Mystic: A Short Story

“Wyatt? Wyatt, wake up!”

The sluggish sixteen year old slowly opened his blue eyes, which were staring at the arms his blonde-haired head was originally resting on. With droopy eyes, he turned his head up towards his history teacher, Mrs. Pack, who was looking down at him with disapproving eyes. “Can you tell me what Martin Luther is well known for?”

“Uhhhhh…” Wyatt’s eyes drifted away from Mrs. Pack as he thought about what to say. He had not been paying attention in class at all. “All real numbers?”

Wyatt’s stupid answer created an uproar of laughter from the other students in his class, even from Mrs. Pack. She brushed away her long, brown hair as she looked back at the still half-asleep Wyatt. “If you actually manage to stay awake and pay attention, you’d actually know the answer. Can anyone else…” Wyatt completely stopped paying attention after that. What seemed like forever later, the bell eventually rang, signalling the very end of school. Wyatt grabbed his ocean blue sweatshirt and put it on over his light yellow T-Shirt as he hurried out the door. The sooner he was out of school, the better.

Wyatt Story never truly liked school. He wasn’t the smartest student in school (his best grades never rose above a B,) and he was one of the only “nerds” that went. Wyatt loved the ideas of magic, superheroes and dragons. He loved fantasy and science fiction, and would constantly play role playing games like Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect on his various video game consoles. If a geeky movie was in the works, Wyatt would study and dissect any information he would find on that movie’s production. In the evening, he would hop onto a website called roll20 and play Dungeons and Dragons with others until nighttime, and he would dream about being a ferocious dragon… or an amazing fire mage… or even Spider-Man!

As Wyatt walked down the locker and student filled hallway of his school, he remembered why he spent most of his school life alone. Other kids never had the same interests as him. In elementary school while everyone was playing hopscotch or four square, Wyatt was in the corner happily reading a Harry Potter book all by himself. He’d spend recesses imagining himself as a heroic knight, sent to defeat an evil wizard plotting to turn the world into zombies. Things didn’t change much when he got to junior high, sadly. If anything, Wyatt believed that things only got worse. Smartphones were starting to get more and more popular, and Wyatt just felt separated from those other kids who constantly were on Snapchat or Instagram, or taking “selfies.” Wyatt shuddered at that term, and how stupid modern life was in general. Sure, he had a smartphone himself, but who didn’t these days?

Wyatt wasn’t in any clubs or activities after school. Instead, he just ran out the main door of his high school, and took in the fresh May air. Summer vacation was in one month, after all, and Wyatt could not wait.

Wyatt had hopped onto his silver bike he had left on the bike rack outside the school, and after making a quick stop at the dollar store for some snacks, he immediately started pedaling off into the forest just outside of his hometown. The forest that not a lot of people even dared to visit. When Wyatt reached the beginning of the forest, he set his bike beside a pine tree and began to walk deeper into the forest...

Then, he made it. The decent-sized lake in the middle of the forest, a small cave residing relatively close to it. Wyatt took a deep breath and walked towards the lake slowly. He then pulled out a small silver whistle from his left sweater pocket and blew into it, producing a clear musical sound. “I’m here…” Wyatt muttered to himself. Mere moments after that silver whistle was blown, Wyatt felt the ground beneath him start to shake. He took quite a few steps back, just in case.

Finally, it rose out of the lake. A big dragon, his head alone the size of a human, had flown above Wyatt, its golden wings stretched out. The dragon’s bright blue scales were glistening from the sun as it flew closer and closer to the ground. As soon as it landed on all fours, the dragon’s big, golden eyes were fixed on the whistle-blower… Wyatt.

“Hello, Wyatt,” the dragon greeted his human companion with a smile. It still weirded Wyatt out that dragons communicate via telepathy. “How was school today?”

“Well, it was school like always, Storm,” Wyatt sighed as he shrugged. “Your day must’ve been much better, no?”

“I’ll go with no,” Storm chuckled, scratching the yellow scales on his belly. “Ah, this reminds me of the first time we met, does it not?”

Wyatt had thought back to when he first met Storm. It was just over a month ago, on a very rainy day in April. Wyatt’s previous bike had broken earlier that day, and it was just starting to rain. Gray clouds had covered the sky, and lightning could be seen striking down. All Wyatt could remember was just wanting to get out of that storm, so he sprinted. He just ran all the way to that forest, and thankfully he found that cave by the lake, and immediately dashed and slid into that cave. Finally, he was safe from that storm…

Or so he had thought. After a few minutes of observing the storm outside the cave, Wyatt noticed the ground beginning to shake. Eventually, Storm’s head had risen out of the lake, and both human and dragon had laid eyes on each other, both equally terrified and curious. Although Storm was not as curious or as terrified as Wyatt in that moment.

“I sure was surprised to see you just come out of the lake like that,” Wyatt chuckled as he patted his friend on the nose. “I thought I was going to die for sure, to be honest…”

Storm also began to laugh a bit. “Be glad I didn’t breathe lightning at you, Wyatt. That… would have been difficult to explain.”

“No worries,” Wyatt reassured Storm as he started taking his shoes off. “Want to go for a swim?”

“You bet,” Storm states and grinned as he launched into the air and dove into the lake. Wyatt followed suit, after he had taken off his clothes down to his boxers.

That was how Wyatt and Storm liked to spend their days. Storm always had a fondness for the water, meaning this lake was the perfect place to hide from the humans. He had even gotten Wyatt more excited about swimming when they first met.

