Panicking False Solitude

Pham Thi Anh Sang

Somewhere up in the sky, there was a rainbow that needed to be stolen. Well, not actually. In Anh Sang's rose colored thoughts, the word that specifically came to mind was borrowed. See, because, stealing was bad but borrowing was okay! Of course, borrowing involved asking somebody if they'd mind it happening in the first place. And actually giving back the borrowed item. Neither of which she had any intention of doing but there were reasons for that.

First off, she didn't really know who she was supposed to be asking. Probably God, but Mommy said that He worked in mysterious ways so Anh Sang didn't expect a straightforward answer. She assumed, however, that He was okay with her taking His rainbows since He kept putting them back up for her. It was really nice of Him and she hoped that He'd keep doing it. They were pretty!

Secondly, there wasn't really a way to put rainbows back into the sky. Not that Anh Sang knew of, anyways. She hadn't tried it in a while but she justified that inaction with the firm fact that rainbows were ten times prettier in her hands than up with all those stupid clouds. Stupid, stupid rainbow blocking clouds.

She pointed at the partially cloudy sky, her white light butterflies fluttering at her back in what she thought was an elegant formation of lights. "Xuống! Xuống!" Anh Sang brought her finger down in sloppy strokes. "Trắng!" A bolt of soft white light shot out from behind her, sourced from the butterflies. The gently shining bolt shot haphazardly into the sky, scratching the edge of a cloud before raining back down in a shower of glitter. The cloud, in response, simply floated slightly to the side. Anh Sang took this as an indication of some great success. In reality, it was probably just the wind.

"Một lần nữa!" the young girl cheered. "Xuống! Xuống! Trắng! Trắng!" As the glitter rained down around her, it suddenly froze, snapping back into a spherical shape. This new form held for only seconds before it shot back in the direction she had indicated.

Unfortunately, in her excitement, the magic got away from her, letting loose as she was starting to point up instead of when she already had. As a result, the ray dispersed itself across the courtyard, quietly exploding and raining down marbles of magic over a bench. That just so happened to have somebody sitting on it. A somebody who looked pretty threatening and like he was in a gang. Basically, somebody who ate his cereal in the mornings with the tears of young children.

However, ten was a magical number. It really was. And being ten years-old, Anh Sang wasn't thinking of scary dangerous people and what they did to cute kids like her. This was what the situation was like to her : there was a grumpy neighbor with a fence. Said neighbor now had one of her super special toys she just accidentally chucked over said fence.

So naturally, the primary thought in her mind was I want that back! Now!

Pham Thi Anh Sang

Let it never be said that children were entirely fearless. Anh Sang certainly was not. There was, after all, a limit even to what childish selfishness could hide away. And as it turned out, being glared at by a really tall -really, really tall. So much so that it hurt her neck to look up at him- thuggish looking guy stepped far out of those bounds. Even his voice was scary! Anh Sang hadn't known that people could make their voices frown like that.

The weird thing was that Scary Man was actually kind of pretty. He had pretty hair, too, and lots of it. Adults aren't supposed to be pretty! Anh Sang wailed in her head. Not men, anyways. Er. Some men. If Oliver grew up to be pretty, then that was only natural.

Because she wasn't really sure how to deal with Scary Man, Anh Sang handled the problem the same way children tended to when they were clueless. She simply pretended that there wasn't any, at least not until she got her light back, squinting up at Scary Man's head and shrugging. The child's way of saving face was truly a perfect one.

Glancing at the ground, she found that her light marbles had gathered by Scary Man's feet. There seemed to be something a little off about them, however. They looked more solid and sharper in clarity than she remembered. Quickly, the girl looked back at her butterflies. Soft light there. Then back at the marbles. Hard light there. She frowned in thought.

One of the marbles was rolling over to her so she bent down and picked it up. It was surprisingly solid, not semi solid like the butterflies behind her were. Shiny... She turned it over in her hands, the motion causing the emitted white light to fracture into tiny rainbow sparkles. She giggled.

Okay! How did I do that? Anh Sang wondered. Usually it took a lot more concentration and well, light, to make hard white light. She wasn't entirely sure where the extra light came in from -maybe she just took it from the sunlight? Oops, that could have ended pretty badly- but she sure wasn't about to complain about it. She had more pretty things now. Pretty things made everything better, and it looked like these marbles were actually stable enough to last.

Excitedly, she motioned wildly with her hands. The marbles on the ground trembled in resistance to the silent command before shooting up to join the butterflies behind her. Except for one.

A single marble hovered in the air, twitching with instability. The light was scrambling around, shifting between soft and hard varieties of white. Worriedly, Anh Sang began to edge away. She didn't think it would explode. But then again, she also didn't think that she could make hard light as easily as she just did. However, as that one marble suddenly began to shrink and pulse energy, the girl knew that it was a really bad idea to stand around.

"Ahh! Run away!"

Adults were sometimes kind of stupid when kids told them what to do, so she ran to Scary Man and began trying to tug him away by the hand. "We! Have! To! Go!" the girl punctuated in quick, slurred English.

Pham Thi Anh Sang

For a ten year-old, Anh Sang had seen her fair share of strange, strange things and people. She was very firmly in that category herself, what with her regular theft of rainbows and swarm of magical butterflies shadowing her. Not to mention, her own roommate was a dinosaur shape shifter, which was totally cool if not just a little bit scary. So theoretically if somebody suddenly changed into a dragon, that would be all right. Right?

