Dark Matter

• Terence Giannarakis, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2010

Amyntas and her shadow cloud crawled through the corridors.
Her blondish hair and light blue eyes was the only available source of light. She moved on, memorizing exactly where the entrance to her classroom was. She needed to get to her classroom and find those letters hidden under her desk, for she knew others would enter this galactic-al race. Protruding her sides were walls covered in paintings of passed leaders of the school. As she ascended to her classroom, the corridors closed in on her and the paintings casted vehement, and contemptuous looks. Her shadow cloud.... Aymos crept out of her coat and took the form of a white dove, after repeating these two words several times ”I'm frightened”

‘Me to Aymos, me to” replied amyntas and the fact was that she was indeed frightened because the only substance that surrounded her was darkness. It was 9:00 p.m. and she knew the corridors would be filled with darkness, but she also knew that her incompetent teachers wouldn’t be around.
She eventually strayed of and found her classroom, which luckily had a light opened. As Aymos took the shape as a white muse and descended down amyntas’s fur coat she implied” amyntas please don’t go in that classroom, look the lights are opened, someone must of come in” “We have to go in, and find those letters”
“ please,don’t I'm scared”
As amyntas and Aymos entered the classroom they found that the light wasn’t switched on. Darkness still filled the room as it filled the corridors, but as she scanned the room a encompassed her chair.

Her classroom was filled with corrugated windows interspersed with paintings of mythological monsters. At the front of the room lay the teachers desk, painted in a light white and glistening color. Opposite the desk located several dozens of neatly lined smaller desks, making out three horizontal lines of desks.
Amyntas darted to her desk, desperately needing those letters. She clumsily searched through her battered sullen desk, and a few minutes later hit success. The letters were held in a yellow bag, which she didn’t dare to touch because they belonged to her father, who was now thought to be dead. But she assumed they were important because other people attempted to steal it.
As Amyntas grabbed the bag she sauntered towards the door, but stopped and listened. “thunk thunk” these strident sounds were ascending, and indeed someone was in the school. “thunk thunk thunk’ again they became louder until the sound was almost unbearable..suddenly the light that encompassed her chair went out...”thunk”

Aymos was crept up in amyntas’ s fur coat, clinging with her tiny claws.
Amyntas, quickly crawled under the teachers desk, perspiration dripping down her face. No one said anything, and why would they, for they were paralysed with fright. Finally the door swept open and two awfully tall people a man, and a women both in black suits stepped in, beside them stood there shadow clouds which both had taken the form of a wolf, coated with the same black and white stripes, and golden yellow eyes. Amyntas didn’t recognise anyone as a teacher, but the women she thought had a familiar face, for example a long lost friend.
The man and women tramped to the students desk moving two out of the first line and then both sitting down.

Amyntas was panting and sweating, like an athlete after an olympic 200 metre sprint. Her fur coat helped the sweat proceed it’s process, because of it’s thick and furry insides making the heat almost unbearable. The fur coat protected her from the rain and hailing from the climate outside but now she felt like the heat was attracted to her.

‘Dark matter” .....as this word was said Amyntas and Aymos were fully concentrated into what the man and women were talking about.
“ dark matter, what is it” questioned the man sitting on the left of the two.
“ dark matter is the shadow’s swarming throughout the night sky. It is gradually dissolving our earth and a substance which can only be stopped by......... and that is the question it would be a world phenomena, a phantasmagoria to find out how to destroy this substance. It gradually dissolves our earth......it literally ripped out a piece of our ozone layer. It can also feed on the bonds between you and your shadow cloud eventually parting you from it, which will feel like half your heart has gone missing.
Among all this treachery the girl Amyntas Belaqure is prophesied to...........
what....who’s there
“Amyntas” aymos said in a vehement Attitude ”RUN” Amyntas thronged to the outside door of her classroom, while Aymos had taken the shape of an eagle and guiding her in total darkness.
Right behind them were the two wolf shaped shadow clouds, now gradually advancing on them.
The apprehension rose and the two were nearly paralysed with fear. “Left, through the next corridor” and directions were just getting screamed from the determined eagle.
Amyntas was clinging onto the yellow bag, for it was the only hope for our world..... for it was the only hope of retrieving her long lost father......

