Lightscript Legends Episode 13
“Overprotective Tendencies”
Groundskeeping, confusing human lingo, and irked shapeshifters…
Barely budding branches trembled in the damp wind. Cold blue water lapped at the rocky shore. Empty docks stood well above the waves, waiting for the lake to rise with mountain runoff. A few sun rays slipped through cracks in the tumbling gray clouds to dance across the restless water. Here and there along the beach, green shoots reached for spring’s promise only inches from traces of ice still clinging to winter’s memory.
The stone mansion stood still as the mountains. Its spacious rooms were empty. Its chandeliers were dark. White cloth was draped over its furnishings. Dry leaves and pine needles skittered across its balcony and leafless vines laced its railings.
Between the stone walls of the mansion and the rocky shore of the lake lay an enormous garden split by a broad path lined with elegant lampposts. The lamps were out for the daylight hours, yet a glittering glow rose from one of them…and an unnaturally dark shadow was cast by another.
Atop those two lampposts, Skyvior and Dravial faced off like the lion statues on either side of the mansion’s gilded entry gates.
In the garden below them, Elina was busily cleaning dead leaves out of a dry fountain built to appear like a real cascade. As the estate’s sole groundskeeper, she had plenty of work to distract her from the shadows and sparks of thought raining down from her invisible companions. But even in her most focused state, she couldn’t keep every idea from circling her mind like the freshly hatched gnats pestering her.
A dark wisp from Dravial reminded her of the perfect cuss word to describe the bothersome bugs flying at her face. In the same moment, a bright ember from Skyvior drew her attention to the first tiny blossom of the season. From seemingly random reminders of depressing headlines and bills, to brief breaths of wonder over slivers of blue sky breaking open the clouds, her thoughts ricocheted between shadows and sparks all throughout the workday.
The sun was setting when Elina gathered up her garden tools and headed for her truck. Solar sensors triggered by the evening shadows, the lanterns started to flicker as she made her way up the path.
Skyvior and Dravial left their perches to return to her shoulders, giving each other sideways glares as they landed.
“That sound your truck has been making is most likely the transmission,” Dravial told Elina’s mind as she lowered the tailgate with one hand, awkwardly cradling her armload of tools.
“If that is what it is,” Skyvior countered, “it can be repaired or replaced.”
Dravial nodded. “Yes. With all of that money you no longer have. Because you poured your every penny into a down payment on a shack with a touch of fairytale flair.”
“Payday is just around the corner,” Skyvior pointed out.
“The grocery store is also just around the corner,” Dravial added. “Not that you will be able to get anything from there after stopping by the mechanic.”
Elina dropped her tools in the truck bed and closed the tailgate, shaking her ponytail to flick away another bug. “My problems are like gnats,” she sighed. “So tiny and minuscule in the whole scheme of things, but so distracting when they won’t get away from my head!”
Skyvior chuckled. “Not a bad metaphor. You should write that down.”
Elina’s lips softened into a small smile, as if she audibly heard him. “A parable of gnats…” She laughed to herself. “What a masterpiece that would make.”
Dravial wrinkled his nose. Jokes about making gnat notations would be less aggravating if the last thing Elina wrote down had not been the name of his nemesis. Now, any mention of storytelling reminded him of the scribbled paper tucked inside her copy of The Firstborn Legend.
Elina was about to open the driver side door when a new cargo van pulled into the blacktop driveway alongside her old pickup. A handsome repairman stepped out of the van with a broad smile that made Skyvior bristle. Then he greeted Elina with a wink, and the Lightshifter’s feathers flared like torches.
Dravial ducked and dodged the subsequent spray of embers. “Really? Why all the sparking every time this particular person appears?”
Skyvior’s eyes narrowed to slits as the repairman sauntered over to Elina, leaning against her truck and calling her some absurd human nickname. “I do not like him.”
Dravial smirked. “She does.”
“No she does not!”
“She is at least on the verge of liking him.”
“He is on the verge of being struck by lightning.”
Dravial quirked an eyebrow. “Are you supposed to do that?”
“Since when do you care what is supposed to be done?”
“I don’t. But would you, with your disgustingly dutiful sense of honor, summon a bolt of lightning to strike down a poor flirt?”
“No. Because it would hit Elina, too.”
Dravial chuckled. “And I thought Lightshifters didn’t have dark sides.”
Skyvior was spitting sparks with every word. “There is nothing dark about lightning.”
“Oh really? What about the burn marks it leaves behind?”
