A Beast Has Come

• Jennifer Lam, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2014

The weather was a beast which swept down to mock them.
Lightning flashed across the sky and clapped alongside the low rumble of vicious thunder. Like the breath of a beast just woken from its long slumber, gales roared down the valleys and through the town. It whipped and lashed against heavy brick walls, rattled on doors and caused houses to tremble with fear. Hail fell with the force of bullets, shattering glass and pounding on ceilings, trying to force its way through to the families which hid behind the safety of their homes. It collided with the ground, with walls and roofs, with loud clacks, chipping into pieces as it barged into its victims with full force and falling apart when it failed to break through.
The castle walls did not fall under any mercy but they still continued to stand tall and strong, like the countless times before when they fought off riots and wars. It was filled with battle scars from years ago, where bricks were chipped like the edges of a blunt sword, where concrete which held the walls were filled with cracks like deep crevices in glaciers that could be traced with a finger all around the castle.
The prince stood in his room, arms crossed over his chest, trapping rain and melted pelts of ice in the crevices of his own body. His wavy black hair clung to his face, fell before his pale blue eyes which glared at the girl's small back. His thick garments grew heavier and heavier by the second, the green cloth of his shirt deepened in colour as it absorbed the rain, and merely standing there, trying not to fall over from the force from the gushes of wind, tired both his mind and body.
He glared. His pale blue eyes narrowed at her and his dark eyebrows furrowed but the receiver only smiled to her heart’s content, basking in the roars of the storm and the lashes of its claws. Her long hair shone silver underneath the dark sky, each strand flying in each and every direction, being whipped along with the howling wind. She spread her arms out, embracing the beast which came down from the vast, blackened sky, which soared through the twists and turns of the mountains and valleys to wreak chaos upon the kingdom. Hail pelted against her skin. It bruised and bled and drips of warm blood immediately turned cold as it mixed with puddles of fallen rain and melted hail that pooled up the marble floor.
She looked like she was soaring. Her feet were planted firmly on the slippery ground but her body was being forced back by the fearful gales, and yet, she looked like she was soaring. A smile twisted up her lips, believing that the sky was hers and the beast which swept across the kingdom was under her command. And perhaps it was. He was reminded of the time she came knocking on the castle doors, announced by the blindingly white snowstorm which drowned the kingdom just a year ago. And as the sky calmed and the ground settled under the thick snow, the low toll of the death bells rang throughout the kingdom and the towering doors of his father's bedroom were sealed tight.
The prince's grip on his sleeves tightened as he awaited for another anouncement when the storm would finally calmed.