Amyntas was a keen, determined and brave little girl. She is aged 10 years old, and at the age of three she had lost her father, who was lost in an expedition to the south. Soon after, her mother(athina) left her because of the misfortunes to her father.
So from the age of 3 Amyntas and Aymos were raised in an adoption centre which personally, she though, was grim, sullen and frightening.

“Aymos Aymos” the fearful girl screamed, wiping the sweat of her forehead.
Aymos was still only a few feet above Amyntas, but because of the darkness and pandemonium that was created, the sound particles couldn’t quite travel to Amyntas’s ear.
“the door, it's there, Aymos charge” and as Amyntas had said, the door was just a few meters in front of them. Lines carved through the thick black door. Still clutching the bag, Amyntas leaped outside dying to feel the fresh brittle one more time.

She fell onto the crisp clean grass, feeling that nice moist texture throughout her ace. Aymos was still gliding above her, opening her wings for the gratifying streaming past her.
Amyntas finally got to her feet desperately wanting to close her eyes and just die.
But she new this couldn’t happened. As she turned around Aymos took the form of a snow leopard and contemptuously stared at the two shadow clouds standing affront them.
It just struck Amyntas’s mind that the man and women weren’t with their shadow clouds.
Amyntas to the right, Aymos to the left, briefly touching the tip of the fur coat. Each opponent directly in front of them. Aymos was slightly bigger and bulkier than the two, and Amyntas...well....Amyntas couldn’t really attend the fight because she merely made a difference, and Aymos knew this two. After a brief stare fight of casting furious and enraged looks, the three shadow clouds leaped.

Fists out and legs spread behind them they leaped. The two wolfs raised their fists ready to grab, but just as the slightest touch from the wolves paws hit the snow leopard, he ducked, sup-rising the the two wolves who glided throughout the sky and eventually slid throughout the grass, creating a mass of dirt.
To Amyntas it was a fascinating sight, due to the fact of the saffron moonlight reflecting the three shadow clouds onto the... now rough and muddy grass.
As Aymos got to his feet he leaped again, only higher, and while progressing through the air, changing his form again and again instantaneously. First a lion,, mouse, eagle, monkey and suddenly changed back to his snow leopard form, and while doing so he thrust his cat like paws, into one of the two identical wolves.

Amyntas was watching vigorously at the three shadow clouds. Finally the man and women who were chasing Amyntas sauntered outside onto the grass, about 10 feet opposite her.
As Aymos forced his paws into one of the wolves, the wolf suddenly vanished, and almost instantaneously the man in the black suit, standing on the left of the women, vanished as well. Not one speck of blood was spilled. Their particles just vanished.

Aymos and the wolf were circling each other, mud covered there bodies, scars were carved into them....but no blood.
The two shadow clouds on the battlefield had stopped circling each other, still a wolf and a snow leopard, both standing a few feet from their humans.
Aymos made the first move..... he bolted into the air, feeling the lushes air, and ready for another kill.
As he lunged at the wolf, he was a second late. For the wolf, eyes glistening in the night and camouflaged by the darkness, had thrust his paws into the left leg of Aymos.
As this happened, he fell, he fell like it was the last fall that would come. Death was rising. He could feel it. He could feel it taking over his body, and Amyntas was feeling the exact same pain. Tears rushing down her face, imitating a waterfall. They were both on the ground in detriment pain, waiting for their particles to vanish, just as the man and other wolf had. Waiting their, in pain..........for death to arrive.

Sobbing, the menacing pain encompassing their body. As they lay on the grass, blood rushed from their body. Scars were inclined, but.............their particles didn’t vanish. They were still alive.
Amyntas was still on the grass crying ,but Aymos had overcome this pain and stood up, startling the enemy. Aymos, was again the first one to move.
He started charging to the thick yet crisp smooth grass, still in his snow leopard form.
As he charged, the enemy raised his thick black paws ready to thrust as he had done before.

Amyntas whimpered. She was a brave, and audacious little girl, and the only ever time she cried in her life was when her father left.
She now lay on the floor, glimpsing at the sight of her beautiful Aymos.
For as the pain spread throughout her body.....she felt weak.
She felt inanimate.
She felt dead.

