elif
It was the keening of the jackals that woke her, carried clear across the sweep of sand on the cold desert night. There was nothing to stop the sound of it and it echoed like a mourning wail through the pre-dawn streets of Solterra.
Elif, who did not sleep well in the empty house that echoed much as the desert did, stirred from her pallet and stepped to the open window. She brushed aside the curtain that fluttered there, a gauzy blue to keep the sand and sun out but let the breeze in, and looked out.
The night was black or silver, the starlight a blessing after so many nights of snow. It limned the buildings faintly, and torches flickered far away, but she could see no one on the streets from her second-floor vantage point. Still the jackals cried their ululating wail, and Elif tucked her wings and began to turn away.
That’s when the night split open.
She had seen shooting stars before, but never anything like this - a comet that carved a red path through the dark sky, low enough that it looked like it might crash into the city gates. She fell to stillness, her drowsy mind amazed that such a vivid thing could be utterly silent, and watched it arc away. She was sure she would see it collide, was sure the world would be rent by fire and noise - but it only vanished. For a moment she thought she could see the dark of the mountains against its brightness - surely that was foolishness, for when she closed her eyes the imprint of light was still there like a crimson kiss on each eyelid.
Elif stood poised as on a cliff for the length of a heartbeat, and before she could decide against it she stepped out onto her balcony and into the cold bite of the air. Another breath and she was leaping, wings spreading, aloft to follow the path of the star.
-
By dawn she was sure she’d made a terrible mistake.
Her half-dreaming flight had brought her to the tangle of Abigo caves, where half the rock glimmered as though it remembered being a star. For the moment she remained on the outside (for how would a star fall within?) but she was no mountain-goat; each foray further up the mountain was unsteady even with her wings acting as balance.
She was alone, save for the wind that howled through holes in the rock, a song far prettier but just as mournful and strange as the jackals’.
But then - ah! Just as the light turns pearl and pink, her gaze finds an indent like a crater in the dark stone of the mountain. A hole like a blast - like the mark from a falling star. It is too small of an opening, too uncertain of an entrance; Elif will have to find another.
It has not yet dawned on her that her first foray from Solterra might not be to the safest of places for a girl only just grown, and tired, and alone.
open to any! tagging @Ard and @Erd for ghost (?) adventures!
