a torrid love affair.

Oh, my tongue's the only muscle in my body that works harder than my heart Korri's head was full as he flew southward. He had walked a considerable distance on his own. Watching the sky dance above him as he traversed tundra, watching the mountains rise in his vision, watching the wind sweep snow back and forth. But eventually, he had launched himself skyward to the part of the world where he was most comfortable. He was nimble in the air, swift and untouchable, a fleeting golden light racing just ahead of morning. He might have been happy if not for the absence of his raven still gnawing at his chest every time he breathed in. Every time he glanced back hoping to see her and seeing only empty sky. Skimming low over the mountains: watching the forest pass below. Watching winged things rise from it but never his winged thing. Maybe he would go on to Halyven and ask Kiada about Helovia. He wasn't sure he ought to ask the leads just yet. Maybe he should seek out Baal again and see how she was settling in. If she had learned anything. Or maybe he should just go, approach regions unknown, make himself a new name and a new personality... Korri became dimly aware of the noise as he flew. It was a distant roar at first, like a beast in pain. But it kept up. Unceasing. And in the back of his mind, he knew what it was. That particular sound had embedded itself permanently in his brain, so he recognized the rush of water even from a distance. Even without thinking. Korri turned his gaze downward as he flew, until he was on top of the noise and on top of the water and he saw it was a waterfall, red and toxic in appearance. Angry. He slowed his flight as he passed it, and banked around until he was circling lower and lower. His ears pricking as finally the sound of a voice reached him above the water. As he spied something — something — gamboling about the banks of the river below. A shudder went through him. A cold feeling Korri recognized as fear but which gripped him so rarely, and never so completely, that he almost didn't recognize it. That he almost turned and flew away, because whatever was running around down there was dangerous (he knew this he knew this in the very depths of his brain where instinct spoke without hesitation). But then he realized he was afraid, and the realization annoyed him, and he banked around and landed near the top of the falls, instead. Too near the roar of water but far enough from the... thing below. His neck craned down, Korri blinked at it. At the strange edge it walked between beautiful and terrible. Like an apparition. Like a ghost, or a god, except too small and not quite terrible enough to be a god. He watched it for some time, wondering. His wings folded slowly at his sides and then he called out, in a perfectly cheerful voice, as if the thing looked normal and he was not at all afraid and he had really only just spied her from his vantage point. "Hello!" Here, a brief pause. Here, a subtle tensing of the muscle of his shoulders. As if he expected the thing to somehow make it up to him in a matter of seconds. As if he expected the need to escape. But he continued talking as if he were not afraid, his eyes riveted on the unnatural shape. Korri found that now he'd seen it he couldn't take his eyes away. "Do you live here?"

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@Miin