Well, okay. Maybe half right. It was one thing to see somebody turn into a dragon and a whole different thing to have said person then scoop a ten year-old into the sky.

So anyways, Anh Sang was a remarkable ten year-old who had seen some remarkable things. She still screamed, though, as Scary Dragon Man closed his claws around her midsection and heaved them both into the air because there were just some things that anybody would be terrified of and this was surely one of them.

"Hãy để tôi đi! Hãy để tôi đi!" She wiggled in the clawed hand that held her, arms pinned too tightly to her sides and head spinning dizzily from both claustrophobia and altophobia at the same time. Eventually, the nauseous feeling became so strong that she was forced to stop screaming her lungs out. It was just too tiring and Scary Dragon Man didn't seem to be listening to her anyways.

Below them in the empty courtyard, there was an explosion of magic.

Pham Thi Anh Sang

Anh Sang squeaked in terror as energy from the explosion swept out at them. They were too high away for it to have felt anymore than strong breeze but after having what she had thought was a harmless spell already backfire on her, the young girl was understandably panicked. Before she could feel relieved that the wave of energy rippled along so mildly -she had done worst before, for sure. But Mommy and Daddy told her not to talk too much about that so she didn't- Scary Dragon Man suddenly jerked and let out a loud, raspy roar. It was hard to make out what he was saying but there was enough time for Anh Sang to think it was along the lines of something her daddy had told her never to say.

Maybe that rule doesn't apply to adults? The idea left her with a bitter feeling of profound betrayal. But the next second, all thoughts of evil, lying old people went completely from her mind as both dragon and girl began a downward spiral toward the earth.

Even though her mind would have really liked to have stopped thinking at point, it was just impossible to do so. The sky was above them and then it was below them and then it was awkwardly hovering on the side and the earth kept running closer to them. The motions cleared her previous dizziness out long enough for her to realize that the claws that held her had loosened for a split second. With a desperate gasp, she freed her arms before Scary Dragon Man tightened his grip. And then the dizziness was back with triple the force and nauseous overtook her.

Anh Sang promptly threw up all over herself. Only, since they were in free fall, it was much more accurate than probably anybody would have cared for. She whimpered for a moment, using her hands to wipe the vomit off of her face as the wind whipped around. At least she felt a slightly better. It was easier to think after that.

Embarrassment, embarrassment, fear, fear, fear, The ground is getting closer! fear, fear, fear, curiosity, Why isn't he doing anything? and then a realization.

This wasn't too different from back home when she would jump into their pool. It was just higher. And more unsettling. And there was a dragon. But she had definitely been in this situation before!

Okay, okay, okay. I know what to do! Layers, that was what she needed. Layers of soft white light stacked on top of each other. Probably hundreds. Thousands. Soft light wasn't that great for holding against actual weight so a few hundred layers of it should act kind of a like a cushion.

The butterflies had come up with them. Anh Sang could see them fluttering in and out of her vision. But that wasn't enough light. Not nearly enough. The only place she could get the amount she needed was from the sun itself and she wasn't too good at that. It might just explode again.

Not that she had much of a choice in this case. So mustering up all of her concentration, she began to form the layers rapidly, not really paying attention to things like structure or gaps. Or potential explosion hazards.

"Trắng! Trắng! Ngang qua!"

Pham Thi Anh Sang

As they bounced a little on the ground, Anh Sang let out a quiet squee of joy at seeing her magic actually work. Without blowing up in her face either, too! The impact was still kind of jarring, though, much more than it would have been had she tried what she had just did over water instead. With a quiet sound of concentration and annoyance, she squirmed out of Okay Maybe Not So Scary Dragon Man's claws. The girl stumbled a little on her first steps but recovered quickly enough to be disgusted.

Ew, that's so gross! She made a face at the state of her dress. Even though her mommy and daddy had told her that her clothes would get dirty eventually, Anh Sang had been trying really hard to be careful with that. I'm not sure I want this anymore, she thought, tugging at a clean part of the fabric. She didn't think that even washing machines could fix this but then, she had seen them get rid of worse, right?

Since Anh Sang was still kind of a shallow girl -children, what could anybody do?- she huffed and summoned up her butterflies. It wasn't that hard making a blanket of soft white light. That would have been making it solid enough to actually be opaque. She didn't have the patience to try that at the time, though, so she simply fused the light together into a cloudy, transparent sheet and let it drape over her like a cloak. The mess on her dress was still pretty visible but with the light over it, it would seem more like an unattractive choice of pattern instead of, well...

Pride partially recovered, the girl turned to the Dragon Man next. "Hey, Mister," she said a little timidly. He was on his back, appearing to be twitching. "Um, are you okay?" Anh Sang bit her lip lightly, trying to get her accent under control. It was fine on the simple words so she tried to keep it to that. "Uh, I'm really sorry about what just, um, happened. Um. Okay?" She guessed that twitching probably wasn't a good thing but she had no idea what to do with a dragon person. "Should I get help?"


The girl waited for a little while, but it seemed like the Dragon Man was still too dizzy to give her a straight answer. It was a little awkward just standing there like that, waiting for him to get himself together and Anh Sang really was starting to feel worse and worse about the situation. She shifted her feet anxiously before saying, "Uh, I'll just go and do that then!"

She scrambled out of the courtyard, feeling really red and itchy in the face. Oh, and her dress was starting to smell, too. Yuck!