" You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire."
A
t first everything passing quickly underneath them appears peaceful, quiet and calm as the day dies around the world. A herd of bison run across grasslands while they low mournfully at the dragon swooping too low over their young. The river runs through Fable's shadow like a glistening snake soaking up the last of the sunlight. Fields of flowers look like nothing more than a flock of jungle birds, grounded and lost in a strange land. Everything looks different from the golden cage, lovely but almost obscure. Isra doesn't think she ever wants to forget this feeling of soaring over the world like a cloud. Fable thinks he could carry his unicorn and her family to the ends of the world if it meant nothing would ever harm them again. Both think that Michael's hair was not made for flying.
There is white hair everywhere. It's tangling in the golden bars, stinging against her face like a net of needles. Birds are flying around them, plucking strands that have blown loose from the air. Isra watches them and thinks that one strand would make a fine nest. She laughs but the sound of it is smothered by hair. It sticks to her teeth each time she tries to open her mouth. But finally she manages to press her face to the bars so that she might yell without drowning in a sea of hair. “This will not do.” What is left of her voice is carried away on the wind rushing around Fable's wing.
Fable turns towards the sea and this time they all seem small when the mountains reach up below them. There are still traces of the tidal wave below them, trees wearing thin blankets of moss, and ships dashed in places they should not be. It's to one of those ships that Fable starts to fly, where a sail waves tattered and bleached in the moonlight. Once he's close enough he tugs the sail free as it flies past. It whips against the golden bars. Isra smiles from where she's hiding from all that white hair. With nothing more than a thought she changes that sail to a scarf, as blue as Michael oft hidden eyes and she decks it with tassels that remind her of the tall grasses where they first met. “Here.” She laughs as she uses her telekinesis to pull the scarf to them and starts to twine up Michael's hair.
This time when she speaks she does not taste hair between her teeth and her eyes are not watering with the onslaught of it. Fable hums this approval. He turns towards the city.
His hum becomes a roar and the cage shakes with the sound of it.
Spirals of smoke are rising from Denocte, dark against the shine of the moon. Isra's heart breaks even as it reforms into something like sharp steel, jagged and vicious. She wants to howl her fury to the night like a wolf, like an entire pack of wolves have made themselves a home in her chest. They fly closer and smoke starts to burn her lungs each time she breathes. Fable lowers towards a taller building and he's careful not to crash his passengers into the stone when Isra rises and leaps out of the cage towards the building's roof. The cage slams shut with a clang louder than the sound of her hooves crashing against stone.
She lands, and Fable rises back to the sky. Isra of course is already turning, but she looks up just once at Michael and her dragon. “I need you to go the other fire.” Her voice is still more howl than sound, but what she's saying is obvious when Fable rises again and turns towards another spiral of smoke. “Stay safe.” And then Isra is gone beneath the shadow of wings.
Once he's close enough to the fire to land, Fable sets his last passenger down. The cage has barely brushed the ground when the door is opening. The dragon barely waits for Michael to emerge before he's gone.
Fable is off to the lake, where he can fill his body with water enough to drown the fires.
@Michael @NightFirefighters | "speaks" | notes: Here, have a dragon to help
