Page 6 of Dryad, Try Again
I wish I lived near more monsters my age.
I walk by another tree when a noise pulls me out of my thoughts. A kid about my height pops out of nowhere, grinning at me. He’s wearing a green t-shirt and blue pants, and his hair is so orange that he almost looks like a carrot.
“Yo, cool!” he says.
Before I can respond, he picks up something from the ground. He’s wielding a large, thick branch, about three feet in length. “A sword!”
I look left and right, then realize I’m the only one he can be talking to. “That’s a branch,” I mutter.
“Not if you use your imagination.” He points it at me and bounces his eyebrows. “En garde!”
I snicker. “What?”
“We can play dueling monsters. Oh, my teacher said it’s not okay to say that, since monsters are real. We can be…dueling knights!” The red-headed kid waves his branch, and I can’t help but giggle.
Something about him makes me feel fuzzy all over, like when I watch videos of puppies doing tricks.
I push down my excitement?no one wants to be friends with me. “Don’t you want to play with the others?” I nod behind me where some kids are throwing a flying disc around. A few parents are chatting on the park benches, paying us no mind.
“No,” the boy says. He drops his arms and a sadness washes over him. “They’re losers. Because they say I’m a loser. Just because I can’t afford nice sneakers and video games and stuff.”
A dark feeling crawls up my throat. Maybe I should spook them in my shifter form to teach them not to mess with others.
The kid stands up straight again and beams at me. “So, you and I can play!”
“You…want to?”
“Yeah!” He holds up his branch. “We can duel as knights until one of us loses our sword. Now, where to find you a worthy sword…” He turns around and stares at the grass.
There isn’t a single branch in sight. So, just this once, I use my powers in public. Gazing up at the tree, I shift only my hand. My dryad powers compel it to let go of a dead branch. It won’t hurt?it’s like getting a haircut. After I look around to make sure no one’s watching me, I hold out my wooden hand and direct the nearest tree to drop a piece of wood.
“Like this?” I ask.
The kid turns around and smiles again. “Wow! Where’d you find that?”
I wave my branch around. It’s longer than his, but clearly came from the same species of tree. “Uh…the ground?”
“Alright!” His smile burns bright, like Christmas lights in the darkness. “Now where were we? Oh yes, en garde!”
He slowly moves his stick around, and I match him in speed. He gently presses, then rotates back for another one. “Touché!” he says with a dramatic growl.
I giggle and move just like him. We spend several minutes in a groove of pretending we’re in a movie about sword fighters. We dance around each other, like our fights are happening in slow motion. We hop around and find a standing metal pole near the jungle gym, and we decide to make believe it’s an alien dragon. He even adds sound effects.
“Bam! Pow!”
“Whoosh!” I add.
We’re both giggling by now. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“I’m Kovi.”
“I’m Tan. Boom! Pow!” He maneuvers his sword in slow motion against the metal, and I chuckle. “How come I don’t see you at school?”
“I’m homeschooled. I live not far from here. Pow!” When I turn away, I notice how low the sun is. I bite my lip and glance at him. “Oh no, I gotta go. It’s almost time for dinner.”
“Same for me. I gotta run. See you tomorrow, Cody,” he says. He gives me a salute and runs off, waving his stick the entire way.
“Yeah, sure. And it’s, um…Kovi,” I mutter. I doubt he even heard that.But how can I care? My cheeks burn and I’m smiling so hard as I walk home.
