healing after the haunting

NOITCERRU The mist clutched its secrets tightly, jealously guarding its mysteries from prying eyes. There had to be some logic to this, he was sure. Even in the Rift, there was reasoning, logic - although it was well hidden. The Rift naturally twisted and contorted it all perhaps beyond recognition, wrapping clear thinking in a riddle and then in an enigma. But there was still wisdom to be had in the thoughts, and the residual traces, of long dead gods. If it was there, he wasn't looking for it. He didn't know what he was looking for. Adventure, a kick - a buzz? The birdman was letting the labyrinth decide. The maze's restrictive avenues and tight corners, devoid of space, should have alerted Noitcerru to danger. They should have had him on guard since the moment he had flapped wing in this place, had him looking around search of enemies and predators lurching out of the green gloom. But its twisting pathways was bringing out the intrigue in the birdman. How could it not? The winding corridors hosted nothing but curiosity to him, a promise of something new and exciting and different. These mists could conceal anything. Or nothing. Noitcerru was flying down the wider corridors, ears pricked for any noises. He weaved past the foliage, threading through the forest in lazy circles. So far, nothing. It was as if the very labyrinth was uninhabited, except for the ghosts of the mists, curling around each other in a languid swirl. The pegasus snorted to himself. The mists. That was the only thing here - and it was more than just a normal mist. The green-grey tendrils circled him like a living creature, and when his wings grew still they seemed to cling to him, to move towards him and surround him on all sides as if trying to pin him down. That they were in some way alive he had no doubt, but this felt different to the presence he'd felt at the new portal....different, but by no means more malicious. If this bothered him, it didn't show. Noitcerru looked around every corner with interest, his eyes skimming the screen of vegetation like a child on a treasure hunt, eager for the next clue, for the next mark that he was going in the right direction. Was there a right direction amid all of this? It was cold here, the water dripping off every shoot seeping through to the bone; but nothing could dull his enthusiasm. He would find something to occupy his time. Free from watchful eyes he was almost childlike, his wings flitting from beat to beat in feverish excitement. He was off the ground, free of the hindrance of his withered legs; in the face of danger he could rise out, above the mists, and fly to safety. What did he have to fear? There was nothing but the sweet taste of adventure....or at least for a few hours, before something else entertained him. His attention wandered as easily as he could on the wing. "Why!" Until that happened. The shout carried through the fog and the gloom, disembodied and from all directions at once. The silence that settled in the labyrinthian twists and turns of the mist was suddenly broken, a needle puncturing the tensing stretch of a balloon. Noitcerru looked up, his ears pricking as he looked in all directions. Was that - shouting? Another, in what felt like endless corridors of bamboo and reeds? He hadn't seen any sign of anyone else yet, no indication that another had trodden down this path. Yet there was noise, and the birdman's attention shifted to its anonymous author with an unbearable curiosity. Who was here, out in the middle of nowhere - and crying out? A chirrup of recognition was about to slip past his whiskered mouth - but then the cry was cut off, suddenly and without warning. Noitcerru froze, his feathers prickling uneasily. Instinctively he tried to slow his wings, to minimise his own noise in the growing silence as he strained his ears. Nothing. Nothing, except a quieter murmur of what sounded like someone talking. He turned around on the spot, his wings beating dully in the quiet that followed. All he could see was green - a screen of foliage, glistening in the rain of Drench like jewels. But the noises were close, and the pegasus rose upwards, out of the labyrinth for a moment to head towards the noise. Where he could fly in the corridors themselves he did; where he couldn't he flew low in the mists overhead. But it was obvious where the noise was coming from. There was some sort of black smoke, a dark cloud over one part of the labyrinth like a dark blemish of ink. He could just about manage to fit through the shoots. Some of the bamboo stalks his wings brushed up against had to bend to accommodate him, some snapping outright under his weight. Crack. The sounds of the plants falling in his wake were unnervingly loud in the gloom, striking out in a sharp and jagged barb of noise and further disturbance. But the birdman was willing to be heard, and his eyes were everywhere, trying to penetrate through the rise of smoke here. There was no sign of fire, no sour taste of ash covering his tongue - but smoke there was. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust. What immediately struck him was that one stallion, white with blue streaking down his legs, was see-through. Noitcerru frowned, experimentally dipping his head back and forth. Yes - he could see to the other side, if in vague shapes rather than sharp images. Interesting. But his eyes flitted to the other, the slight one. He was thin and angled, as if scratched into existence, with a dirty mane and tail. He was on the ground, but there was no scene of violence to be had, no wary cry of waging battle. He seemed to have stumbled on something quite different. He kept his eyes on both of them, watching the horses with interest. They could walk and stand and - well, yes, sit in what looked like complete and utter terror. The landlocked. The hoofed. They were a source of immense fascination. He whistled a high trill, a sharp nasal noise. Water dripped down his legs from the endless moisture and he tossed his head, his feathers glistening with beads of water sliding down his frame. "Did not think others came here. Thought this....empty." Puzzlement coated the birdman's thick accent, his voice sing-song and his tones bouncing from one word to the rest as if to a rhythm only he could hear. He treaded air, his wings beating slowly to keep him airborne but otherwise still. He looked between them both, between the terrified one and the...partly see-through one. "'Why!' 'Why!' He imitated the call he heard - not perfectly, with a mimicry distinctly off, as if placed through a synthesiser. He turned his head on one side quizzically - but in curiosity, too. He wasn't quite sure what scene he'd just found himself in, and couldn't help finding it most amusing. "What is this?"  Who'd made the noise? Were they in trouble - lost? Those who came to the mist had to be lost, in Noitcerru's mind. There was no such thing as knowing one's way here, even for the winged amongst them. The maze was the great leveller.   "Talk." @Cielo @Tamlin run boy run this world is not made for you

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