She thinks she won’t make it, the way that her heartbeat accelerates in her chest.
She thinks the pumping organ might explode before she has a chance to even reach the center of the storm, the way she moves as if her life depends on it.
All the while, nightmares play around her. A grizzled muzzle snaps inches from her face. A scream follows, amplified and echoing in the narrowing tunnel of stormcloud she travels. Her ragged breath is the most prominent sound of all. She is used to the hitching way her breath catches, used to the heaving of her ribs as they struggle against what nature has given her. But she is not used to the stakes being so high if she fails.
The tunnel narrows even more so that she feels the wispy clouds pressing in on her. The end is just ahead, she sees the hazy darkness that must be the center of this harrowing storm. But she isn’t sure there will be enough space for her to pass through. Like a kaleidoscope from hell, the images along the walls become twisted and spin faster as Glaw hurries along. It’s dizzying, disorienting; the young mare trips and falls through the closing hole at the end of the tunnel.
The eye of the storm seems blessedly free of nightmares, she sees as she rights herself and tries to catch a breath that will hardly come. The others are here, though, and she ducks her head despite herself when she realizes that the sound of her haggard breathing will likely annoy them at best. She flutters her translucent wings in hopes that it will draw some of the attention away. Their buzzing reminds her of a gentle summer morning in a field of bees and wildflowers. The image in her mind’s eye slows her racing heart. She wishes she could project her memory onto the dark walls and brighten it for the others.
She wishes she could replace the nightmares that will plague them instead.
All at once, just when the chestnut girl thinks their trial is over, something tugs at a long lock of her red hair. Whether it is another nightmare or a stirring of the wind, it soon doesn’t matter. The dark clouds begin to move again around them. Small gusts quickly become forceful gales as their sanctuary becomes a prison instead.
Glaw’s eyes instinctively search out the others, but they are all soon lost in the swirling storm. Wind tears at her buzzing wings that struggle to keep her aloft. She sees the tail of another participant and tries to follow it up and away from their once-safe spot. Her shoulders scream with the effort as the air batters her to and fro. “Wait!” The tail is slurped up into the living storm like a bird to a worm. A pointed tongue licks the now empty air in apparent satisfaction. She doesn’t know if it had been real or another nightmare. She doesn’t know even if any of it is real anymore.
Maybe she is in the meadow now, having a bad dream? Perhaps she will wake up and she will see how silly this had all been, something bad that her head made up to forget the real nightmares she had already lived. Maybe she should let herself wake up. And how do you normally wake up from nightmares?
If she dies in the dream, she will wake up and it will be over. Glaw suddenly gives herself over to the violence of the howling storm. She loosens her muscles and lets her wings hang limp. It yanks her midair from one side of the storm to the other like a puppet. She feels the very wind pummeling and bruising her. This is the way, she thinks at first, this isn’t real, can’t be. Because the storm no longer feels like just a storm. It feels sentient, the way it seeks to hurt her. It feels alive in a way that rattles her to her bones. I have to die to wake up, she thinks, but her confidence begins to slip as her will to live - to survive as she always has - starts to take over.
She had been falling deeper into the center of the tornado without using her wings, but now she pumps them with everything that she has. She grits her teeth so hard she thinks they will crack and crumble in her mouth. Little progress is made upward. The storm is relentless in trying to push her down. Her muscles scream against it. She screams, too, in futility into the howling, hurricane air. It is clear she will never make it up and out. Then the answer comes to her.
Glaw gives in for the second time and falls.
She controls the drop this time, as much as she can, fights against the wind to avoid the worst of the violence. As if reading her mind, the tornado throws everything it can at her. Gruesome images flash one after the other at her in blinding speed as she descends madly into the growing gloom. At the end, when she thinks her wings will snap from the force, she sees her mother’s face reflecting back at her.
She cries out and falls through the tornado’s dark, angry clouds.
glaw
She has dragonfly wings (from the quest) that can be scrambled or sunny side up (egg humor)