08-22-2021, 03:41 PM
Snow fell on Hyaline long before Autumn came, turning its high peaks to whipped sugar, glittering and beautiful and deadly. Popinjay spent more hours exploring the territory on foot and on the wing than she did on watching how quickly her children grew but Raum never much noticed the lack. On this day, his mother patrolled the jagged skies with her veil of lightning and her track could be seen easily by the trail of light that followed her as she wove her way between the mountaintops, coasting on thermals that would freeze him through if he tried to join her.
Wingless, he could not, of course. The boy's interest was not on his mother's skies, however, but on a pool of shadow spillt across the rocky wall above him. The ledge he'd climbed up to was a narrow and precarious one, but he had his mother's sure feet and fearless nature and thought nothing of making the dangerous climb up to it. His reward, a fractured bit of mountainside stained red and green-gold with lichens, and silver-black with the ice reforming as midday's heat faded back to evening chill. Somewhere behind him, a pika cried out its shrill alarm, but the golden-feathered boy only flicked an ear contemptuously at the little creature and peered more closely at the darkness tucked beneath the cracked rock face. There, the darkness and the ice mingled so densely they seemed to have never seen the sun. It was the deepest shadow he had ever seen and pictures danced across it sharply.
The shadow theater lived everywhere that the downy-soft paws of darkness tread.
The colt shook his head. That description didn't quite fit the darkness in front of him, black as velvet but hard as a knife. It smelled of nothing and of eternity and of a thousand things a boy his age could only imagine, and he - tactile, like his mother - stepped forward hungrily to press his nose against it, but found instead nothing at all. Empty space loomed ahead of him. Pressing the tip of his pink tongue against a sharp tooth, he snorted and stamped and squealed into that impenetrable darkness that was so full of the whirling dervish on his premonitions; color and light projected on their opposite by the magic that filled his ruby-bright eyes. His own voice answered him from a thousand open throats.
"Hello?"
hello hello hello hello hello hello
Wingless, he could not, of course. The boy's interest was not on his mother's skies, however, but on a pool of shadow spillt across the rocky wall above him. The ledge he'd climbed up to was a narrow and precarious one, but he had his mother's sure feet and fearless nature and thought nothing of making the dangerous climb up to it. His reward, a fractured bit of mountainside stained red and green-gold with lichens, and silver-black with the ice reforming as midday's heat faded back to evening chill. Somewhere behind him, a pika cried out its shrill alarm, but the golden-feathered boy only flicked an ear contemptuously at the little creature and peered more closely at the darkness tucked beneath the cracked rock face. There, the darkness and the ice mingled so densely they seemed to have never seen the sun. It was the deepest shadow he had ever seen and pictures danced across it sharply.
The shadow theater lived everywhere that the downy-soft paws of darkness tread.
The colt shook his head. That description didn't quite fit the darkness in front of him, black as velvet but hard as a knife. It smelled of nothing and of eternity and of a thousand things a boy his age could only imagine, and he - tactile, like his mother - stepped forward hungrily to press his nose against it, but found instead nothing at all. Empty space loomed ahead of him. Pressing the tip of his pink tongue against a sharp tooth, he snorted and stamped and squealed into that impenetrable darkness that was so full of the whirling dervish on his premonitions; color and light projected on their opposite by the magic that filled his ruby-bright eyes. His own voice answered him from a thousand open throats.
"Hello?"
hello hello hello hello hello hello
Raum*
in every bird a black thought
someone please come help Raum find trouble
Please tag ratty or Raum* (<--with the asterisk) in threads!