Aymos seethed through the ankle top grass, tearing the overlooking darkness to pieces.
Just as the snow leopard became 2 feet affront the wolf, he leaped. Taking the form of a white dove, leaving trails of shimmering light, fighting away the darkness.
Aymos darted directly into the night sky at a speed well over 100 mph.
Amyntas was startled but also fascinated by this amazing event. As Aymos was directly over the startled wolf, reaching the height of the closest' clouds........he fell.
He didn’t fly, he didn’t glide....he just fell.
Diving towards his quarry.

The lushes belligerent winds surrounding the dense sturdy beak of the white dove, Aymos.
The wolf below him did nothing then stare up in the night sky, locating his enemy.
Aymos gradually descended faster and faster towards the terrain, still directly above the wolf.

The wolf had seen him now. Staring up in disbelief for he had finally spotted the white dove.
His human hadn’t moved since she walked out of the school. She still had that same disturbing smile.
Amyntas had just noticed how beautiful the lady opposite her was. for in the school the darkness shaded most of her face.
She had light blue eyes, just like hers. Her hair was coffee colored, and the black suit was actually a long corrugated dress containing multicolored silk patches, and transparent pictures of 3 petaled flowers.
Her hair oscillated as the wind past, creating a landscape of delightfulness.

Aymos stared at the the wolf below him, slowly plummeting towards it.
As he was became a few hundred feet from the wolf he changed back to his snow leopard form and propelled his claws into the flesh of his enemy.
Just like that the beautiful women and her shadow cloud disappeared.

The sun was rising, shining through the shadows of dark matter.
Aymos was injured. He lay on the grass still in his snow leopard form. Amyntas was still startled that the beautiful women had disappeared, but she eventually walked up to Aymos.
She teared a 10 centimeter cloth patch from her dirt colored fur coat.
She then wrapped the cloth around one of her shadow clouds wounds, and repeated the process, until most of his severe wounds were covered.
After this was completed Aymos relaxed himself....which was a sign to Amyntas that the bandages helped.
Amyntas , then lay on the floor near her sweet Aymos, and started to cry.

Amyntas was still holding the yellow bag.
“Aymos, Aymos”she said as he nudged him over to get his attention.”Aymos..do you think we should open the bag, and read the letters?....Aymos wake up.”
“Yeh...what” Aymos said in a groggy tone”
“I’m gonna open the bag and see what’s in it”
Aymos didn’t say a word after she said that, for he was already asleep.
Amyntas opened the yellow bag,(which was zipped)and took out the letters, which were written on cow skin with black ink. There weren’t many, as she presumed.
She kissed the papers, because the very writing made on these cards, were written by the man she most wanted to find.
She eventually started to read.

ALASKA
April 18th 2001

My darling-We have just set our voyage, and are heading north Alaska. I am traveling with my dimwitted collegue, adam.
He brought no damn supplies or any equipment to help look for the anomaly(dark matter).
We are traveling, as you should already know to look for the mysterious anomaly.
I am craving to see you and our beautiful daughter, but if this voyage succeeds it will be a world phenomena.

..............John..............

Northwards
June 18th 2002

My darling-For what did i call my collegue adam, a dimwit.
I was terribly wrong, for i have just found out that he is looking for the anomaly himself.
We have nearly found the piece to this world phenomena.
The anomaly i this case dark matter...is what keeps us seperated from different planets, galaxies.... But it is what keeps us close together.
Dark matter is what allows us to travel to different worlds.... but it also will eventually dissolve different worlds.
My sweet beautiful maria..... i have nearly succeeded in my voyage.. and i will soon be back at home cuddled up with you and sweet amyntas.
The last thing i will do... is construct a spyglass which will allow my collegue and i to see dark matter itself, therefore we will be able to travel to different worlds.
Bye Bye my sweet maria for this will be the last letter you will get until i am back at home.
Love ...........John...........

As Amyntas had finished reading these letters she placed them carefully back into the bag. She would set out on the same voyage as her father had. She would complete what her father had started and hopfully find him. She would travel to different worlds...this would be a world phenomena.


She knew who the beautiful women was who was murdered by her and her shadow cloud.The women with the silky dress, light blue eyes and coffee colored hair.

It was her mother.....she was responsible for her mothers death.
Her mother had no clue who she was..... due to the fact of her running when Amyntas was aged three.
But Amyntas knew the moment she finished reading the letters.
She was a murderer,
she had killed her own MOTHER!!!!!!!!