waterfall. — chapter 2

Instructions

Chapter 2 Press flag to play music, press buttons to mute or unmute. Music is not mine. ——————| Artemis POV , I rose from my bed, put some nice sandals and a reasonable outfit on, then quietly opened my door. I was supposed to be asleep right now, but I had to go see the grove at night. I silently walked through the halls after softly shutting my door. Thankfully my siblings would be asleep so they wouldn’t be able to tattle on me. I just had to worry about mother and father hearing me and getting up to investigate. I soon approached the balcony door. We always kept the door open because it was fairly safe in the caverns. I walked out into the balcony and climbed over the rails. I looked down to see my options, the lagoon below me, some vines, or keep climbing down. I decided to keep scaling the walls, because there were some loose bricks where I could step down, and jumping into the lagoon would be too loud. As soon as I got to the steps, I quickly stepped down and walked as fast as I could to the grove. I followed the creek, trying not to step on any of the fungi. Soon enough, glowing lichen started to show up by the creek, I must have been close. My pace started to speed up, I was eager. I have always wanted to visit the grove at night. I heard it was the only place where the ground opened up, and you could view the stars. Not before long, I found myself running towards a group of trees. That’s it. I passed the group of trees to find the grove, the small clearing, with dozens of glowing mushrooms, flowers, and lichen growing. There was a small pond full of glowing fish. Their scales glistened with blues, cyans, and whites. There were some lillypads floating atop the water. I took off my sandals and dipped my feet into the small pond. Oh, I almost forgot. I dipped my head up to the sky, to see the place where the ground above had opened up, revealing thousands of stars. I exhaled in delight. I almost forgot the main reason I came here for. I felt my smile grow bigger and bigger as I gazed up at the starry sky. Each star seemed to be trying to talk to each other, each trying to strike up conversation. “You all must be the best of friends.” I muttered, swishing my hands around in the water. I didn’t really have that many friends here in the caverns, they either lived far away or didn’t get along with me, due to our species differences. I was a water spirit, meaning I could control water. Kind of like a ‘water bender’ for a piece of literature I read once. Anyway, not only could we control water, but we could heal others, we could shapeshift, and we could talk to underwater creatures. Pretty neat. I tried to get along with my family’s neighbors, the Koi, but they didn’t really like me. I did have a friend who was a wind spirit though, her name was Skye, very appropriate name. Anyway, me and Skye would always hang out with eachother, she would fly down to the caverns, and we would just spend the day together. Hopefully tomorrow would be a day that she could visit. Lately she’s been working as a messenger, just flying around in her hawk form and delivering letters. I laid down onto the cool grass and lichen, swishing my feet around in the pond. I closed my eyes after looking at the stars again and sighed. I really wished that I could meet more people. The only explorer that I discovered was scared off by my brother, Croix. I decided to get up and walk back home, so that I wouldn’t be discovered as not in my bed by my parents. I put my sandals back on, and started to walk along the creek back home.