A Secret Path

Show me an anti-hero. It can be a character sketch or a scene, but try to establish how and why this person is the obstacle to the protagonist’s goals.

Write a piece, fiction or non, in which your character suddenly finds themselves somewhere and have no clue how they got there.


I've tried to handle two prompts at once here. Let me know if I succeeded. More of the Elementals' story can be found here


       The kitchen was busy. And noisy. Beth was teaching Barry more games using his power of air. Her mother, Tam was watching and talking about how she should really go home for a while.

       Darren felt left out. He was only a little boy. A little human boy. He couldn’t move the air like his brother and mother. He couldn't make the earth work for him like his grandma. He was not special. Just human, like his daddy.

      But Daddy was a grown up. He got to leave and go to work. Darren was just a little boy, he was not special, he was nothing.

He sighed and left the kitchen. His feet slowly dragged him upstairs to his bedroom.  Once there, he picked through his toys and books, looking for something to do. Nothing interested him because he was nothing.

He was nothing, so he climbed to the back corner of his closet. With his arms wrapped around himself, in the dark he could be nothing and pretend he was nowhere.

>>>>>>>>>>>

                          

Tam was rambling on about trees she knew and flowers that she loved. Suddenly she stopped mid word.

“’Bet.” She tried to get her daughter’s attention, “Lyabet!” she called, using her daughter’s given name. “Did you just feel that?”

“Feel what, mother? Barry! You dropped the feathers. Pay attention to what are you doing.”

“They just falled, mommy! They just falled!”

“They don’t just fall, Barry." Exasperated, Beth finally answered her mother, "Feel what Mother?”

Tamryn Leafeyed, earth elemental, Lady of Treecairn, sat still and felt the earth beneath her. She’d lost touch with her element, for just a moment, she believed her young grandson had just had the same experience.

She sighed at her daughter’s distraction, “Never mind, ‘Bet. It was nothing.”

“Okay, Mother, whatever. Barry, good job! Your feathers are floating again, now you…” Beth, as she was called by her human husband, was focused again on her youngest son.

Tam quietly left the kitchen, troubling memories from her youth swirled just out of her grasp. Still, she followed her instincts up the stairs. Standing outside her other grandson’s bedroom, she called, “Darren, it’s Grandma. May I come in?” There was no answer. “Darren? Sweetie?”

         Reaching for the doorknob, she realized she was holding her breath  She exhaled and scolded herself for overreacting, with a twist of the knob, she threw the door open.

Tam stifled a cry of horror. On the other side of the door was…nothing.

Tam closed her eyes to the emptiness beyond Darren’s door. The light is off, nothing more she told herself, but when she opened her eyes, there still was nothing. Just black, empty space. She put her hand through the doorway and watched as it disappeared. She yanked it back quickly, then stared at her fingers, wiggling them to reassure herself.

“Darren?” she whispered, “Darren are you there? Answer me baby, are you okay?” Tam started to panic. Should she call her daughter,what could she do? 'Bet was too young to have any knowledge of this. This void.  Blackness.  And elementals had no power here, their elements no existence. She reached again toward the emptiness.

This time the blackness held her, sucked her into itself. Tam felt herself falling, she knew she was screaming, but her voice made no sound in the void.

Yet, she wasn't falling, she could almost feel ground beneath her feet, but there was no connection to it as with the earth. The blackness wasn’t  complete, she could make out a bleak landscape of various shades of black and gray. “Darren?” she whispered, her voice almost soundless to herself.

Close by, Tam heard a voice chanting, “Fall. Fall. Fall.” She could just see the outline of a small figure in front of her. She recognized the muted voice and gently touched the young boy in front of her, “Darren? Darren, please stop.”

Darren flinched at her touch and voice. “Grandma, what are you doing here? I just want to be alone!” he yelled. His focus shattered, his bedroom began to reappear around them, color and light quickly filling the shadowy void.

Tam threw her arms around the boy. “Oh Darren! You're okay, I was so afraid…”

“Afraid? Afraid of what, grandma? I was just playing, by myself.” Darren rocked side to side in his sneakers. Guilt warring with anger at being caught.