And in the moonlight the girl crouched to the frozen forest floor. Shoulder length hair the color of oak framed a delicate round face. She seemed so fragile and vulnerable, yet her cynical stare pierced through the lenses of her glasses, letting everything and anything know she was a force to be reckoned with.



"Your glare does not impress me girl" hissed the shadow from beyond the nearest pine. The dark entity looked past her glare, and into her soul, and suddenly it knew everything. As the shadow did this the girl pressed her hands, clothed in black wool gloves, into the solid earth laden with pine needles. The pine needle closest to her hands emitted a quiet popping sound, and burst into bright blue flames. The next pine needle followed, and the next, and the next. Soon several jets of blue flame were crawling away from her hands, burning several pine needles and leaving a trail of blue fire behind as they did so. They traced across the shallow earth, weaving back and forth into some manner of incomprehensible design. However, when the last trails of flames connected, the image of a pentacle, drawn in fire, was perfectly comprehensible. The girl straightened in the center of her pyrotechnic construct, boldly facing the line of trees.


This time the shadow was impressed, "your powers are indeed strong girl. But mine are stronger." The blue flames suddenly turned black, and a moment later they whisked up into the air and extinguished. Smoke began rising from the still intact image of the pentacle, carved into the soil with fire. The girl, still confident, ignored the smoke and faced the growing shadow. "How lonely you must feel," continued the dark entity, "Your abilities justify your reputation for being strange, an outcast within the highly judgmental society of humans. yet you are too human to be accepted amongst your brethren...tsk, poor girl," Her stone cold glare intensified by the slightest degree. A hardly noticeable change in expression, yet it revealed so much, and the shadow pressed on, striking her weakness, "will your heart ever find a home?"


This final statement aroused a small glimmer of despair in the girls expression, the softening of her iron stare, the miniscule upward tilt of her eyebrows, the slight falter in the solidity of her grimace. She had weakened, and for a single moment her defenses went down entirely. And so the shadow darted from the trees, towards the girl, towards her heart. But she sensed the onslaught immediately, and in one deft move, she drew a knife from her belt and twirled it thrice in her hand. As the shadow charged her, she whipped the knife out in a wide arc in front of her chest. The moonlit blade tore through the shadow like it would a frail cloth curtain. A splash of the blackest ink erupted from the wound,spraying the girl and the ground in dark shadows. The wind picked up suddenly. It tore up pine needles up from the forest floor and dragged the broken shadow away into oblivion.


"I'm sorry," said the girl, "Was that supposed to be an insult?"