Home
once a dream did weave a shade; part i
IP: 108.56.232.184
Posted on June 6, 2013 at 01:32:07 AM by Gaiane & Pallas

Gaiane didn’t know what was going on, but the alluring call of the round man on the beach drove her to him from her studies at the Pantheon. She wasn’t alone in feeling this way either. So many warrior and mages and average, everyday fairies like her had come to the ancient one’s meeting. Even Gaiane’s mother was there, she noted with a smile. The young fairy situated herself by her mother while she listened to the round man. Gaiane had never felt the pull of Omni to his competition, nor had her mother, so though she had been studying with few opportunities to get out of the pantheon for most of her life, she was not aware of this ritual gathering.

The necklace and pendant felt heavy around a neck that was unused to jewelry of any sort as she accepted her charge, and it was carrying that weight that Gaiane thought of as the background of the entire group shifted to a place Gaiane did not recognize. Styx looked unperturbed though, so Gaiane relaxed significantly. The words of the round man jolted her into attention and excitement. Earth! She was going to go to Earth! Of course Earth had been a significant topic of study for the young fairy, and the ability to see her mother’s native land was not about to be missed.

She was dancing around in excitement before she even knew the task, but hearing it gave her pause. Steal a relic from one of the cults on Earth. That seemed awfully disrespectful to Gaiane, but she couldn’t just give up. Quitter never prosper? Quitters never live happy lives? Something like that. She was not a quitter.

Before she knew it, Gaiane found herself falling and being buffeted by gail-force winds and burning as cold rain stung her face and arms. She flailed, trying to get her bearing and her wings snapped out, hoping to steady her, wherever she was. She was not a strong enough flyer for this though, and as soon as they were fully extended, Gaiane felt like the long appendages were being ripped from her back. They were useless in this storm. It was unexpectedly lucky then that she landed with a hard plump on a hard bed of feathers. Pallas had been pulled through the rip to earth though Gaiane was not even aware that her familiar had been near to the meeting. If ever there was a time to be grateful for the large white dragon, this was it.

Together they swooped, Pallas’s larger, stronger wings slicing through the wind and rain until the white dragon stopped short of a deep blue mess of seas that churned and slapped up at the wing tips every down-stroke. Perhaps five hundred meters away, a strange creature with wings above its head, wings that did not beat up and down, but around in a circle, as though it had no bones or muscles to hold them in place, hovered above a ship. It was an impossible thing, a creature that Gaiane could not recall from her studies. Slowly, its long tongue slid from its mouth down to the ship and began to slurp the men and women, all of whom looked to be no higher in level than one, possibly a low two. Enraged at the audacity of the beast that it would just eat the endangered fairies, Gaiane urged Pallas toward the beast and with long teeth, the dragon cut through the tongue like rope. Exactly like rope.

The dragon was not shy about spitting the stringy material from her mouth and sent a barrage of foul thoughts and images at her fairy in protest of being asked to do the cutting. The falling screams had given the young fairy a word for the monster: “Hurricane.” The whooshing of the impossible wings grew louder and angered shouts assaulted the dragon and child with curses, from which Gaiane flinched. Slowly, the people in the “hurricane”s belly grew quieter and their eyes widened. It was almost as though they had never seen a dragon before? Was it so lucky that Gaiane had become close to a dragon, and met others who were just as close to other dragons? Like that boy in the castle. Were Earth fairies so inexperienced? And where were the familiars?

One last shout sounded out against the wind and sea. “Get the helicopter out of here!” it called, and the beast fled into the slate gray horizon. A few of the sailors continued to bob on top of the water mountains, but surely being lost at sea was a better fate with more hope of rescue than being eaten alive.

“Let’s go, Pallas. We have to find land to know where we are.”

A few strong pumps of her great wings, and the feathered dragon and her fairy moved again, against the strong southern wind, westward.
fractal by Silvia Cordedda on dA



Replies:

Post a reply:
Name:
Email:
Subject:
Message:
Link Name:
Link URL:
Image URL:
Password To Edit Post:









<-- -->