Black Morning

Written for Writer's Cramp but was 5 minutes too late to submit!:) Oh well! There were four options and I chose the 4th one which had the character wake up with no sunrise...



“Hoo. Hoo.” Angela’s dreams were disturbed by the intrusion of the hooting of her owl.
“Uhh.” She waved a hand in what she thought was the general direction of where her owl was roosting, and felt a sharp nip on her ear.
“Ouch! You ornery old…” she burst out of bed ready holding her pillow in hand as she thought she might like to whack Armeth with it. She stopped in mid-swing as she realized she couldn’t see. What was Armeth thinking waking her before the sun came up? He’d never done that before. She laid her pillow on the bed, grabbed her lantern and walked to the fire. She shoveled the cold ashes off the top of the hot coals underneath and lit a light stick.
The lantern’s light was small in the gloom and Armeth swooped down from the rafters to land on her bedside table.
Angela rubbed her eyes and looked at the old owl. What had gotten into him to wake her before the sun rose? She yawned and stood up. Well, she was more awake than asleep now and so she decided to eat.
While Angela prepared a small meal of bacon and eggs, Armeth flitted above her head in the rafters. He never stayed long in one spot as if he were trying to get her to hurry up. All the movement agitated Angela.
“Would you knock it off?” she finally shouted at him.
He stopped to hoot at her in an annoying manner before flying down and landing in her still unfinished breakfast.
“Armeth! What has gotten into you, you crazy old thing!” Her meal looked decidedly less appetizing with talon prints all over it. She left it on the table and threw on her clothes. When Armeth saw her doing this he started flying back and forth between the door and the rafters.
“Aren’t you tired?” Angela sighed as she watched him fly to the door for the hundredth time. She finished lacing up her boots and grabbed the lantern. She opened the door and Armeth’s large brown wings flicked her in the face as he raced out before her.
Angela looked at the horizon. Even if Armeth had woken her early, she knew that the sun should have at least started coming up, but the horizon remained dark. Angela shivered. What was going on? Where was the sun? It gave her an uneasy feeling in her stomach that she didn’t like at all. Suddenly she didn’t want to be alone in this unnatural darkness.
“Armeth,” she said, and the name seemed to echo as if in a cave and its sound was magnified by the loneliness around her.
She heard the flap of wings and muttered, “Stay with me.”
Armeth complied by perching on her shoulder. She reached up a hand and smoothed the soft feathers of his head.
“Do you know what is going on?” she whispered to him. She’d done a circuit around her little shack and the only light that she could see was the feeble light of her lantern. There wasn’t even any starlight.
Armeth hooted softly and started spreading his wings but then relaxed again onto her shoulder. This whole affair was making her entirely uncomfortable. Every sound she made was magnified, making it sound to her as if twenty people were walking around with her, or talking to her. She felt anxious and her breakfast was now a sour heaviness in the pit of her stomach.
She’d walked out several yards from her home and decided she’d feel better if she were inside where it didn’t seem so black. She headed back toward the house and saw a couple of lights in the near distance. The lights were lantern lights, like her own. She waited by her door and when the lights got closer Armeth flew away.
“Greetings, Angela.”
She nodded and bowed slightly to her old master.
“Greetings,” the other man said.
Angela merely looked at him. “What are you doing here?”
“The darkness is not natural. The sun should be hours high in the sky and yet we have blackness.” Her master’s gravelly voice brought back memories of school; some were fond memories, and others resembled nightmares. Her humiliation at being expelled permanently being the foremost of her thoughts and the cause of it was standing beside her old master. She could barely contain her anger, a feeling that she had thought long ago buried.
“Do you think I have a solution?” she spat out angrily.
“No, we were wondering if you…,” Brett paused, watching her, “…knew anything.”
“Why don’t you just say what you mean, Brett? Why can’t you accuse me to my face like you did at school? Why the nice words and the coded message? Geez, you must think I’m stupid. I really have nothing to say.”
“Maybe you are stupid, seeing as you didn’t get very far in school.”
“You really are an ass. And just to get you off my property quicker, I know nothing about this.” Angela waved her hand around at the dark.
“I don’t believe you. It would be just like you to do something like this.”
“What are you talking about? Revenge?” Angela scoffed.
Brett smiled smugly and Angela’s hand twitched at her side as it was aching to smack the smug smile of his face.
“Leave.”
Brett inhaled sharply, probably to begin a new tirade on her treatment of one of the chose and the master, but the master raised his hand and Brett bit his lip quickly and stepped behind.
“Leave us. I wish to speak to her alone.”
Brett looked like he’d been punched in the face, but left quickly enough.
“I had hoped this situation was far behind us.” The master’s cold blue eyes watched her.
“I had thought the same thing, but seeing him brings back too much.”
The master nodded.
“I actually came for help.”
“What?” Angela asked in confusion.
“You were the only one who came to the school with knowledge of the old ways,” he began.
“Which was why I was expelled, permanently.” Angle stated bitterly.
He ignored her retort and continued, “The new ways aren’t able to help us find out who is doing this to us.”
“Are you asking me to do magic? And the old ways besides? If I were found out,” she looked pointedly in Brett’s direction, “I would be quartered alive.”
“I know.”
“No. You ask me to risk too much for people I have no love for. They all condemned me.”
“Then do it for yourself. Free yourself.”
Angela had no idea what he was talking about. He knew what her punishment was. Suddenly she was angry with him. He had no right to ask her to do this, to put her in a position of danger just for the sake of knowing who had brought an unrelenting darkness upon them. As she struggled through her emotions she came to an abrupt understanding; by helping even when she didn’t want to, she would free herself from her anger of the years before. The master had given her an opportunity to prove that the old ways weren’t wrong and to prove to the people that she was good.
She looked at him and smiled an ironic smile. “You always did know how to get me to do what I didn’t want to do.”
The master chuckled and Armeth flew in for a landing as she opened the door to her house.