Fiction Friday: Chapter 2

Sienna heard what Savannah had said and immediately starting running toward the garage. Her long blonde braid whipped back and forth. Shelby, who was getting ready to tell Savannah she couldn't tell her what to do, Saw this as a problem. She ran to get ahead of Sienna. They bolted across the long grass. They half tripped over the chair where Sierra had been sitting and then smashed right into her back.

"Back up!" she shouted at them. She was annoyed.

Neither were listening to her. They pushed on the door and tried to get around her. Sienna knocked her book out of her hand, putting a little scratch in the owl on the cover. They shouldn't have done that. With a quick motion she yanked the door closed again and pushed both back away from her.

"Momma said to play. Go play.". Her teeth were clinched like she was going to hit one of them.

"We need the shovel, Sissybug," Sienna explained.

"It is a spade, actually," Shelby said putting her hand on her hip.

Sierra was unmoved by the pleas of her sisters. At least they weren't pushing on her anymore.

"We found something," Shelby said, "and we need the spade to dig it up."

"Fine," Sierra said moving out of the way. She was curious, but wasn't going to be drawn into some stupid club.

The spade did a much better job than their fingers. The soil around the apple tree was thick brown dirt with lots of roots. Savannah had watched enough Discovery channel to know you dug around an object, but never into it. You used brushes and things for that. All four of the worked. Had the parents looked out the window they would have seen the curly blond hair of Savannah working beside the darker long hair of Sierra. It didn't happen often, but for the moment they had the same interest.

About a foot down they could see what it was, a giant, fancy feather. A peacock feather. The point was somewhere deeper in the earth, but they didn't dare pull it into get it free. The blue and green plume stood upright in the hole before them. It seemed like the oddest thing any of them had seen. Sienna thought the bird must be around somewhere. Shelby didn't know how the feather got there, but was sure Sienna was wrong. The older two just kept working. They knew this was something special.

Then all at once, the feather was free.

From tip to tail the feather was two feet long. The feathery part seemed to resist dirt, it looked clean. In fact, it almost looked shiny. The blues looked like pieces of sky and the green made you think of the deep forest. The rib that ran down the center of the feather was think and seemed to have a pattern of black and gold. It was the tip that was most unusual. It had been modified to end what looked like an old style, gold pen. The kind with a split in the middle.

the girls just stared. It was amazing. How did it come to their yard? How old was it? What should they do with it? For a long time they guessed at the answers, speculating on what this thing meant. None of then could have imagined the truth.