Children of the Glimmer Pool by Obstinate Anarchist (book series for 10 year olds .TXT) 📕

Pulling the instrument-weapon from her back, she inspected the weapon end. Both sides of the sharp, double edged axe blade were nicked and not nearly as deadly as they might have been before her little dip in the river. Nevertheless, Nova slung it over her shoulder for easy access in case she needed to cut some limbs off.

For a few moments, Nova remained in the same spot she had been when she'd heard the voice call out to her. Still nothing. So when she couldn't find the source, she started up again.

"Hey! Where're you going?"

Nova grit her teeth when she heard the voice again. She was already angry and this voice was only making everything worse. She felt a lump in her throat and worried that she may break into a fit of furious crying, she spun around again. "I don't know! Home? Away from here? I'm trying to find my friends, so if you could kindly shut the hell up, that would be spectacular!"

She waited, her free hand clenched into a fist. Nova glanced around again and sighed loudly. "Great. Now I look stupid: standing around looking like an idiot and having a conversation with some 'invisible voice.' Yeah, good job, Nova, way to live up to the family name," she grumbled bitterly, starting off again.

Just like it had twice before, the voice interrupted her. "Can I come with you?"

"No, you most certainly can not. I don't want a stupid voice coming along with me," Nova spat, tightening her grip on the handle of her bass-axe.

"I'm coming anyway."

"No, you're not!"

"You can't tell me what to do, stupid!"

"Jerk!" Nova retorted, stalking off. She might have gone even further had she not heard footsteps behind her. It hadn't quite been her intention to draw the source of the voice out, but this was actually a good start. She needed to let off some steam and hacking up some annoying brat would prove to be good for her.

Spinning on the heel of her foot, Nova turned around to face her new adversary. She had both hands on her bass-axe, preparing to whirl it around in a death strike, but stopped short when she saw a curious look in the girl's bright blue eyes.

The slightly shorter girl standing before Nova wore a pale green shirt with a plaid design. Over this she donned a cinder colored vest that she had lazily left unbuttoned. She wore black boots, the same as the other girls of the Mountain Village.

Nova made a mental note to punch herself later as she lowered her weapon. "And you're the voice that called me stupid?" She asked slowly, arching a brow.

The innocent looking girl grinned and nodded her head. "I had to think of something to get you to respond, didn't I?" She ventured, leaning back and forth on her heels. "Where are you going?"

Again with the endless questions. Nova grit her teeth. "To find my friends." She turned and started to walk again, upstream, at least.

"Can I come with you?" The girl inquired, though she was already at Nova's heels, clearly having already made up her mind.

"No."

"My name's Vanessa," she girl announced suddenly, sliding her hands into her pockets as she easily kept pace with the dark haired girl beside her.

Nova sighed loudly and slung her bass-axe over her shoulder. "Nova."

"That's a nice name, Nova. Aren't those like, something to do with space? Were you named after something in space, Nova?" Vanessa asked, tilting her head to the side curiously.

And so, once again, Nova was thrown into a never ending, lengthy conversation filled to the brim with hundreds and hundreds of questions, something she managed to slowly become accustomed to. 

At the current moment, Nova was getting along with Vanessa better than she had first expected. By now, she thought she would have hurled the poor girl off a cliff, but she had managed to take a liking to her. She was excellent company, even if some of the things she said were a little out there. And despite that, the dark skinned girl found that Vanessa was keeping her more or less distracted from the idea that perhaps her friends were dead.

“So what sort of stuff do you use that axe for? Do you cut down trees like a lumberjack? You know, the ones in the forest village. Or do you like, cut off chicken heads with it? The edges look kinda cruddy. How did that happen?” Vanessa inquired, swinging her arms back and forth as she walked beside Nova.

Nova's brown eyes flickered over to meet Vanessa's blue ones before moving back to the bass-axe she slung over her shoulder. Her brows furrowed in slight offense. The blade of her bass-axe was only nicked, and not even that badly. “First off, Nessie, it's a bass-axe, not just an axe. No, I don't cut down trees and no, I don't cut off chicken heads. I play it and I use it to cut off the limbs of the ignorant. Secondly, Vanny, the edges of my bass-axe are fine. Don't criticize it. I've gone through some tough shit in the last few hours and just before that, this baby was pristine and shiny and new,” she explained, taking care to give Vanessa as many ridiculous nicknames as humanly possible.

