time to pick mushroom and berries in the summer time when she was younger. At the age of twelve she began to venture into the woods on her own to gather food for her mother to cook with. They were in one of their harvesting areas when she noticed something different out of the corner of her eye.

    Through the heavy snow fall she noticed eight small glowing red lights slowly coming their way. She thought to herself, this can’t be good, and she pulled on Milan’s hand. He was still looking at the red lights when he jerked and almost stumbled. He quickly caught himself and hurried to match stride with his sister. Kenya pulled her scarf over her face to protect it from the cold wind and began to walk towards home with haste. She periodically looked behind them to keep track of the lights behind them. They were still glowing red through the snow but now they becoming brighter and more prominent. Whatever it was that stalked them was now picking up the pace and following them with determination. Kenya and Milan began to panic and started to run in fear across the slick snowy ground. Kenya’s scarf fell off her face and landed on the ground but she gave no thought to reaching down to pick it up.

    They weren’t far from home but it seemed like it was taking an eternity to get there. As they ran through the woods, they gave little thought to the small abrasions forming on their faces from the tree branches. The sting from their wounds was minor compared to the burning fear heating up inside them.

      They were just about home when Kenya looked behind her and saw that the lights had disappeared. When she stopped to look around, Milan bumped into her and let out a small grunt. She looked every direction including above her, but there were no signs of what followed them. Perhaps, whatever it was, had given up the chase for a better prey or maybe the blizzard had created too much of a white out causing the predator to lose track of its prey.

    Up ahead of them was the final stretch to returning home and Kenya was anxious to get there. She would feel safe once her and Milan had gotten inside their house, there little fortress and refuge from the wild. But first there was a ten foot embankment they would have to climb and on the other side, open land covered in a blanket of peaceful undefiled snow and just an acre away from the tree line was the safety of their warm home. Kenya could already see it in her mind, the smoke rising from the chimney and a warm glow coming from the windows. It was a spacious log cabin surrounded by a stone wall about four feet high. Her father had built the wall from stones he had imported from a land far away. It was a magical land so the story goes and the stones were supposed to have the ability to ward off negative energies and powers from the darkest domains of the galaxy. Kenya never understood why a wall of magic was needed this far away from the war but she liked the blue glow the stones put off at night, so she never complained.

She gently pulled Milan in front of her, “All right little one, up you go.”

“Stop calling me that” he replied.

“Just get going.”

    Milan grabbed onto a thick root coming out of the ground and started to pull himself up.

Kenya looked over her left shoulder to see if it was still safe. There were still no signs of anything hostile or anything out of the ordinary lingering in the woods. She looked back at Milan and started to give him a boost up the bank when a loud howl echoed through the woods. Kenya froze in shock and her face was suddenly masked in fear. She slowly turned around and saw more than just red glowing lights. She had never seen anything like this before. There were four beasts that paced towards them in a slow stalking manner. Half beast and half machine, they looked like wild dogs with almost no fur. Their flesh was raw with some bones visible along the spine and paws. Their faces were shielded by metal plates with two holes open for their red glowing eyes. It covered most of the face but stopped at the bottom of the lower jaw and the end of the snout. Their legs appeared to be part robotic in nature combined with flesh and bone. Their tails were the only part that had fur. Grey and shaggy it grew from between the metal joints that made up the shell around the tail. At the end of the tail was a large metal spearhead about the size of an average adult human hand. It was obvious these creatures were not the friendly stray a person would take home to mom but rather they were built for killing and bread for war.

Milan had looked back and saw the same horrifying sight. He firmly gripped the root, dug his left foot into the snow, and attempted to lift himself up the embankment, but his foot slipped and he slid back to the bottom landing at his sister’s feet.

"No!” she said.

“Get up and try again, hurry!"

    Kenya bent down to help her brother to his feet.

    He quickly grabbed the root again and dug his feet into the snow with more force hoping to get a better grip. The snow had made the bank too slick and the root was too wet to keep a hold of but Milan gave it his best shot.

    The bark on the root began to separate causing his hand to slip and lose its grip. Simultaneously the snow gave way under his feet and he fell again except this time he landed on his sister. They both fell to the ground with a soft thud in the snow. The creatures were getting closer now and Kenya knew they only had one last chance to get up the bank before something bad could happen.

She quickly stood up and put Milan back on the bank.

“You’ve got to try harder!” she cried

She held him in place so he wouldn’t fall again and kept giving him a forceful push up the bank. She was helping Milan gain his footing when she heard a snort behind her. It was too late to escape. Kenya turned around to see three of the four creatures staring her down.

“Kenya”, Milan Cried.

She turned around and looked up at her brother.

The fourth creature was at the top of the bank. It stood there with its mean red eyes looking down at them and the creature began to growl.  Their one escape route was now blocked and there was nowhere else to go. 

