Siren's Summit
Zahra & Ilham
It was pride that turned angels into devils
For a long time, she and Eleos had driven an aimlessly repetitive course between the Rainforest Cliffs, the beach beneath it, and the eerie shadows surrounding the Portal. Through those months, Zahra had unleashed upon the forbearing stallion, the furious, pent-up storm of her emotional torment, long entrenched loneliness and despair surrounding the memories that yet haunted her to the day. Hooves had traipsed endlessly, carving a comfortable and mindless circle, if only for the sake of relieving the frustration wrought below her skin. And her long-suffering companion had followed in staid silence, listening, empathising with only small contribution, for in those early days, the painted orphan had been unreasonable and quite unable to tolerate his broadening perspective.
As the days began to blend into one long blur, however, and the baking, irrepressible heat of Scorch softened into the wet season, Zahra’s sheer wall of stubbornness began to give way to a truer personality; perhaps one that even resembled the free-spirited babe that once had been.
Resistance became acceptance. Bitterness lost all discord. Fear and faithlessness became confidence, restored. By all accounts, a fondness for his company had blossomed within like a rose in the garden green. So the reinvigorated daughter of the Gallant and the Starry-Eyed revealed her knowledge so far about the Rift: firstly the blinking smog at the start which leeched magic and stripped power from the veins of the unsuspecting. She explained that his spear now caught fire, whenever she summoned its full length and that the stunning glassy flight feathers newly fringing each of her wings, was the result of the same, hungry shadow - it was not always cruel.
So too had she enlightened him about the quirks of their strange habitat: the mossy rocks in the rainforest that screamed upon contact, seasonal cherries that defied their very understanding of delicious and trees that would walk, if they stood long enough to see. Zahra taught him how to find Malspira along the sandy foot of the cliffs and then teased his sense of logic forward, luring him to paddle beyond the safety of the shore. She’d laughed at his vain attempts to stay afloat, and louder still with unbridled delight as he discovered the unnatural ability to breathe underwater - without the plant’s maturing leaves, she’d informed sternly, they would surely have drowned.
Neither truly enjoyed the single stint out to sea, however, and pottered afterwards at length along the soft salt-licked beach.
But the curse that Zahra had acquired, long before she’d discovered Eleos, quickly became unbearable. After the umpteenth inflation of her body, she ’d convinced the stoic stallion to travel north beside her, into the little-known region of the Western Mists. After much deviation and countless times lost, they’d arrived upon the swampy skirt of Siren’s Summit. The voice which had readily greeted her request for bone-headgear (place for beloved Ilham to thread a web in which to live), had insisted that she find it and craft from the skin of a resident walking pine, something… anything; and too, the instances of ballooning would cease. So it began: the relentless pursuit to ensure the painful tree.
As she paused between two rocks and nudged at the twiggy timber angled over their top, light laughter bubbled in her throat. “I haven’t seen a Velella for months…” she mocked cheerfully, for the creature was an ocean skimmer, sliding above the waves like a bulging sail in the wind; there was no sea around here…
“We can ask for something each,” the mare continued, pressing the matter as she fumbled for the spear that lay on the fragrant soil. Her teeth clasped the curve of its cold metal base and she lifted up her face. “Do it!” she urged around the deceptively short weapon. With a click, it extended and ignited with flames. Zahra threw it awkwardly, frantically, towards the fringe of trees between them and the net. “Fingers crossed!” she shouted after, eyeing each stationary timber narrowly - one of them would run…
@Eleos
Trial Note: Zahra is trying to catch the Pinus ambulo :P
