Elchanan GOOD SENSE COMES THE HARD WAY
It’s really not any stranger than Home. When Elchanan had first taken off for the island he had been excited, but apprehensive, too; when the natives discussed it they did so in voices that trembled both with awe and fear, and his curiosity had overtaken him but he had thought, too, it might be dangerous. (He had snorted, thinking of the white scar down his face, the patches of blue on his shoulders. Thinking of the way he could turn them all to snow. What could they know about danger?)
They made it sound dangerous. They whispered about the way the island was made from a volcano’s mouth, how it was filled by birds with jewels for eyes. How the whole jungle trembled with the song of wild cats. How deep in the veins of the thing, underneath the sand and leaves and soil, magic roiled and bubbled and spat like an ocean of its own, threatening always to break the surface, just for fun. They were scared. They didn’t know what to think. And Elchanan didn’t, either — only knew that he had to go see it.
But as he alights upon the bone-white sand in a whoosh of easy, pale wings, it is not danger that comes to his mind but beauty. His breath comes out in an awed rush. The beach is littered with opalescent rocks and shells, fading footprints washed away by waves somehow both clear and greenish. A dense, glossy-dark jungle sprawls out to the very ends of the earth, towering high against a bright-blue sky; birds go wheeling through the salty air, chittering aimlessly to one another. Elchanan stands with his narrow hooves in the shifting white sand and tilts his head up into the clear sky, watching with a smile so faint it might be a mirage.
The archpriest starts to move deeper into the island. It has not made an appearance for quite a while, but in the presence of potential danger now seems as good a time as any — he ruffles his feathers, shifting his shoulder joints, and with a loose telekinetic hand pulls the gold staff from its hiding to place to hang at his side. Its weight is a familiar comfort in his mind.
Especially as he shoulders his way through the first patch of undergrowth and his pulse picks up, just the slightest bit.
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