The wind ruffles my hair, tugging at the deep blue strands and tangling them with the white. There is no smoothing them into respectability; that chance was lost about four thousand feet up in a particularly nasty cumulonimbus. The memory of the storm is still fresh in my mind. Lightening below me and thunder all around me; I am still blinking away the results of the brilliant flashes as I stand in the heart of the forest.
Around me, the woods are just starting to rouse themselves after the storm. Late afternoon sunlight is filtering through the branches overhead. I breathe deep in the revitalizing scent of a world after the rain. I can almost block out the scent of the fall, of the autumn when life slowly begins to decay. It is easier now that winter is close. I draw my wings tighter around me as another gust ripples through the trees that surround me. It carries with it a familiar scent, one that I am surprised I have not forgotten. It had come to me in the clouds, when a flash of lightening illuminated a piebald coat in a pattern I knew well.
He’d not heard me over the wind, shouting his name. He probably hadn’t even seen me.
But I’d seen him land, here where the storm had already passed, and I had followed him down. My situation is forgotten; it doesn’t matter how I got here, only who I have seen.
“Castile!” I call as I pick my way through the sopping forest. My head is held high, and I search with my nose and ears as well as my eyes. There is no one around, but I know he must be near. “Castile!”
It doesn’t occur to me that he might not recognize me, that more than my voice may have changed since the last time we met. I’m no longer a gawky yearling, but a woman grown. The rosebud prettiness of my adolescence is gone, replaced by a sharper sort of beauty that is offset by the myriad of scars across my buckskin coat. Castile had looked the same though, strong and fast and draconic, the idol of my childhood and my beloved uncle.
“@[Castile]?!”
@[Castile]
I thought he needed some non-romantic drama in his life <3
Around me, the woods are just starting to rouse themselves after the storm. Late afternoon sunlight is filtering through the branches overhead. I breathe deep in the revitalizing scent of a world after the rain. I can almost block out the scent of the fall, of the autumn when life slowly begins to decay. It is easier now that winter is close. I draw my wings tighter around me as another gust ripples through the trees that surround me. It carries with it a familiar scent, one that I am surprised I have not forgotten. It had come to me in the clouds, when a flash of lightening illuminated a piebald coat in a pattern I knew well.
He’d not heard me over the wind, shouting his name. He probably hadn’t even seen me.
But I’d seen him land, here where the storm had already passed, and I had followed him down. My situation is forgotten; it doesn’t matter how I got here, only who I have seen.
“Castile!” I call as I pick my way through the sopping forest. My head is held high, and I search with my nose and ears as well as my eyes. There is no one around, but I know he must be near. “Castile!”
It doesn’t occur to me that he might not recognize me, that more than my voice may have changed since the last time we met. I’m no longer a gawky yearling, but a woman grown. The rosebud prettiness of my adolescence is gone, replaced by a sharper sort of beauty that is offset by the myriad of scars across my buckskin coat. Castile had looked the same though, strong and fast and draconic, the idol of my childhood and my beloved uncle.
“@[Castile]?!”
@[Castile]
I thought he needed some non-romantic drama in his life <3
