IN THE END, THEY did not travel very far on that first day toward the mountains. Repairs to the worst rents on the Felidragon’s supple wings took forever plus a few multiples in excess of her estimated couple of thousand stitches, using up every last inch of their thread, after which he hunted for a jungle samrax, a large and allegedly delicious rodent – retch – with which to fill his capacious stomach. They flew about ten miles before it became too dark to continue. Dangerous in the daytime; lethal at night. One travelled the Russet Jungles with care or faced becoming plant fertiliser in the near future.
For her part, Allory stuck to sap and nectar. She slept badly, however, with her back injury aching abominably and phantom pangs shooting through her numbed right-wing cluster. The nightmare about falling forever, about not being able to fly, was a delightful addition that kept her wakeful through the darkest hours. She fully expected a debilitating halo migraine to follow, but no. Maybe this was just a normal nightmare? Normally horrible? Horribly normal?
Setting out early the following morning, Yaarah proved his worth by flying thirty miles through the jungle thickets and no less than thirty-four the day after – so he said. She had no idea how he could tell distance, or direction, for that matter. The foliage and nature of the sarembis trees seemed unchanging, endlessly unnavigable and fully stocked with toothy creatures which would dearly have loved to replace the Felidragon as her new best friend. To most, she represented nothing more than a tasty sapphire snack; careful, the wings might tickle on the way down.
Swarms of carnivorous green Shriller Beetles kept popping out of the foliage, eager to sup upon any passing flesh, but this was where Yaarah’s natural electrical properties came into their own. Being zapped in the nose was a deterrent that most creatures understood.
So was being set alight.
When she coughed at a particularly acrid curl of smoke, the Dragon promptly delivered a hearty soliloquy on the delights and proper procedures about how one’s meals ought to be chargrilled, not a single detail of which she had wished to know. The Scintillant Fae had a minor chuckle over his lecture, thinking it was made funnier by her keen awareness that flying atop Yaarah’s shoulders and thus being on the right end of his raging breath weapon made all the difference.
On the third and fourth days, they flew low amongst the boles of the jungle giants in order to avoid the shockingly tangled upper canopy vine growth, taking a detour to avoid a mountainous nest of Serpent Dragons which Yaarah seemed keen to treat with the utmost respect. When Allory spied one peering down at them from the first set of boughs that separated the jungle bottom from the upper layers, she had to agree. That beady-eyed emerald Serpent could have swallowed her entire colony in a couple of bites.
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It would not bother, her companion teased when she voiced this concern. Not enough meat on her bones, nor could they even use her kind for toothpicks.
One appreciated the candour.
Days three and four also came punctuated with violent thunderstorms that lashed the trees with damaging gusts and torrential rains. Nothing unusual about this weather to one who had always lived deeply sheltered beneath the jungle boughs, but Yaarah claimed that the storms had been growing noticeably more intense of late. Allory was grateful because the unsettling impression of memories skulking about the edges of her awareness at last began to abate.
Perhaps the location of the Faerie colony explained why she had never been sensitive to these changes he talked about regarding Middlesun, which led to destabilising effects on atmospheric conditions.
This conjecture turned out to be the perfect fodder to occupy a Felidragon for hours.
Daily, she meditated to try to focus her sensitivity to ariavanae, but the exercises the Philosopher had taught her did not achieve anything noticeable. Just another skill that evaded her grasp. It would have been nice if she could raise even one tiny spark in service of her world, but no.
Scintillating? Not a glimmer of hope. Literally.
Sparkles? Distinguished by their absence.
Toward midnight on that fourth day flying through the Russet Jungles, Allory awoke to an awareness of the strangest sensation, as if a hammer had struck the world with a firm rap upon the noggin. All that remained of her confusion was an after-echo, as if something deeper than her own bone sap still resonated with aftershocks. When she gathered enough courage to crack open her eyes, her night vision outlined their leaf bower in multihued aural traces she remembered all too well. It was as if unbearable luminosity outlined every leaf, twig and branch. Migraine aura! Before she could quite catch her breath, pain clamped down in the form of burning talons that pierced her temples from either side and drove straight into her brain.
Soundless screaming …
She came to mere seconds later. Or did she?
That wasn’t from me.
This initial thought swilled around inside a brain that did not know how to process a shocking absence of pain. She expected to be half dead, a limp leaf slumped in her cocoon, eyes covered with a cloth against the slightest hint of light which always compounded the agony. Breathe. Just … breathe. Maybe mere seconds had passed; the attack had surely not lasted more than a few minutes?
What?
Her head shook slightly. Was this a new pattern? She was meant to be languishing for a handful of days as she tried to regain her power to move, never mind her sanity. Not to emerge feeling … alright? Shaken but functional. Disturbed but undaunted.
What became of yesterday’s Allory? Where’s the vision of that place …
Today’s Allory was cold and wet. The Fae spent a very long time shivering while watching her companion sleeping, envying his warm coat of fur, before finally working up the courage to act upon her first impulse. Hopping over his outstretched paw, she ducked beneath his chin and found in the crook of his neck a warm hollow sheltered from the incessant rain. She snuggled down a quarter inch at a time, not wishing to disturb the Felidragon’s slumber. One would not wish to make a proud living flame aware that he was being used for a fur rug.
Soon, she sank into a deep, fidgety slumber.