Alta pushed his legs hard as he held Icasondra’s inert body in his arms. With every stride, tens of meters were skipped, though the homogenous landscape of the underworld didn’t allow for precise metrics. Only the endless corpses of the wardens highlighted any meaningful change.

The chimera’s heart beat at a pace never seen before. It wasn’t because of his physical exertion but of fear. The fear of what would happen if Icasondra awakened.

Winter hadn’t lied.

The Queen of the Underworld’s words rung with truth. If Icasondra woke up in the prison, she would remain dead forever.

Before the man noticed, he had already reached the bottom of the abyss. A clearing free of white blood or the corpses of the undead.

Alta looked upwards, seeing the impossible long climb. The ascent would be far harder than the descent.

The fairy’s eyes twitched.

The chimera skipped a heartbeat.

There’s no time. Dread settled on his mind. How can I do this? Even shifting all my biomass to my legs and jumping, I won’t be able to reach the top. And even if I did, the crystal ceiling remains. I would have to break it...

He faced too many problems and didn’t have enough time to answer them.

A fugue light appeared before him.

A flashing image.

It was all in his mind, but the statue of the bird intruded on his thoughts. The statue of her mother. A symbol of origin.

Alta comprehended it.

He was a chimera, an ever-shifting creature. But he had progenitors. Progenitors who weren’t chimeras. Yet their blood ran on him.

The transformation was sudden but swift.

Fire grew out of his skin as feathers. Bones stretched far longer than it should be possible with his current volume, but Alta knew he was far denser than he appeared. Arms shifted into colossal wings, yet he didn’t allow Icasondra’s waking body to fall. His embrace was tight.

Most remarkably, Alta’s nature changed once more.

Soon, she evoked a figure far bigger than her previous abomination shape. She didn’t know the name, but she recognized the flames.

Those had always been there, healing her.

Alta put Icasondra on her back, shifting her flame feathers around her to tie her in a makeshift harness. Then she extended her wings.

She flapped them.

Unlike the failed fluttering attempts of her Blossomflame shape, she now gained air. And that with a single flap.

The next one shot her through the prison.

As she tore the underworld across with her mythical speed, Alta finally understood what Icasondra had meant with flight. It was incredibly efficient, incredibly fast, but also, incredibly fun.

A screech came out of her beak, dissipating the distractions of her mind and she pressed on, flapping her wings with even more intensity. She wouldn’t allow Icasondra to die. Again. Especially after she had finally managed to fly.

Alta wanted to show the fairy her flight.

The flames became redder.

Her vision narrowed by the seconds, the speed too high to process. The fogginess of distance disappeared and instead got substituted by the dark ceiling of the prison. She was going to collide against it in a few instants, but before that, fire gathered in her throat.

This new shape gave Alta an unprecedented mastery over fire, it was even greater than an instinctual feeling.

She was the fire itself.

The chimera opened her beak and a swirling ball of fire came out of it, shooting at even faster speeds. Before, Alta had broken the crystalline sky with brute force. Now, she obliterated it with fire.

As she flew beyond the fabricated darkness, reality warped, space shifting as her body did. This fact was more than enough evidence to comprehend that the underworld – or Afterlife as Winter had called it – was beyond the world of the mortals. How did Alta even manage to enter it was a question beyond her comprehension and current worries.

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Only one thing mattered now.

The starred sky filled the chimera with hope.

They had escaped.

Alta flew higher, her blazing figure soaring upwards in the night sky.

Icasondra had been saved.

Once she had passed well beyond the clouds, she twisted her neck to look at the sleeping fairy. Her wings shone with overwhelming light, far brighter than those of the fiery bird, the close light of the three moons powering them.

Her eyelids twitched.

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Icasondra opened her eyes, rubbing them groggily. It took a few seconds for her to notice the bird in flames before her.

“Em... Alta is that you?” The Moonlight fairy’s tone was charged with confusion.

“Yes, Icasondra.” She spoke affectionally, the voice didn’t match the face of the bird. “It’s me.”

“Oh, ok.” Icasondra dismissed it, her mind feeling incredibly foggy. She led her hand to her head. “I just had the strangest dream... Or rather, a nightmare.”

“Yes, a nightmare.” The chimera admitted, heaving her head up and down.

The response alerted the fairy as realization struck her, memories becoming clearer.

“It wasn’t a dream, was it?” She asked.

Alta didn’t answer.

“What happened? Please tell me!” Icasondra pleaded, the lapse in her memory looming, as another more terrifying feeling did.

“Nothing to worry about,” Alta responded with a smile, somehow. Icasondra didn’t know beaks could perform such gestures, but once again, she was a chimera, not a bird.

For more than she was worried, the dismissal allowed the fairy to become aware of her surroundings. The stars, the moons, the sky...

The sky?

“Alta you are flying!” Icasondra shouted.

