How to lose a game of hide-and-seek

Crawling through a space between a dead tree and the forest underbrush, Atten settled into his hiding place. He made himself become one with the dirt and dead leaves, rolling over onto his back and spreading detritus over his arms for extra camouflage. Atten forced himself to stillness, mentally washing away the urge to adjust himself. It wasn’t long before he felt tiny, prickling steps up his arms and legs, insects returning to their various tasks. They didn’t care about his presence, they didn’t view him as a threat, and that was a good sign that nothing else would either. He was a ghost in the forest, a veritable specter.

Not that Atten had ever seen a ghost. And based on what he’d heard about them, he wasn’t really hiding like one. This style was more frog-like than anything. But frogs were good hiders, even he had trouble spotting them.

And if he had trouble spotting frogs, then their style was his best bet. After all, he was hiding from Pell’s eyes. Eyes that could detect a rabbit’s sprint from a thousand meters away. He would know, they were his eyes too, though he didn’t enjoy the taste of rabbit as much as she did. Not that she’d ever admit that.

But Atten did know for certain that his sister had never eaten a frog. There was a good chance she’d never even seen a frog outside of one of her books. So in order for Atten to win, he would become a frog for thirty minutes. Then the Hide-and-Seek crown would be his.

An outside observer might not understand the weight of this award. Not without having a sister who had lorded it over them for five years. Five years of arguments that had been settled by “yeah but I won last time.” Five years of watching that crown, built from Illusive magicks by their mother, float onto Pell’s stupid head after her victories. Five years of pity from his parents, who couldn’t just admit that the only reason his sister won every time was because she was born with more advantages than him.

And oh, did she have advantages. Wings, magick, scales, being the size of a small elephant; the list was as vast as the number of doors she couldn’t fit through. A similarly sized list could hold the number of Atten’s disadvantages. For one, he only had two arms and two legs. For another three, magickal schools hated him, he didn’t have wings, a tail, or fire-resistant scales. Atten was born just as boring and human-esque as his dad, but with none of the skills.

This might not have stung so badly if Pell was the older sibling, unfortunately for his ego it was Atten who held that title. Even if he’d hatched only a few seconds before her.

But in spite of all of that, Atten had finally caught a break. In their previous game, he’d hidden near the druid-woods, taking advantage of her reluctance to cause trouble for their neighbors. This led to his first win in over a year, which came with an epiphany; Pell didn’t know these woods as well as he did. She only knew them from the skies.

From there, he’d begun to use his personal knowledge of their neck of the forest to his advantage, hiding on trees, in trees, under trees, under rocks, but mostly trees. He’d considered asking the druids for hiding-advice, but hadn’t in the name of fairness. Even if his sister refused to play fair, he would, and he’d win. The thought of this would normally make Atten smile, but there was a weevil crawling over his mouth so he elected to smile with his heart. He could smile for real when he won this tiebreaker and the hide-and-seek crown was transferred to his head. All he had to do was stick to his plan, and stay still for thirty minutes.

The hard part of that task wasn’t the staying-still bit, it was finding something to occupy his mind with while staying alert. Not that there’s much to occupy. Pell would’ve said something like that, if she could read minds. Or more like when she would learn to read minds, as her repertoire of magicks expanded year after year. While Atten’s remained at a big fat zero.

Even Dad can use magick. It was such a scam. Pell had clearly stolen the better genes. But wallowing in self-pity wasn’t the best thing to keep his mind occupied. Atten knew this, and turned his head to the side, evaluating his hiding spot. Was he far enough from the treeline? Were the clothes he’d chosen dark enough to blend in with the ground? What was that twinkle in the clouds?

That last question made his stomach drop for a moment, before the cloud passed and revealed that it had been hiding the sun. While it was a little embarrassing to panic over weather, he had good reason. Pell was absurdly fast and could cover the distance from that cloud to his tree in a fraction of a breath. Relatively speaking.

In that moment he’d have to escape and sprint deeper into the woods. There, her wings would be more of a hindrance, and she’d either have to decide to follow him on foot or return to the sky. No matter which she chose, he’d be long gone by then, heading to the druid-line to run out the rest of the clock.

