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The sun shined from high in the sky, as Ophelia was walked by the ocean. The waves lazily moved towards her, only to be pulled back to the abyss. Nothing ever moved in the water, nothing but the ripples made by the wind, and every time she thought about it, something in her stomach felt empty. Almost like she missed something, without knowing what it actually was. On the ground, you basically couldn’t even take two steps without almost stepping on something. Whether it be a bug, a chicken, or another person, there was always something moving, and there was always something alive. The ocean was only filled with dead bodies from broken boats, and failed trips out on the unforgiving waters. Nothing but death and rot.A salamander was crawling down by her feet, and she instinctually bowed down to pick it up. Holding the small creature, she looked into its eyes, and saw the same dark abyss that she saw in the ocean. She walked the few steps toward the water, and sat down in the low waters. The salamander seemed to be aware of her intentions, since it started moving in her grip, seemingly trying to get free before it’s demise.Nothing could save it, especially not the woman putting it in the water, and watching it move like a chicken without a head. After only a few seconds, it stopped moving, and Ophelia felt disappointed. She didn’t exactly know what she was expecting to happen, but it definitely wasn’t that. Having it simply drown in the waters was a much too boring result, although it was the only logical result of putting it under the dark water. She let go of the animal, and stod up again, turning around to walk back to the shore when she felt something touch her leg. Thinking it was just the corpse of the salamander, she put her hand down to push it away from her, put she was surprised when she felt it again only a few seconds later. She looked down and saw the salamander from before, but it was moving around in the water and kept bumping into her legs.Frozen from the shock, she simply stood there and watched it swim around her legs a few times before it swam farther out into the water. She still didn’t move, not even when the creature came back again. It didn’t look like it had before. Its limbs were gone, and it had gotten some weird new flaps around its body. It seemed to use its tail to move around in the water, and she was quite fascinated by the way it seemed to swim just as well, or even better, as a human raised by the water. A sharp pain in her leg got her mind back to reality, and she was shocked again when she saw blood colour the water around her. It didn’t take long for her to get out of the water, and when her breathing calmed down, she saw two puncture wounds on her lower thigh. The creature she had drowned before, had turned against her, as anyone would, and it had already shown its hate by biting her. She didn’t go out into the water after that, instead choosing to go home and sleep. She told the people of Potterstead about what she had found out, but nobody believed her story. ———— Only a few days after that, a boat was sent out to see if she was telling the truth after all, although its purpose was mostly to prove her wrong. A man, the best swimmer in Potterstead, was sent into the water to see if he could see anything moving around. He didn’t come back up, but people talked about founding a hand with his signature ring washed up on the shore far way from that place. When the people on the boat saw the blood, they sailed back to the shore, not wanting to stay out there for even a second more. Since then, no child in Potterstead was allowed to swim in the ocean anymore. It took many years for them to find out what was actually in the water, although it didn’t make it any less terrifying.
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Ophelia moved to the mountains some years after the incident, the scars on her leg still clear, to get as far away from water as possible. The only water-source by her house was a small pond. There was nothing living in the pond, and no creatures that would attack her when she went to wash herself. One day she was walking in the mountains by her house, and found a couple of hens and chickens. They must have been living in the mountains, because she knew for sure that there were no farms nearby. A bunch of eggs lay in a nest close by them, and there was a few chickens running around the hens. She walked toward them, and they didn’t shy away, probably not used to humans, so she sat down next to them. A few of the chickens ran to her, and when she put her hands down to them, one of them jumped into her hand. She stood up again, and looked at it. In the background, she clouds were moving, but other than that, nothing was moving in the sky. There was no animals in the sky, just as there hadn’t been any animals in the ocean. When she didn’t do anything for a few seconds, the chicken in her hand started moving around impatiently. Before she could do anything, it jumped out of her hands and fell toward the ground.Everything seemed to move in slowmotion for her, and she could already see the blood on the ground, and the hens running around terrified. But before any of that could happen, the chicken falling to the ground was suddenly by her head, and flying around by her face. It was peeping and the other chickens and hens were running around on the ground, like she thought they would, but instead of being scared, they were cackling like they were very excited. There were feathers and wings in front of her eyes, as the chicken was flapping its wings like crazy. Before this, Ophelia didn’t know that chicken’s wing could be used for anything other than food, but it seemed like she had been wrong. The proof in front of her eyes would have been unlike something she’d ever seen, but after the episode with the salamander back in Potterstead, she wasn’t that easily surprised. Holding out a hand, she was kind of expecting it to land on her finger just like the butterflies back home used to do, and so it did! She felt a whoosh in her stomach, and was very excited to be holding the flying chicken, but that excitement was quickly turned into pain when the bird bit the tip of her finger. It wasn’t as bad as her old fish-bites, but it still hurt like hell, and there was a small puncture wound, which led out a small drop of blood. She shook her hand, and the chicken flew a couple of meters into the air again, before it turned around again and flew back towards her. For a second, Ophelia was scared that the chicken would attack her, but it simply landed down by the other chickens, and every one of them flocked around it. She didn’t want to stick around any longer, having had her full of animals that turned into strange creatures, so she turned around again and walked back down towards her house. ————A couple of days later, she was outside in her garden, and she heard some fluttering nearby. When she looked around, there was more than one flying chicken in the air. They didn’t exactly look like chickens anymore. Their feathers looked softer, and their beaks had gotten longer, but they still had the same colour, and there was no other animal with that resemblance, so it was only logical to think that it was more odd chickens. They didn’t do a lot. They simply sat on her fence and stared at her as she stared at them. Even when she walked inside to grab her notebook, they didn’t move. They only looked at her with their black eyes, and ruffled their feathers once in a while as she drew some rough sketches of them. Back in Potterstead she had drawn a few drawings of what the changed salamander had looked like, and with the drawing of the odd chickens, she almost had a collection of weird animals. Maybe in a couple of years she could return to the city and tell everybody of what she had discovered. But for know, the only thing she made sure of doing was to put out some food and water for the chickens every morning. And every day, they would sit on her fence, or fly in the sky over her house, and keep her company as she read her books, or painted the mountains.