To which the chimera simply nodded. “I’m indeed flying, yes.” Alta’s face was brimming with satisfaction, but above all, happiness.

“I told you, didn’t I?” The fairy said. “Flying is fun.”

“You were right. I feel at peace in the skies.” The nightly breeze swept, loading the air with embers from Alta’s fiery feather and carrying them into the horizon.

The sight was mystical.

Icasondra separated from the chimera’s embrace, dislodging herself from the tight feathers, and flying on her own. Oh, we are high. Very high. The moons were close and the clouds closer. The Evergreen only seemed like a smudge on a canvas. The fairy flew backward, taking a better view of the bird. She’s so big... It looks more like a winged dragon than a bird.

Her brain put two and two together.

Is she a...

“Alta, are you a phoenix?” Icasondra asked, the chimera flapping her sizeable wingspan casually to stay at the same altitude.

“I do not know that word. But if you ask about my current form... that name seems appropriate.”

By the moons! She exclaimed in her mind. She’s truly adopted the shape of the mythical bird of rebirth! Was that how she... revived me?

“Now,” the phoenix interrupted her thoughts, “we should get going. Flrynwydl will be worried about you, and I doubt this cold is good for your health. You should rest.”

“Wait, Flrynwydl? What does she have...?” The Moonlight fairy’s eyes darkened. “Did she see me? Before I...”

“Yes,” Alta admitted.

“Oh.” Her lacking expression was filled with sorrow for what she made the dryad behold.

“Latch on to me.” The chimera said, unbeknownst to Icasondra’s struggle. “It will be better if I do the flying. I do not know how well your body has taken in the recent events.”

“Okay.” Icasondra accepted in defeat, hugging the mythical bird’s warm back.

Alta’s winged shape graciously soared through the sky with a familiarity it shouldn’t be possible for someone who had just learned how to fly. It’s like she was born to do this.

The cold air caressed Icasondra’s platinum mane. It wasn’t freezing as Alta said, the fairy enjoyed the cold touch. It made her feel... alive. Icasondra buried her face in the soft feathers. Warmth. Warmth is better.

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The fairy slightly moved around on Alta’s back. She could feel Icasondra’s nervousness through the small motions.

The chimera looked below to the Evergreen, but quickly found herself cornered.

“We have a problem, Icasondra,” Alta said. “I don’t see the village.”

“Hmm.” The fairy stood up on her back, her naked feet gracing her feathers. “Me neither. Well, I guess if you didn’t see it, I wouldn’t be able to. The Midsommar must have ended if there’s no pyre. I do see the lake, land there and we can fly the way back on the ground.”

“Understood.” The phoenix nodded and began her descent.

The lake that Icasondra had called Clair De Lune, was massive. Yet Alta managed to find the exact spot where the Moonlight fairy had brought her a week ago.

She landed carefully on the bay, so as not to distress her passenger. Icasondra didn’t land herself, choosing the fairy way of sprouting directly into flight.

Alta undid her shapeshift, suddenly finding himself in the body of a man.

Icasondra looked at him, the small flying fairy barely floated above the ground, so the colossal figure of the man was at her full display.

“Em... Alta?” The fairy said as her face gained a pink coloration. “Could you shift back into a Blossomflame?”

“Of course.” Answered the voice of a man, his original voice back in the prison, and not the one he had gained upon becoming a female fairy.

The shift was swift, far more than any previous ones. She was getting more and more used to it. No pain this time.

But it wasn’t wholly successful. She had adopted her Blossomflame shape, yes, but she had an extra pair of wings, those of the phoenix. Unlike in her phoenix shape, they didn’t sprout from her arms, but from her back. She used the extra wings to envelop her naked body, to be more decent.

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Alta had transformed back into a Blossomflame instantaneously, she didn’t bloom out of the human body like she had done the first time. Icasondra appreciated that a lot.

But there was something different.

Her leaf-like Blossomflame wings remained, but now an extra pair grew below them. These were composed of feathers. The phoenix wings resembled more than that of angels as Alta flapped them. Then she curved them around her body into an impromptu dress. Curiously enough, it reminded Icasondra of the dress Alta already had.

“Alta, can you come here?” Icasondra asked.

“Sure.” The Blossomflame fairy separated from the ground, taking into flight and fluttering her wings toward her. Alta’s progress was surprising.

Icasondra looked the chimera in the eyes. They were green, but unlike before, they were no longer impassive to the outside world, but she saw a spark there. Happiness.

A bad idea coursed through the Moonlight fairy’s mind, but she couldn’t help herself.

Icasondra lunged on Alta’s lips. Mouths connected.

The Blossomflame fairy opened her eyes in surprise, yet she didn’t push Icasondra out. Instead, she grabbed her hips and locked them into an embrace, her tongue pushing against hers.

Ah~ Icasondra lingered on her thoughts. Is this the right choice? But truth was, she didn’t care.

Icasondra enjoyed the moment.