“Get down!”

She grabbed her brother and pulled him down to the ground. His feet lost their grip again and he fell to the ground landing on his side. This time he didn’t even get up since he had nowhere to go. He just sat on the ground crying with his knees to his chest and his armed wrapped around his legs.

“We’re going to die aren’t we?” he asked.

    Kenya didn’t answer her brother, she just stood in fear looking around at the creatures surrounding them. They had moved in close enough that there were only about five feet between them and their prey. They just stood there staring Kenya down with steam rising from their nostrils in the cold wind. The fourth creature jumped down from the embankment and stood with the others. It appeared that this one was probably the leader of the pack. Its armor was gold instead of metal grey, but its eyes were still red with fury just like the others. The leader began to pace back and forth like it was getting impatient. Kenya knelt down beside her brother to try and calm him even though she was pretty certain they were going to die.

The leader of the pack had waited long enough. The scent of human flesh had filled its nostrils so full it was unbearable. It pointed its head toward the sky and howled so loud it echoed through the woods. The sound was painful to hear and deafening to Kenya’s ears. As the creatures lunged into the air she screamed as loud as she could and quickly tucked her head between her and her brother. Just as the creatures were about to land on them a bright orange glow lit up the area around them and then everything fell silent.

    Kenya lied face down on the ground for a few seconds before she regained consciousness.  The ground felt warm to her and she could feel moisture rising around her face like steam from a pot of boiling water. She rapidly blinked her eyes several times before she could keep them open.  The ground appeared to move around her as if she were dizzy until her vision cleared. She had no clue what had just happened, all she knew was that she was obviously still alive. There was little energy left in her body and she felt almost too weak to get off the ground. Slowly she found the strength to at least get to her knees and kneel on the ground.

    She looked around and saw the immediate area was no longer full of tall stout trees but rather land which appeared to have been blasted by fire. The ground was covered in ash and the steam rising from the ground was dancing into the air with the grey smoke from the charred timber. The metal robotic parts of the creatures were scattered about the area but nothing else remained. There were still some minor fires burning on some nearby tree stumps and the area was warm enough that the snow was falling as rain.

    Kenya looked around for her brother but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Milan!” she yelled, but there was no answer, not even the echo of her own voice.

“Milan!” she yelled again as she began to cry and still there was no answer.

    Her brother had disappeared and she had no idea where he could have gone. She wiped the tears from her face leaving a streak of black ash on her cheek. Kenya bowed her head and when she did she noticed Milan’s gold pendant that he had been wearing around his neck. It was dull and faded by the ash it was piled in. She reached down and pulled it out of the warm ash and held it to her chest. She looked into the sky and cried loudly.

“No!” she screamed in sorrow.

She realized that the ashes on her hands and on the ground next to her were the remains of her brother. She wasn’t sure exactly what had happened but she knew that she must have been the cause of it since she was the only one to survive.

    She stayed on the ground a bit longer mourning her brother before she realized she needed to get out of the area for her own safety. She put her brother’s pendant in her pocket and stood to her feet. She climbed the embankment that was now clear of snow and stood at the top looking down. She glanced at where her brother’s ashes were on the ground and mourned for him one more time.

“I’m sorry my brother.” She whispered as tears flowed down her cheek.

    She turned around to head for home but stopped after only a couple steps. When Kenya had lifted her head to look towards home she saw it was burning. Her once peaceful home was almost completely burnt to the ground.  She scanned the area to make sure it was safe to approach and she saw a body lying on the ground in front of the stable. She feared the worst and ran straight towards the burning stable giving no regards to her own safety. Just outside the main stable door she found her mother lying motionless on the ground. She knelt next to her body and rested her mother’s head on her lap. Her face and short blond hair was covered with soot. Her white and blue dress was full of holes and tears and her shoes were missing.  It appeared that she had been dragged across the ground.

“Mother can you hear me?” she cried loudly, but her mother didn’t respond.

    She lowered her Mother’s head and kissed her on the forehead and then rested her mother’s head back on the ground. Kenya mourned once more as another person she loved very much had been killed by whatever was after them.

    She stood back up and searched the area for her father but she could not find him. There were no human tracks in the snow to follow, only prints identical to what had been chasing her. There was no evidence that anyone other than her mother had been dragged around on the ground. She could only assume that her father was inside the house when it burned to the ground. There was nothing she could do to save him now; the blaze was too hot to approach.

    Kenya stood between the burning stable and the blazing house with no idea what to do. She didn’t know where she would go; she had no food and no extra clothes and their carriage had been destroyed so she had no transportation as well. All she knew was that she had to leave for her own safety in case the creatures would happen to return. She looked around her once peaceful home crying in sorrow. Confused about why this had happened, she turned to the west and followed the sunset to wherever it would lead her.