Starthroat
(#37193893)
A Careful Alchemist
Dawn
Mesacliff Harpy
Click or tap to view this dragon in Predict Morphology.
Energy: 0/50
This dragon’s natural inborn element is Arcane.
Female Imperial
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Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Scene
Measurements
Length
22.51 m
Wingspan
15.37 m
Weight
5880.03 kg
Genetics
Pearl
Iridescent
Iridescent
Mist
Shimmer
Shimmer
Mist
Runes
Runes
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 25 Imperial
Max Level
STR
120
AGI
10
DEF
5
QCK
64
INT
5
VIT
26
MND
5
Lineage
Biography
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STARTHROAT She is cheerful, friendly, and helpful. Seems out of place here. There must be something wrong with her under all that. |
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The imperial’s name is Star. Her feathers are emblazoned with dragonfly wings and Lisianthus flowers to show that she is a trained alchemist. Her hair is cropped short. One of her antlers is half the length of the other. She has been living in this clan for barely a month, as an extended guest, not a member. They found her lodged between two boulders amidst an old ruin under a picturesque sunset sky, trembling in her sleep. There was nobody else around. When they woke her up from her nightmare, the first thing she saw was a dragon looking down at her. She recoiled. She thought it was her mother. When she didn’t recognise her, she relaxed. “We have food and rooms for travellers,” the skydancer told her. “You look like you could use some rest. Come.” She was so weak that, on the way, the skydancer’s guardian offered to carry her. She fell asleep again on the stranger’s back, and it took her two days of drifting between lethargic nightmares and bleary insomnia to roll out of the cotton blankets they had swaddled her in, and gulp down a small meal the skydancer offered her. The current arrangement is that Star is working for her room. A few times a week, she tosses together a mediocre meal. She also brews watery potions and runny salves to treat the mundane everyday ailments that can’t be resolved by magic. Her ineptitude does not go unnoticed. The skydancer criticizes her often. She appears at random times when Star is hunched over her fold-out alchemy table, fiddling with different-size vials over a bottle stand, trying to work. “Your potions are weak. They hardly have any effect,” she’ll say. Or, “Shouldn’t you be measuring that more carefully?” Star swallows her desire to retaliate. Instead, she fantasizes about throwing one of her potions into the skydancer’s face. It wouldn’t hurt her, of course. They’d hardly have any effect. As for her cooking, she gets no feedback at all. She lays dishes out in the great hall, and dragons appear from behind curtains and closed doors to take their share away on a plate. They vanish before even taking a bite. Sometimes, the castle seems so empty that a panic sits in, and she finds herself frantically scouring random hallways until she sees another dragon. This is still better than what she had at home. She tells herself this often when she is in her new room, sipping on fragrant tea made with moor thistle and jasmine. It’s a way to try to trick herself into feeling content without the aid of alchemy. The days are steady and monotonous. They’re all the same. She sleeps when the dim candles in the great underground hallways go darker at night, and stays in bed until she starts to ache. Then she rolls out from under the covers, sinks down into the cushion by her brother’s alchemy supplies, and tries to learn something from borrowed textbooks and handwritten notes. If she doesn’t feel like thinking too hard that day, she’ll turn to devouring pagefuls of flowery romances and melodramatic tragedies. Anything to stifle the ennui. Time passes in a hazy lull. Often, she will be jolted by a paralysing wave of déjà vu. She can’t get used to these moments. They remain intense and unsettling. She is still a student of alchemy. She is still berated and criticised for her failure. Everything still feels dull. Sometimes, she still fantasizes about flying blindly into an unknown horizon, despite her newfound terror of the wilderness. Even her dreams are the same. They take place at home, as if she hasn’t left at all. The dreams happen almost every night. There are nightmares, but not always. Tonight, she is spiralling wildly in the Starwood Strand. She tears through the whistling treetops, fearlessly snapping branches with every wingbeat, shielded from pain by an alchemical high. There are cheers from the ground below. As a finale, she folds her wings and plummets, catching herself just before she lands. The stunt throws a gust of vibrant air into her audience, enough to knock her brother onto the ground. He leaps back onto his feet with an exuberant cheer. The effervescent crowd of friends around him brush the dust off his feathers and pat him on the back. They don’t make fun of his small wings, or his broken leg. Not when he’s lucky enough to have a sister like Star. When she falls awake, her wings will be twitching and dreamy laughter will be burbling out of her throat. It takes her a moment to shake the heat out of her skin, sober up for the dreary present, and remember what an awful, awful, dragon she is. In the mornings after the good dreams, Star finds herself laying her head on the table and staring at the smoke-grey pouch of herbs that was in her rucksack on the evening she was found. It contains valerian root, amaranth, blue entoloma, and a variety of