Interactive Quest To see never-seen colors and shapes,

Spring was infiltrating the cool winter morning. It filled the air with anticipation, with hope, with the excited uncertainty of new beginnings. Alaunus was eager for the change in seasons, as he was eager for all things. He wanted to see the ocean thicken with shoals of fish come to spawn up the mouth of the Rapax. He wanted the trees to regain their leaves and the air to fill with the scent of their blooms. He wanted to see the newborn fawns, with their big ears and wide eyes, take those first shakey steps.

But most of all, he wanted time to hurry along so that his bonded would regain the use of her wounded wing. It had been months now since the incident that left her land-locked. She had gotten close to flight on numerous occasions, but in the end she always backed out. He did not blame her, of course, feeling through their bond the complex layers of emotion behind her actions. He used his magic to help stitch together broken tissue and encourage new growth, but there were some wounds that burrowed into the heart. Those only time could heal.

It had been something like a week since they last came here, to the salt-flecked cliffs where the wind rose strong and steady. It was not quite dawn and Alaunus was more than happy to wake the rest of the world. He flew low and graceful over the wind-swept cliffside, squawking loudly. Flocks of drowsy terns took flight, roused from sleep by the commotion, and among themselves they chittered angrily. With every flap of his large wings, crickets scattered in the grass below, afraid for their lives. Wake up, wake up, echoed the wind beneath his wings. Today is the day.

Behind him Samaira walked slowly but certainty. She was the picture of calm grace, yet the bird sensed fear and anxiety rippling through the connection between them. He circled round her, rousing more small birds and insects with his flapping and his squawking, before finally coming to rest on her hindquarters. "Is today the day?" He asked her eagerly. They stood at the edge of the cliff, watching the sun begin to color the sky in dramatic shades of burgundy and indigo.

How many times had they stood on those cliffs together? How many times had she said "maybe tomorrow"?

Everything is vulnerable at sunrise. But she stood there until sunrise burned itself and all its frailty up. It burned clear into morning, a bright, beautiful morning, so full of possibility that it almost made you a little sad, knowing you would only ever experience so many of them. It made the large bird’s heart swell with excited certainty.

"Today's the day." He declares as he picks at some loose feathers on himself, and then on her. "I feel it, don't you?" Without speaking further, he reaches out his magic. Pinpricks of heat start at the tip of her wing, where feathers met flesh, and run all the way down to her shoulder. He feels the energy gathering there in a ball of warm golden light that spreads across the joint of her wing. "Stretch," he commands, sending the golden light into the space between muscle fibers, between muscle and tendon, between tendon and bone, and finally into bone itself, in all those hollow spaces between that collagen framework.

The light of his magic is clear and bright, unmarred by shadows of old or current wounds. "Today's the day!" He laughs delightedly, a cawing, heaving sound, and the bond between them glows bright with the strength of his youth and his joy and, most of all, his love. That love bends and sways with his magic like two currents in the ocean, and as he fills her with healing energy it becomes impossible to tell where his love ends and his magic begins, or if there is even any difference anymore.

"Are you ready?" He hops down to stand behind her, flexing his own wings in preparation, in a promise: This and all things, we do together.

the spring wind carries with it an adventure