New Tales of the Gobi Desert
Beacon Hill School, Tung Yi Lai, Fiction: Group 2
T
he rage for revenge is what in my mind,
Everyone I love have left me behind,
Darkness in light is what I see,
Is that truly my destiny?”
I perched on a large sand dune and overlooked mournfully at the polluted land of the Gobi
Desert where digging machines were mining coal. The biggest one rumbled as it burst putrid
smoke into the air. I glanced at the yurts dotted the south and sighed.
We are the Spirit Foxes whose existence is a mystery. After rescuing a nomad chief by our
miraculous magical powers thousands years ago, we became the mythical canines in stories and
songs within the nomadic tribes. All Spirit Foxes had ghostly fur with color ranges from red to
pale orange, a snow white belly and black ear tips. We welcomed all peaceful and kind animals to
share our Forest of Eternity, but any trouble-makers who tried to meddle with us never returned.
With the whole pack together, we had the tremendous power to nourish an ideal habitat for
creatures on the Earth. My name is... Well, I have forgotten my own name, as no one has called
me for centuries.
Every spare second I had, I desperately sought for any clues of my pack: paw prints on the
sand, scents in the wind, but every attempt was in vain. Every night I was haunted with the same
dream: my pack was shrieking for rescue. They were sliding down hopelessly to the steaming
lava but my paws never reached them. Before they touched the lava, I burst awake with my heart
pounding. I still remembered the peaceful days like it was yesterday when I was playing with my
pack in the forest with the fresh air of nature. The spring-green leaves always fluttered on our
snouts like butterflies. That was our life until our catastrophe approached...
I would never forget that terrible night, while a cursed comet streaked towards the north, my
pack was panicking with the trembling ground. Smoky ash and lava bombs were spraying from
Mount Gobi like fireworks but no one enjoyed such an evil scene. All I could see was nothing
but dunes of soot and ash. As the flaring stones tore through the darkening sky, I faintly heard
the cries and yelps of terror but the wails were fading. It tore me into pieces to feel my pack was
leaving me, and I would never see them again. I was swift enough to dodge the falling rocks, until
it ended with deadly silence except my own panicked breathing and the hissing of fire.
At dawn, the inside of my body, the very middle of my soul, felt drained of spirit bolts. In
spite of being abandoned by the Sun Spirit, I howled to the sun to resurrect my pack that were
crushed by the blows of the rocks. I screeched in anger, calling and calling to the smoke but my
prayers unanswered. I would never trust him again, even in our greatest need of help. I closed my
eyes and I imagined myself dashing toward the sun to take revenge for my pack. I focused on my
magic to summon blue fire, touched at the ash and soot that coated the ground with my paws. The
icy flame spread across the debris around me, and my magic controlled everything on the ground.
I shouted at the glowing blazes, “I will command by the soul sparks of the Spirit Foxes to recreate
our home with plenty of food and water! The habitat I wish for is for the Spirit Foxes, to leave us a
chance to proliferate!”
The blazes paled slightly and shrank to tiny flickers. As a solitary fox, my magic was too
“