Looking out at the sky, Atten watched as a new formation of low-hanging clouds rolled across the great wide blue. They were bulbous and fat, their bottoms all flattened as if they were sitting on a plane of glass. Mom had tried to explain how that worked, but he’d never picked it up. Something about layers and air… It looked cool, that was enough for him.

From the bottom of one of these clouds, a blue shot ripped through the cotton-white tapestry, leaving a trail behind in its wake. The atrophy of stillness fell away, and Atten kept his breathing as even as possible. Panic might have stirred in his chest once, energy that he would use to bolt away from his cover, but for now he held on to that precious energy. Just because he’d seen her didn’t mean that she’d seen him. Maybe she’d spotted a juicy rabbit to munch on.

His eyes tracked her movement, a searing descent from the clouds. And then… she smashed into the treetops and was gone. Atten’s stomach dropped, panic radiating across his body. Did she just crash?

Instinct compelled him to move, but experience made him pause. Pell would lie about a twisted ankle to win a game of tag, she was a sister utterly lacking in honor when it came to victory. Especially when that victory concerned her older brother. Of course, a crash like that was hard to fake, but he wouldn’t put it past her…

As the stillness continued, Atten’s concern grew. On one hand, Pell would do anything to win, on the other, she was overconfident. She might have been trying to trick him, but maybe she didn’t pull up fast enough and hit the tree line. The less he saw, the tighter his gut became. Then, a flutter of snaps resounded from somewhere behind him, as if something heavy was quickly being dragged through a pile of sticks. Turning his head in the direction of the sound, the image changed from cloudy sky to moldy log to smug dragon.

She was coming in blisteringly fast and low over the treetops, her knuckles snapping the twigs at the top of the trees. The tree line fell away into a clearing, and she dropped with it, keeping herself just above the grass. Pell had pulled her wings in tight, using only minimal movements to adjust her course as momentum carried the blue dragon straight towards him. No time to think about how she’d seen him or what had even just happened. As she drew closer, Atten had about a fourth of a second to see the world’s most annoying smirk. Yeah, it was time to move.

Atten shoved the dead tree, launching it almost completely vertical. The force of his push had pressed him into the dirt, which he shook off as he rolled from his back to his hands and knees, taking off at a sprint. The dead tree hung in place for a moment, as tall as it had been in life.

Pell saw what he was doing, but she was traveling too fast to stop now. Atten found his footing and kicked off, sprinting in his chosen direction into the woods. The ex-hiding-tree couldn’t maintain its brief resurrection, falling back to the ground in almost the exact same path he’d pushed it. A path that directly intersected with his sister’s trajectory. As the scene grew distant, Atten heard a faint and satisfyingly frustrated curse as his tree struck the azure dragon.

That’s for making me worry.

Trees whipped by as Atten bolted through the underbrush, his ears popping as he picked up speed. His eyes hunted for solid pieces of ground for his boots to launch from, the sprint turning into more of an angled hop from rock to root to log. The softer ground would slow him down.

Atten didn’t dare look back or stop yet, every step away from Pell was a step worth taking. If he couldn’t lose his sister he’d try to lead her to the druid-line, which would protect him from being flanked again. Now that he had a moment to think, Atten wondered how she’d even flanked him in the first place. Especially if Pell’s fake crash had been an attempt to draw him out, then she must have already known where he was. But how had she crashed in one place, only to end up in another?

Interrupting his thoughts, a red wisp floated over his shoulder. It hung lightly in the air, twisting and curling against the breeze, but somehow keeping pace with him. Atten found himself slowing, staring at the strange light as it twirled past him. It was followed by a swarm of similar sparks, each one twisting and curling as they rode invisible currents up into the canopy. The adrenaline began to wear off, and Atten’s thoughts became more organized. In the back of the young half-dragon’s mind, a question began to form; what is that? Looking back to where they came from was all he needed for an answer.

Fire raged, the tongues of flames lashing out against the trees and twisting up through the branches. Sparks slithered out from the flames, the hot summer breeze carrying them up into the canopy. It was too far off for him to feel the heat or smell the smoke, but the brightness of the light was more than enough to make him take off at a new, slightly more desperate sprint.

Another downside to being him; he hadn’t inherited his mom’s fire resistance. Scales would have been great but no, he had to be born with soft, burnable skin. Once again, Atten found himself resenting the ticket he’d pulled at the genetic lottery.

