Deze is wel in het Engels en een Court of Thorns and Roses shortstory!

A Wonderful Wendlyn Race

Naomi was huddled in her boat while the wind howled. She shivered in her boat while lightning was striking from a storm. Her mom told her not to go outside but she didn't listen. Naomi loved the water, she had to and would go sailing. Due to the storm, she already regrets that decision. The water wasn't safe and she must get away from there. Impulsive, she decided to jump out of the boat. Nao knew that the lightning would always hit the highest point in his environment and that was her boat. She was a Water Fae but that didn't mean that she couldn't get hypothermia. The water was colder than she expected, the cold water felt like a shock through her body. She started swimming to keep her warm while she tried to make as much distance as possible between her and the boat.

There was nobody around who could help her, every smart person thought it was safer to stay indoors. Everyone except Naomi. One she gambled that the distance between her and the boat was enough, she stopped to give her arms some rest. In the time she spent in the water she had used almost all her energy partly because of the cold water. She was not a strong Fae, it was a fact that now became painfully clear. To stay afloat, she swam on, not feeling her toes. Only by keeping moving could she keep herself warm. Her muscles were cramped as she tried to get moving again.

She was hundreds of metres away from the small boat when disaster struck. Lightning struck again, this time on her boat, and the mast immediately caught fire. Naomi looked at the mast with wide eyes as she swam even further. The lightning had indeed struck the highest point and little Naomi was unharmed. Although she urgently needed to get out of the water. Het geluid van het vuur zorgde ervoor dat ze het volgende gevaar niet hoorde aankomen. Met iedere slag die ze zwom werd het water kouder en kouder. Haar lichaamstemperatuur daalde maar ook de omgevingstemperatuur zakte naar beneden.

On the water, too, a layer of ice began to form behind her. Yet Naomi still did not notice it, for her it was now more important to reach the shore. For a moment she wished her Fae form was an aquatic animal.

She did not know why, but she suddenly looked over her shoulder as she swam and saw the next obstacle coming towards her in time. Normally she would panic, but swimming had already cost her so much energy that she could hardly do it. However, she did start to move as much as possible on the spot. As a result, the water sloshed around her, preventing the part around her from freezing. The ice continued to move, but all her movements broke the thin layer that was within her reach.

Carefully she swam to the ice that was still intact and hoisted herself onto it. During this movement she lost her shoe, but the water was too cold and dark to dive behind it. If she did, the hole she had managed to keep would close anyway. The ice on which she was standing was just thick enough so that Naomi would not sink through, but it was extremely cold on her bare foot. Her wet clothes only made her colder.

The fear she felt caused her to lose control of her powers. She would not be able to heal at the moment and without wanting to, she changed into her Fae form, the spotted hyena. It was probably her survival instinct that had changed her, for she could not yet do it herself. The warmth that her fur provided was more than welcome. She also had a better balance on four legs than on her two. The energy reserves that she could draw on as a hyena gave her some more energy as she carefully shuffled across the ice. As an animal, Naomi weighed a lot less, which made her walk more confidently across the ice. Turning into a hyena was something she could rarely do, only when she had powerful emotions like her fear of hypothermia earlier.

The storm still persisted, but as a hyena Naomi was also a lot smaller and faster, so the quay soon came into sight. But Naomi was exhausted, the little energy she had left she used it all to continue walking and moving her legs. But she was too weak and inexperienced to keep her form, and before she reached the quay safely, she changed back to her human form.

Panic got the better of her again as she lay down in front of the thunder and lightning. Shivering from the cold, she crawled over the ice to the shore so that she could get off the water and hopefully continue her journey home.

For fifteen seconds she had to crawl on the ground, shivering, until her hyena got the upper hand again and she could continue walking. After two more minutes, she finally reached the quay. The stones were cold but felt like a pleasant change from the ice. Again Naomi returned to her own appearance. Frightened, she looked up and started to run with the last bit of energy she had left, back home.