little pilgrim
the Indian's axed your scalp.
the Indian's axed your scalp.
It had felt almost traitorous, her relief when Caine - when anyone known, she told herself - had landed behind her. Wasn’t she brave enough, wasn’t she old enough, to be able to manage alone? But a wiser part of her said that it was alright, to find comfort where you could, when the world might be ending.
So she had summoned up a smile, when he spoke, and tried her best not to look afraid - no matter that it always ended with her looking arrogant, instead.
It was hard to keep track of how much time had passed (time seemed thinner, here, like moonbeams through your hands, or maybe thicker, like tar) especially with the awful heartbeat of those berries. But the sudden silence woke her up, shivering in the night, stamping and shifting and nervous with the other horses gathered at the end of that long black bridge. Elif was far enough back, then, that the ivy on the wall was indistinct; when the pearls began to fall it only sounded like soft, strange rain. When the breeze shifted, dried leaves and scattered petals and seed-pearls swept along the bridge and into the water, and Elif tried to guess what it meant.
She did not have to wait too long.
First there came a wind - a strong gust that scuttled the remaining leaves across the bridge with the sound of rattling bones, that scuffed up the surface of the wave and ruffled her feathers and tore at her short hair. Behind it was a breeze that smelled of strange things - sand, but not the kind she knew, and deep-green trees, and the tang of magic.
When she leapt to the air, she found (with relief) that it was not too thick to fly in, that nothing kept her back. The wall was gone; the island laid before her, blue sky, blue water, swaying quiet trees, and something in the middle that seemed to glow and pulse like a heart. Even from above she could hear the birds calling out to one another in no tongue she recognized.
Elif did not yet descend. She hung in the air, uncertain, not wanting to be alone.
STAFF EDIT***
@elif has rolled a 1! She has been awarded +40 signos.