Vanessa frowned and increased her pace so that she could be slightly ahead of Nova. “That's cool, I guess. Not as cool as cutting off chicken heads and watching them run around for a minute or so, but it's still cool, sorta.” She was quiet for a few moments before she finally seemed to realize that Nova's clothes, which had dried substantially in the sunlight, were still a  bit damp. “How did that happen? Aren't you cold?”

“Oh. Not as cold as I was earlier,” Nova replied simply, absentmindedly fiddling with some of the dreads her dark hair was pulled into. “Just a little accident by the river was all,” she replied, a bit unwilling to go into further detail, though she didn't really make it clear.

Obviously Vanessa wanted to hear more. “An accident? What kind? What happened?”

Nova grimaced. “Some friends and I were crossing this log and one of them slipped. Long story short I tried to help her and we both ended up in the river. I don't really know where either of them are, which kind of sucks because they were sort of... entertaining, I guess. You would have liked them, I think,” she sighed, glancing at the river that she and Vanessa were currently following. After all, she thought that would be the best way to find Farren and Iris.

Now, the blue eyed girl seemed to make sense of Nova's previous rudeness and unsettling attitude. Sort of. Vanessa bit her lip and continued to stroll alongside the river, glancing over at the rolling waves that carried away anything it happened to snatch up from the bank. “Did you ever think maybe they went looking for the nearest village?”

This seemed to pique Nova's interest. “Pardon? Where exactly, is the nearest village? The three of us were sort of running from one of the more... unfriendly ones. It's not like we'd be in any rush to get back to them,” she sighed.

Vanessa, however, did not seem to be fazed. “That had to have been miles and miles and miles away, though! We're close to the Glimmer Cave, so wherever it was that your other friends are, they probably went to whichever village was closest to them,” she explained, and her logic, though slightly strange, did sound sort of sane to Nova.

The brown eyed girl stopped in her tracks and stared down at the grass intently, as thought it would provide her with the answers to everything. “I... guess that makes some sense. How did you know we were close to the Glimmer Cave?” Nova asked abruptly, turning her head to look at the other girl.

With a smile, Vanessa grabbed Nova's arm just above the elbow and guided her a few feet forward before spinning to face the sun, which was just now beginning to descend in the west. The two girls stood facing westward for a good minute and just when Nova was about to interrupt the silence with a smart comment, a strange light that could only be described as a glimmer in the sky caught her attention.

It wasn't that far off from the girls and it seemed like the source, the Glimmer Cave, was probably only a few miles off. The glimmering light was iridescent and sent something that was more or less a rainbow from the source and into the sky.

“It'll only last for a few hours,” Vanessa stated abruptly, looking over at Nova, who was startled by the sudden comment.

“What will?” Nova asked slowly, calf brown eyes focused intently on the strange light.

Vanessa let her hands rest around the waist of her dark jeans, slipping her fingers into the two lateral belt loops. “The light. It only happens for a few hours every day just when the sun starts to set. That's supposed to be when Frederick died trying to reach the woman created from the sunlight. You know the story, don't you?”

Nova grimaced. She had heard the stories several times before, but she didn't remember every single detail, unlike Vanessa, apparently. “Yeah, I know the story. My mom and dad always used to tell it to me before I went to bed at night. They always used to tell me not to be foolish like Frederick.” She seemed to be a little amused at the memory.

The other girl turned her head to look over at Nova in disbelief, eyes widened just slightly. “Foolish? Frederick? How so? Frederick wasn't foolish!” Vanessa insisted, crossing her arms over her chest.

The dark skinned girl frowned, displeased. “What sort of idiot drowns himself trying to reach a woman made from sunlight? Couldn't he tell it was just a reflection?”

“It was out of love, Nova! He fell madly in love with the woman and he wanted to be with her! Can't you try to imagine being so in love with someone that you just... you just want to be with them at any costs?” Vanessa urged, desperately trying to explain her take on Frederick's story.

“I believe the word you're looking for is 'obsession.'”

“Okay, smartypants. You tell me why you think Frederick's such an idiot,” Vanessa retorted with a huff, turning around to start up walking again.

Naturally, Nova followed right after her. “If I have to,” she sighed, adjusting the gray sweater worn loosely about her shoulders. “Frederick could have amounted to be a great leader for all of us –the villages, I mean– instead of just 'praying to the heavens.'

Who's to say that even happened? People here pray to the heavens for things much less trivial than mutual peace for all of the villages and no one answers their calls.

And the whole 'woman created from sunlight' thing was probably a fantasy created by Frederick's inability to keep it in his pants.