Where had the fire even come from? Where was Pell? Oh sure, she could take getting clobbered by a tree. He’d hit her with plenty of them. And she was certainly fire resistant, but resistance wasn’t the same thing as invulnerability.

Wait…

A rancid thought wriggled into his brain. Of course, it was ridiculous, but once the thought had found a foothold in Atten’s head it was hard to see it from any other angle. She’d do anything to win. But there was no way she could have done this. Right?

Unfortunately, Atten knew that she could. Pell was loved by magick, one of the first she’d learned was the school of Ignitions. Normally she could control herself, and rarely used any spells she didn’t intend to use… unless someone hit her with a tree. Which would make the tree-thrower directly at fault for whatever happened next.

Atten shook those thoughts out of his head. At the moment, it didn’t matter. If Pell was still in the forest, she was in danger now. The fire was acting as a living thing, chasing Atten and corralling him towards the forest’s edge. That would work in his favor, if he could escape he might be able to regroup, maybe even call for help. Leaping over a cluster of bushes, Atten focused on moving, sprinting over and through the cover, the mid-afternoon sunlight growing brighter as the canopy fell away.

Sprinting out into the clearing, Atten turned back to scan the forest, eyes already hunting for his sister. The fire roiled and twisted, his eyes latching onto every detail of its movement, but unable to find anything that was tangible. As he looked into the flames, something odd caught his eye. Or rather, something normal, which was entirely odd.

A spruce tree, engulfed entirely in flames, red lashes of fire dancing on its green leaves. Its entirely too-green leaves. In fact, the tree looked remarkably healthy, if you got past the whole “being on fire” bit. Almost as if it wasn’t on fire at all.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be-” Atten found the words wrenched away from him as something unpleasantly familiar wrapped itself around his shoulder. The ground fell away, and Atten gritted his teeth, struggling against the feeling of his body being lifted and his stomach being left behind, but he wasn’t stupid enough to actually struggle.

“Brother, brother,” his sister chided, “you shouldn’t just run out like that. Make this at least a little challenging.”

It was her tone that brought everything together, even if it painted an absurd image. “But you aren’t supposed to know Illusives!”

“Oh? And when did that happen?” Her question was so purely innocent that anyone who didn’t know better would’ve believed it. But considering that Atten had overheard their argument, he’d considered it to be a moot point.

“Mom’s gonna kill you,” claimed Atten, attempting to cushion the sting of his loss with a deference to power. In truth, he was seething at himself that he hadn’t caught it earlier. There was no actual heat from the fire, there hadn’t even been smoke, of course it was an illusive. And the dragon he’d seen crashing into the trees had obviously been another.

“Not without evidence.” Her empty hand stretched out, clawed fingers twisting in the air. A subtle pulse shuddered across Atten, his molars itched as magick rippled out from the dragon. The fire shimmered, first in a small ripple. The image began to peel away from the forest in a sheet, a mold of twisting flames that had fit around shapes of the extremely unburnt trees.

Atten groaned, recognizing the effect. He’d seen it so many times when dad needed a visual to go along with one of his stories, or when mom was presenting some magickal theory to Pell. Like a thin layer of paper was being pulled away from his eyes. It always gave him a headache.

Gods, he wanted to punch her.

“You taught yourself,” Atten said, miserable. Once again, a sick knot tightened in his gut as he was reminded of how horribly inferior to his sister he was. Below them, the fake flames still burned, getting uncomfortably close to the druid’s neck of the woods. It was extremely convincing, and given how protective druids are of their woods, it would be stupid to let it keep on going. “Alright Pell, you win. Get rid of the rest.”

“I did,” Pell said, and this time he actually punched her. “Hey!”

The fire was crawling closer to the druid treeline, sparks whirling up through the smoke. “Pell, seriously, get rid of it,” Atten said, panic seeping into his chest.

“I said I did!” Her smug cheer had vanished, and she twisted her free hand again. Another magickal pulse shot out from Pell, but the fire did not vanish. If anything, it began to burn brighter.

The tips of the druid-line leaves began to smolder. As they banked over the trees, the young half-dragon could make out figures sprinting through the smoke. The druid’s land was actually burning.

Mom was going to kill her.