Fan Fiction ❯ Owen's Angel ❯ The Photo ( Prologue )

Owen's Angel

By Nix Winter

All rights reserved

Copyright 2003

It had started in some little country some where so far from the modern world that science didn't really apply and the people living there were all the kind that decent people tried to avoid so they didn't have to give money into the 'Will Work for Food' boxes. It had started with the explosion of a bomb that could have flattened the biggest mall in the modern world. The modern media had not at all known how to cover the story. The tabloids had a field day, and the press representatives of all the official countries involved denied the entire thing. It was right there in the photos on the front of the tabloids though.

A very flattened neighborhood, warehouses and a dock laid out over what the tabloid said was nearly five miles. It was five miles covered with a bio-toxin that lowered the population of that country and made epidemic look like a welcome level of catastrophe as it wafted from one contact to another. There in the photo, that's where the world first saw her. A single pregnant woman, tall, slender skin slightly bluish, even with only the full moon to light the photo. Her clothes, sheer and not a single straight edge, flicked on the breeze, around her swollen belly, not touching the ground. That was only right though, as her feet weren't touching the debris under her either. People didn't notice that right away though. There was the matter of her ears, delicate and pointed, a silver chain pierced through the tip of one, floating on the same breeze that lifted the gown around her. Around her head she wore a circlet of crystal or moonlight. It was hard to tell in the photo.

The photographer who'd taken the photo swore she'd turned to him, smiled. Broke his heart with the gentle love in it, the beyond words sensuous beauty, full lips, so soft even form the good fifteen feet away. She'd laid one hand on her belly, sought out his eyes, and then blown him a kiss. The was the only one to have seen her. The only one in the little coastal town to have survived. She broke his heart, stalked him in his dreams, and that was no small feat, as Taylish Aziz had been gay and known he was gay since that first day in high school. He had his single photo and his life. That was pretty much more any one else who was there.

He named her Tatiana, queen of elfs. After a week, his photo was picked up and run around the world, but it was accompanied by a letter, or rather the text of a letter. The letter had been delivered at precisely 00:01 GMT, around the entire world, by a slender pointy eared person bearing a sword and dressed in impossibly light and hard to see gowns. Heads of state received the letter, no matter where they were. Security the world over had aneurisms. It was also delivered to religious figures, celebrities who were known for speaking out, to Bill Gates, and to one little gothic high school drop out living in a youth shelter in Neo-Seattle. It read: "Return Mai. Return the princes."

Well that was easier said than done. The next letter allowed humanity until the next full moon, or the gates would be opened and The Hunt released. People said King Arthur would return. People said it was aliens. People mostly said it was a hoax. Taylish said they were in trouble, but no one listens to photographers anyway.