Skyvior abruptly changed subjects, entirely consumed with glaring intensely at the man invading his personal human’s personal space. “Why do male humans call adult female humans, Baby? And why do female humans consider it a compliment? Babies are all fleshy and helpless and generally strange-looking. Is that how this man sees her?”
Dravial shrugged. “It is human lingo. You will drive yourself mad trying to make sense of it.”
The repairman said something that made Elina laugh, and Skyvior’s claws ignited. “He is standing too close to her.”
Dravial rolled his eyes. “He is on the opposite side of the truck.”
“It is a small truck.”
“And you are a small invisible force that he cannot see. Therefore, glaring at him and spattering me with sparks is not going to stop him from talking to your pet human.”
“You are right.” Skyvior opened his wings and drifted off Elina’s shoulder without breaking his searing stare. “There are far more effective strategies.”
He began flapping all six wings in a fluidly rhythmic motion, stirring the fierce sparks leaping from his feathers into a whirlwind of green and gold. His form grew like a gathering storm cloud. He opened his claws, and they took the shape of human hands. He shook the mane of feathers cresting his heavily muscled neck, and golden-brown braids flowed out from their flames. He wrapped his changing body in his wings, and they dissolved into cotton fabric.
Dravial drifted away from Elina, shaking his head and squinting against the tornado of light.
Skyvior landed behind her, fully shifted into a hulking human that appeared to have just stepped around the mansion’s nearest stone pillar.
The flirtatious repairman startled, pausing mid-sentence as his eyes shifted from Elina’s smiling face to the steady glare of Skyvior’s intense eyes. Though cooled from molten-emerald to forest-green, they could still be described as ‘burning’ when combined with the lethal look on his face.
Muscles bulging under his torn jeans and T-shirt, Skyvior marched straight up to the truck and draped one enormous arm around Elina’s shoulders. The hair falling against his broad shoulders was the exact same color as hers and the shifted shade of his eyes mirrored her own, giving a striking family resemblance.
The repairman did not bother to introduce himself or ask whether the mountain of a man with the don’t-you-dare-stare was boyfriend or big brother. He just smiled nervously and blurted out, “Well I…better get going. Burning daylight!” He hurried back to his van, fiddling clumsily with his tool belt.
Elina tilted her head in confusion over his sudden change in demeanor, then shrugged and murmured, “Men are so weird.”
Skyvior nodded approvingly, crossing his treelike arms across his wall of a chest. “I am glad you think so.”
Dravial, still hovering at a short distance, gave him a disgusted look. “All of that transformational fuss and you came out looking like a vagabond. My human form is far classier.”
“I was going for brute intimidation, not suave manipulation,” Skyvior retorted. “And this is not a vagabond look. It is a rugged working man look.” He chuckled to himself. “And it was very effective.”
Dravial perched atop the tailgate, watching the repairman enter the mansion with a nervous backwards glance. “Effective, but anticlimactic. Try something more ominous next time, such as an enormous black snake, and I will grade the scream you get out of him on a scale of one to heart attack.”
“You are demented.”
“Obviously. But you wanted to strike him with lightning.”
“I wanted to, but I didn’t.”
Dravial flashed a mocking grin. “Of course. You can’t strike without wounding your poor, tender Starblood conscience.”
Skyvior flicked his fingers as if flicking away a mosquito, and a branch of light shot from them to club Dravial squarely in the puffed-out chest. “My conscience feels just fine, actually.”
Dravial tumbled from the tailgate into the shrubbery alongside the driveway with a puff of black smoke and an intensely irritated grunt.
Skyvior smirked. “Why Dravial, you seem a little starstruck.”
Dravial slunk from the bushes, feathers disheveled and eyes livid. “I thought puns were strictly human lingo.”
“Well, I am wearing a human mask.” Skyvior eyed the truck as Elina climbed in to fire up the engine. “I think I will take it off for the ride home, though. This form may not fit in the cab.”
“You could ride in the bed,” Dravial said with a wicked glint in his eye. “That would give me some quality one-on-one time with dear Elina’s mind.”
Skyvior sent another branch of light at his face. He narrowly dodged it, only to be blindsided by another that sent him sailing through the wall of the mansion.
From behind the stone wall, which he passed through like mist, his disgruntled voice muttered, “You and your overprotective tendencies.”
🏔️💫Lightscript Legends💫🌲 is an ongoing series of bite-sized stories and sip-on-the-go serials. Click here for the full list of published episodes and subscribe to get new installments in your inbox!