"Elif," she calls herself, although he can hardly hear over the rush of wind. The name lodges in his mind. There is something strangely familiar about it that puzzles him. He juggles the sounds, and the letters that make up the sounds, and grins even wider in pride as he realizes- Elif. The same letters as life, just a little mixed up. It feels like he's solved a puzzle, although he thinks that proper puzzles ought to have prizes.
She's pulling ahead of him toward the great mountain, and although neither of them had said the word race, that is most certainly what this feels like. He flaps his great wings hungrily, but they were built for gliding, and with every beat he pays careful attention for an updraft to catch. Even being in second and last place (for now) he can't help but to grin widely. Partly because he's got a nice view of her from here, but mostly he's just happy to be airborne. On the ground his height chafed his pride constantly- he was almost always the shortest person in the room, or the bar, or the great hall. But up here in the air, his small stature is a boon. With his large wings he can do acrobatics as good as any raven, and if he has the mind to he can make himself very small and plummet to earth not unlike a falcon. He does not often have the mind to, of course, because he is not, by nature, a risk taker-- unless there is an audience.
The mountain lies quite evenly between him and the horizon. He spreads his wings as wide as possible and catches the wind, lets it vault him up and forward in a delicious rush of speed. He wants to say something to his new companion-- his new friend-- but anything he would say ("Nice night, eh?" "Are we racing?") seems unnecessary. Anyway, the wind is too loud and fierce to hear much of anything else. So he simply hollers at the sky, and in response the wind squeezes tears from his eyes and whips his short mane against his neck.
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@Elif finally! sorry for the wait <3 (continued from here)