Wyatt had dived deep into the lake, swimming side by side with Storm. They both looked at each other and smiled. The bond between these two creatures truly was strong…

Storm then grinned mischievously and started swimming away. Wyatt took this as a sign for a race, and took off after Storm. The blue lightning dragon was clearly faster however, as he was eventually out of Wyatt’s sight. Wyatt tried his best to catch up to his friend, moving his swimming arms as fast as he could. However, Wyatt saw something in the corner of his eye. He turned his head around suddenly, and saw a beautiful woman with black hair and a fish tail swimming by. This caused Wyatt to start screaming, or at least try to scream, as he was underwater. In his state of freaking out, he immediately swam back up to the surface of the lake. Storm had seen him do this, and decided to resurface as well.

“Is something the matter?” Storm reassuringly asked his human friend.

“I saw- I can’t believe- there was…” the frightened teen stuttered, unable to finish his thought.

“Calm, Wyatt…” Storm tried to calm down Wyatt in a soothing tone. “Breathe… Tell me what you saw…”

Wyatt cleared his throat and looked into Storm’s golden eyes. “A mermaid. I saw a freaking mermaid!”

Storm sighed. “I guess it is time I told you…”

“Told me what?” Wyatt asked suspiciously.

“Dragons and merpeople are not the only mystic beings that exist,” Storm revealed. “However, we do not come from this world… this forest is the reason we are here now.”

“This forest?” Wyatt asked as he observed the various trees and land surrounding the lake. “What’s so special about it?"

“This forest is an area known in my world, Mystic, as a Portal,” Storm continued, pausing for a moment to let his friend take it all in. “A Portal is a plot of land where Mundane… this world… and Mystic intersect, making travel between the worlds possible.”

“Mystic…?” Wyatt gasped. “Is Mystic like a fantasy world?!”

“If you would prefer to put it that way, yes.”

“Ooooooh!” Wyatt giddied out with enthusiasm. “What other creatures are there?!”

Storm stared at Wyatt for a few seconds before chuckling. “Alright… I shall tell you…” he tells him softly. Wyatt smiled with glee and got on top of Storm’s back as the blue dragon explained everything to the blonde teen.

“All the mystical, supernatural and so-called fake species your kind is familiar with… ones like vampires, werewolves, fairies, witches… they all exist. Just not in this world. The Earth is split into two separate dimensions. The dimension we are currently in is the one we Mystics call the Mundane. The world of the humans, who either fear us… or never believed us in the first place.

“Then there’s my world… Mystic. It is very similar to Mundane, except everyone is magical in some way. The merpeople rule over the sea, and each country has a primary race: either vampires, werewolves, fairies, witches, elves, gnomes, dwarves, or the Animalia, a breed of animal people.”

“And these Portals…” The human muttered as he stared at the lake. “They’re the only way to travel between the two worlds? And this forest is one of those places?”

Storm nods. “That is the case. The thing is, no one knows if an area is a Portal until they use it to travel worlds. The mermaid you spotted must not realize she’s in Mundane…”

Wyatt was silent for quite a while. “...is that what happened to you?”

Storm sighs solemnly. “That is correct… I was only trying to fish, and one thing lead to another…”

“Don’t you have a life back in Mystic? Friends? Family?”

Storm shakes his head. “Dragons typically are a lone species. The parents take care of the dragon until they feel the offspring is ready to survive on its own… then, they just take off.” Wyatt could see Storm shed a small tear, and he thought back to his own parents. He missed his mother…

“Don’t cry, Storm,” Wyatt patted his friend reassuringly. This caused the dragon to immediately snap out of it.

“Cry? Me? No, dragons don’t cry…” Storm bluffed. Horribly.

The teenager laughed at Storm’s behavior. “C’mon, let’s just keep swimming,” he says as he bellyflops back into the water, making it Storm’s turn to laugh.

After a couple hours of swimming, the two friends eventually got out of the lake, back to the cave. As Wyatt was drying off and putting his clothes back on, he could hear Storm grumble about something.

“What’s wrong?” Wyatt asked as he put his sweater back on, without turning around.

“I am hungry,” Storm says in a calm voice.

“Well, that’s no issue,” Wyatt cheers as he opens up his bag and pulls out the snacks. “I had a feeling we’d get peckish, so I stopped at the store and loaded up on junk food!”

Storm grabbed a chocolate bar with his giant clawed fingers. Storm was mainly used to consuming things found in the forest, such as bugs, lizards and fruit. He was not entirely sure about the food that Wyatt had bought. Wyatt could tell that his dragon friend was unsure about the chocolate bar.

“It’s alright,” Wyatt reassured Storm. “They’re good! At least just try one, okay?”

The dragon was about to refuse, but he felt his stomach rumble as he was about to do so. Sighing, he threw the chocolate bar into his mouth. “This tastes dreadful.”

“That’s because you ate the wrapper,” Wyatt managed to say, trying not to laugh. He picked up another chocolate bar and showed Storm how to unwrap it. Storm picked up another chocolate bar for himself and did exactly what Wyatt did, before throwing that one into his mouth.

“Alright, that tasted better.” Storm nods in approvement.

Wyatt and Storm spent the next thirty minutes chowing down on junk food, then two hours after that just discussing the mystical world.

“You know…” Wyatt tells his friend. “One day, I want to visit your world… the Mystic world!”

“Why wait?” Storm asked as he looked at the lake, which now started to glow…

Wyatt stared wide-eyed at the glowing lake. “The lake is…” He turned to Storm. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

“That is not a question I can answer,” Storm says. “Only you can come to that conclusion…”

Would Wyatt go to the Mystic World… or should he stay?

After thinking for quite some time, Wyatt eventually made his decision. “I’m ready, Storm. I want to go to Mystic!”