A Flight to Remember (solo)

[Tempest]

Spring 45, 511 A.V


The world was smaller than any land dweller realized. Stuck where the grass and roots caught their feet, few could appreciate the true scale of Mizahar. Here, in the wind and clouds, the world was smaller. Green blended into green as forests mated into formless clumps of emerald. Pockmarked with mountain peaks, lakes, and the veins of rivers pushing their way to horizon, the world was like a sleeping giant lain out for all life to live upon it. Got by an updraft of current, Tempest beat his wings and rose, lifting himself higher toward a sun he could not touch. Each day at dawn he rode the winds and flapped his wings thrice as much as any Zith should. Each time the familiar burn would twist the flesh in his shoulder blades. He could feel his strength, could sense his body growing more powerful with each beat.

Here, up here amid the True world, he felt free. All the pain and anguish of life without his family, caring for his sister, his inadequacies at hunting or tracking, none of them mattered here. He was a bird upon the highest climax of their flight path.

It was only in the dawn that he could ride the winds as such. When the sun began to approach its zenith, he would depart and find a place to rest. While the firm rays of warmth felt pleasing upon his back, his eyes abhorred the brightness. His kind were not made to fly by the light of day, or at least to never look skyward to the Sun. In return they were given ingress by the night, her shadows meaning little to a trained Zith flyer.

Bringing up both wings sharply, he felt the current of air splash across their leathery expanse, pushed it down and pushed up higher, high as the wind and air grew thin, even as his breath grew short in his lungs.

He fell.

There was a sensation that few could understand as well as a flyer. Each who would trespass across the sky must know what it feels to lose control, to fall, to be without defense against the inevitable.

It was beautiful, and Zulrav made it so.

He was falling at perfect pitch, perfect balance. There was primal excellence, a moment of pure tranquility in essence.

His god reached out and touched his face.

Both wings shot out, wide to grab the wind around him and slow his fall. Every time he had done this before, he always pulled up nearly short of hitting the ground. It was always close, but then, living always was...and always should be.

This time he was late.

His path slowed, mighty wings straining at the wind to pull his body from a vertical plummet. The trees rose up around him, mere blob of green before and now so detailed, every leaf twisting in the warming dawn breeze. Gritting his teeth, Tempest put both hands up across his chest and face, tumbling into the treeline.

The branches bit at him, the leaves heralding his arrival and watching him depart, and the breeze was gone.

The impact with the ground was not so bad, he had slowed enough to save himself the trouble of a broken bone, but still his body rolled with the blow, his wings wrapping around his shoulders even as he pitched over, allowing him to keep both wings undamaged as well.

Flat on his back, staring up at the hole in this fake sky of leaves, the sky of earth, both wings firmly wrapped around his shoulders, he smiled.

He laughed.

Pushing his way out of the dawn sun, the Zith moved along the shadowed paths of trees, his yellow eyes piercing the darkness. Sleep hovered at the edges of his conciousness, just enough to slow his movements and elicit a yawn with a tired shake of his head. His pony tail twisted with the movement, a black snake along his velvet back.

"Thank you Zulrav," he spoke in Zithanese, the name of the God repeated in common, as no word could substitute such a being's true name, "I will return to you this evening."

[Tempest]

Forest shadow dappled his fur and lent irritating flashes of blindness. There was no true shelter from the Eye of the Heavens, and its light showered all. Once he had envied the day walkers, humans and the other races who found no trouble to live by morning light. Night was deception, a gloom too deep to puncture and too strong to fight. Zith, in all their primal ferocity, were the dark princes of evening.

But the day reviled them by nature.

Pausing beneath a thick limbed tree, Tempest scowled into the droplets of luminescence dancing through the foliage. The dawn urged him to rest, to take wing again in the evening, but as Zith and being so young, he could not afford to stay at ease.

Tempest touched the ground, spreading his hands across the gritty soil to feel the texture on his skin. It was too often that he forgot himself, his place in the world. He had been gifted wings, but also feet and arms. Placing both hands in front of him and spreading his legs back, Tempest took a position the humans used to train their bodies. In the two years his sister lived among the day walkers, he had watched them from afar. Powerless to join her he had squeezed contentment out of observation.

Two years he'd watched the day walkers by night, winging over their city and skulking at their limits. In all that time he'd seen his sister only momentarily, eying her with her human lover from a distance...a world he could not touch, a world his sister had chosen.

Down he went, pushing up with his arms. This early routine was a tribute to the earth, his lesser loved companion. His wings must be strong to carry his body, his body must be strong to carry his will. These statutes were only the edge of his goals.

Llano was to be protected, her very existence defined by tragedy and conflicting emotions. She was a Zith trying to be a Daywalker, addicted to the sunlight and the pretty words of the city dwellers. Perhaps that was why she left with the slave, abandoned her heritage and family.

Growling, pumping up and down, breathing through his mouth and nose, Tempest felt fury rising in the pit of his stomach. She had never told him about her lover, her child, but he had seen them. Was he jealous? Perhaps, the notion had occured to him one gloomy night, gargoyle-like on the roof of their home. His desire to wet his claws in the slave's blood may not have been entirely motivated by disgust.

It was confusing, the thoughts were not entirely his own. Sometimes he thought they were the product of a different Zith, a different creature. What he felt for his sister was hard to dwell on, too hard to think about. Hissing the thoughts out his nose and mouth, the Zith continued to push his muscles toward a screaming agony, beyond the point of exhaustion.

He had to be stronger, better, more able to defend both himself and his sister. As Zith went, he was strong, but his skills were lacking.

And in lieu of a sparring partner he trained his body, pushed it to become larger, stronger.

In place of thoughts, these repetitious muscle contractions would serve to abate the confusion.