Force of Impact

"This..." I said. "This!"

The yellow light blinked like it had acknowledged my thoughts.

"This is the very same yellow tint I saw that night! This is not a curse, this is the warning for it!"

It was strange. The light was bright enough to be seen all the way from Yuvakaya, and it wasn't focused towards any particular direction; but yet, I could look at the shiny gemstone without even squinting. I turned the wand around in my hands, but the result was same. It would light up the area, but wouldn't harm my eyes from even the closest distance.

While I was curiously inspecting the mini lighthouse, Yuvakaya's lights flickered for a moment, then went off again. A couple of seconds later, I heard a faint voice which sounded like a scream.

"Oh no! Not again!" I shouted. I wanted to travel down to the village to see what's going on myself, but I knew that was a stupidly dangerous idea. Besides, I was told to wait here.

The ground shook around. My feet slipped, and I landed on my hips.

"I wonder what is going down deep inside." I said, slightly in pain after my fall. "...for wise and powerful Mr. Engin to give me his much capable wand and a task so important so he could get there by himself."

I got back up, and kept the wand upright. I stayed there for a bit longer, listening to the somewhat pleasing sound of the actually irritating cold wind.

"Okay, I am definitely going to get sick." I said as I sniffled. It was a bittersweet thought, this should have remained as the worst of my problems... for as long as realistically possible.

I felt like the universe was listening to me. The fast moving clouds overhead flew towards the horizon, allowing the moonlight to fall on Yuvakaya and it's surroundings. It was a full moon today, and the Moon was going to reach it's peak elevation on the sky at about midnight. It still had a few hours to happen, but I couldn't possibly complain.

I was getting tired of standing in the same position on my feet, so I sat down on the ground, supporting myself with the wand.

Even though I had a wand and village to take care of, soon enough, I started getting bored. I knew the importance of my task and the directions I was given, but I couldn't help getting bored a little bit. I began looking for pebbles around me to throw them down the slope.

I threw a small, round rock down. It made increasingly distant and decreasingly audible sounds as it repeatedly hit the ground on it's way down. After I could no longer hear it, I threw another one. And another. And another...

This went on for a while. The Moon was now a bit higher in the sky, but it still had a while to reach the top. I was running out of pebbles, so I started started hitting larger rocks on the ground, trying to break them down. After my attempts failed, I simply threw down those larger rocks in one piece. Some of them broke into pieces as they rolled down, some didn't even roll down.

As time went by, I was getting so bored I was about to throw the wand down the slope, then follow it myself the same way.

A barking came to my rescue, from the boredom rather than any danger. It was in the distance on my left side. Was it a dog? Was it... a wolf? I couldn't know. The yellow light was not helping.

I got up, and looked for a piece of rock.

"Yeah, I couldn't have really thrown all of them down, could I?" I said in mild frusturation and fear. Normally, a barking dog wouldn't make me panic, but when I was alone on top of a mountain at night, the situation was a bit different.

After some indecisiveness, I threw a rock in the general direction of the barking to scare the creature away. The barking stopped, but I heard movement.

"That was a bad choice, wasn't it?"

I lifted the wand to get closer to the enterance of the mountain enclosure. I could try rushing inside in case of a danger.

The barking started again, but this time it was much closer, coming from my right side. I looked there, and saw a dog. I couldn't identify it's breed, but it was a gray-black dog with a yellow collar - or at least it is how it appeared under yellow light. And so the dog saw me, ran away barking afterwards. "What is a dog even doing up here!?" I thought. "Is it lost?"

"Hey! Hey! Kara! This way!" I heard a man somewhere down on the slope. The running dog belonged to him!

"Why? No!" I said. I had to hide. I couldn't risk being found by someone else like this. I ran back to the large stone that acted as the door to the mountain enclosure.

"Open, please open, I beg you!"

I tried rolling the stone sideways, but like I expected, I wasn't very successful. I didn't spend much time there and started looking for another way to run.

At that time, the yellow-shining gemstone had dimmed.

"Hello!" A man from below shouted. "Hello? Who is there?"

I didn't reply, but they certainly knew I was still up around here.

"Is there anyone up there? There is nothing to be worried about, I just want to talk."

Someone had probably got courage from the full moon and attempted to see the man behind that mysterious yellow light by himself. Little did they know, it was still much of a mystery for me too.

I got a rock from the ground silently, and threw it somewhere away to create a misleading sound. This way, I could probably get them to follow that sound instead of me.

I was wrong. The dog had silently followed me, and there was only a few meters between us. The owner most likely couldn't catch up with his dog yet.

"Don't you dare bark!" I whispered, gritting my teeth. That would certainly give away my position.

The dog barked.

I swung the heavy wand in the dog's direction before I started running, to scare it away.

The dog took a step back, but my handling was even worse than that dog's perception of size, speed and distance. The heavy wand unexpectedly hit the dog by the side of it's head and body, sending it flying sideways, making painful sounds.

I felt the pain in my heart as the force of the impact reached my arms.