Scribblers

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: This story must contain the words raindrops, scribble and penny

Scribblers

Penny giggled as she watched her crayon filled hands move deliberately across the walls of the hallway outside of her first-grade classroom. It was a funny sensation, seeing the colored scribble as it spread across the once-white surface. 

She didn’t understand exactly what was happening. One minute she had been in Art class and the next, she was out in the halls watching as someone or something else controlled her limbs.

At first, her teacher hadn’t noticed her absence. When she finally went looking for Penny, she was shocked at what she found. The walls just outside the class were filled with nonsensical drawings. The images were dark and brutal without actually being recognizable as anything in particular.

The drawings themselves paled in comparison to the little girl. She giggled as her hands swayed back and forth, leaving a trail of color in their wake. She was having some sort of conversation with herself in a voice to low to make out. Her arms, face and dress were covered with apparently random scrawling. She seemed to be completely unaware of her teacher watching gapped-mouth only a few feet away.

As if she only then became aware of her adult observer, Penny turned her head to look up at the woman. With a smile, she simply said, “Raindrops”.

The storm arrived moments later.

Five years passed and it was still raining.

The world had changed a lot during that time. The food chain had a new top dog; Wisp-like beings that thrived in the high humidity. No one knew where they came from or how long they would stay. Their only communication was through the children. They claimed one in a hundred for the task.

Penny was the first of the new-age druids that came to be known as The Scribblers.