other dried leaves and powders that she cannot name because the jars they came from were never labelled. There is enough there for her to brew at least a day’s worth of bliss. This is the only potion she understands. It is of her own invention. She developed it, night after night, ingredients illuminated by only the candle under the potion stand. She made adjustments, tested different versions, even scrawled ideas and observations on loose scraps of brown packing paper. She did not count leaves or weigh powders. She used pinches or handfuls instead of grams and millilitres. The formula is memorised by her fingertips. Some nights, she could sit at the table and daydream and the potion would be there. Effortless. She never lit any lanterns. Her mother wouldn’t have understood. Her mother would have considered it poison. It started as an imitation of one of her mother’s sedatives. A few drops were good as an aid for sleep. A cup would be enough to calm a wounded dragon while they were being stung by poultices or burned by restoration spells. The version she brewed was a dark amber colour. It had a burnt, sour, smell. Her brother’s was pale green, transparent, and odourless, just as her mother described it an hour before. “You’d deserve whatever happens to you if you drank that poison,” her mother scoffed. “You imbecile. Get out.” She did. She slammed the door behind her as loudly as she could, and stormed away. The carpeted floors muffled her stomping, so she slammed her fists against the walls every few steps, just to make a point. She ended up in the garden, sprawled out on the ground, tearing apart bits of grass with her fingers. The sky was dark and grey that day. She drank the potion. It tasted like ashes and copper and lemon rind. Unpleasant, but not unbearably so. Nothing happened at first. She felt calm. She laughed a little. Tendrils of golden warmth crawled over and burrowed into her skin like snakes made of sunshine. Not such a broken potion after all, she thought dreamily. Then the tremors started. There were a few clattering spasms in her legs at first, then her tail, then a flap of her wings. She should be afraid, right? This was terrifying. She was probably dying. Instead, all she felt was curiosity, as if she were outside herself. Like watching an ant wither under a magnifying glass, but with the extraordinary sensory detail that comes from being the ant. Then there was a sudden rush of manic, scarlet energy. Star rose to the air with the intention of hurling herself into rainbow of aerial stunts, but an orange wind threw her back down. Her landing was an electric flurry of feathers, followed by twenty minutes of raw yellow retching into a bed of her mother’s nightshade plants. Star woke up to the vague feeling of movement. Her mother was standing over her, shouting and shaking her by her antlers. She snickered. Her mouth tasted like copper. It didn’t hurt. Her mother was pulling her hair and throwing claws into her cheeks but it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt! How could that be? The smoke-grey pouch sits innocently on the table. Star hates the way she is anticipating the sourmetal taste. She tries to rationalise: The taste she is imagines is an idealised, sweeter version; she only has enough to brew a day’s worth, so she should save it. Star covers her eyes with her claws. She needs to force herself to hate it. She needs to think of her brother. Instead, the skydancer appears. “Not studying today?” she asks. “No,” Star replies. “Why not?” “Not feelin’ it,” she grumbles. The skydancer narrows her eyes. After a small, uncomfortable silence, she says, “Aracari has a headache. Can you brew something?” Star heaves her cheek off the table, sighs, and gets to work. The skydancer doesn’t leave. She just sits down and watches her work, antennae drifting as if floating in a breeze. Unnerved by thought of skydancer omniscience, Star has been eating a pulpy concoction of mashed herbs to guard her mind from the pale, probing gaze: one bowl when she wakes up, and another after she eats dinner. She hopes she has the recipe right. “You’re using lot of water. I’m not sure those leaves are that potent.” Star closes her eyes for a moment and takes a breath before answering. “Alchemy is subtle.” “There’s subtle, and then there’s useless.” “Better useless than poisonous,”she snaps. The skydancer glares at her with an expression of suspicion and disappointment. It brews a resentful fury in the pit of her stomach. “Sorry,” Star whispers. She is pulled back to her mother’s alchemical study, where the feeling used to be steeped every morning, over iron pots and glass beakers. “Too much,” her mother would hiss. “It’s supposed to be white, not gold. Useless! What did you do?” “I don’t know,” Star yelled back. “How am I supposed to do anything when you’re always staring at me like that?”’ “Your brother can do it,” her mother said, grabbing a fistful of hair and pushing her face towards his beaker. “Why doesn’t yours look like that? Why are you so worthless?” During those arguments, her brother would keep his eyes glued to his own beaker. He said nothing. After the lessons ended though, he would always find her, with a kite or a board game tucked under a wing, and a cup of fragrant tea in his hands. “It’s moor thistle and jasmine. They’re calming ingredients.” When the tears come late at night, after the candles are out, they’re about him. He surfaces in the sharp clarity of lucid insomnia, in moments when she does not dull her wakefulness with trashy novels. Her brother hatched four days after she did. They said that the others had wanted to bury him, but their mother had refused. There is no rot, she had insisted. There is no rot and so he must be alive. She had spent four days rubbing salves into his shell and filling the nesting cave with a haze of herbal smoke while other dragons took care of Star. She has a faint memory of crawling towards the fragrant egg and nestling herself between the smooth, warm shell and her mother's velvety feathers. When he finally struggled out, he was small and fragile, and bleeding where bits of shell had stuck to his skin. His wings seemed like they were too small for his body. One of his back legs was stiff and bony, and he cried out every time it was touched. He fell asleep while they were cleaning him up with a cotton towel, and it took him another two days to wake up and take his first nibble of food: Strawberry mash with honey and sugarmelon juice, sucked from Star’s fingertips. Two weeks ago, Star had been pouring a syrup of honey and sugarmelon juice onto a platter of overripe strawberries. Her hands had started to shake. Another dragon had to take the bowl from her after she had begun to cough onto the fruit, and tears had begun to drip onto the table. At first, her new clanmates tried to comfort her in the sudden leaks of sorrow. "Are you alright?" one would say. "Would you like some water? A hug?" Another would ask, in a small voice, "Do you want to tell me about it?" She thanked them and shook her head and told them she just needed to be alone. They did not push. Back then, the skydancer did not push either. She would bring her blankets and firewood, smile, and analyse her with a gentle, probing gaze. Star would smile back and get away as soon as possible. She thought she could feel her slithering around her mind. The questions began after Star alchemically blocked her. Today, she asks, "What happened to your antler?" "I banged my head against something," Star says. "An accident?" "Yes," she says, "an accident." From the way the skydancer is looking at her, Star can tell she knows she's lying. What had really happened was that her mother had thrown her against the floor so hard that her antler had cracked. It was too humid that day, there were insects everywhere, and she had a mosquito bite right on her palm that itched worse every time she picked up a beaker. She felt good, though. She was charged up on half a bottle's worth of alchemical delight, and was too in awe of the dust specks adrift in the sunbeams to be paying attention to her mother's instructions. Her potion did not pop or foam that day, and there were no unusual smells spilling out of it. She was cautiously permitted to administer it to a delirious harpy. Nothing happened. "Figured," her mother hissed, "Another useless piece of work." The harpy her brother fed had calmed down, and was staring at him with droopy eyes and a lolling tongue. A few hours later, when she was laying on the floor in her room doing nothing, her mother stormed in and threw a dead harpy onto her bed. It was beginning to grow stiff, landing with its feet outstretched into the air. "This is not what alchemy is for!" her mother screamed, grabbing her by the hair. "Alchemy is healing! I did not raise a poisoner!" She pushed her hard enough to throw her halfway across the room. Star fell backwards and landed on her left antler. Pain tore through the side of her face. A shriek ripped through the house. Her mother stared in horror. "Look! Look at you," she shrieked. "Look at what you've made me do!" After she left, Star lay down beside the cold harpy. She did not cry. Her face was beginning to grow stiff. She stayed there until her brother came. He took the harpy away, and returned a cup of tea: jasmine and moor thistle. As she drank, he dabbed the crack in her antler with a poultice that made it tingle and go numb, and carefully cut the broken part loose. "You look gnarly," he said, "Like a scarred adventurer." Star managed a small laugh and handed him a pair of garden shears. "Want to cut my hair short too, to complete the look?" "But-" "And so that Mom has nothing to grab a hold of," she murmured. The next day, she woke up with her mother standing over her. "That suits you," she said. “You look as ugly as you act. Don't come to the study anymore.” She glared at Star’s wings. “You don’t deserve my tattoos.” After the lessons ended, the days mellowed out into a steady, uneventful monotony. She slept until noon, and stayed awake under the blankets, daydreaming, until she began to ache from keeping still. Most days, she didn't feel like thinking. She sulked about the house, searching in vain for things to stifle her ennui. All the books were field guides or planting almanacs or alchemical theories. She fantasized about leaving one day. She imagined herself dropping out a window, and flying blindly into an unknown horizon. "Do you really want to go exploring instead of doing alchemy?" her brother asks, “Aren’t you scared of what’s out there?” "I'd do anything but alchemy," she tells him. "I don’t think anything out there is scarier than Mom.” “But being alone is scary. There’s nobody around to help you if anything happens.” “Then you’d better come with me,” she jokes. She knows she is alone before she wakes up. It is cold and empty and too quiet. The crackling hearth has flattened into a muted pile of ashes. Nobody is around. She nudges at the corners of her eyes with a finger to wipe away phantom tears. She needs to go back. She decides this as she is finishing her morning herbal mash. She needs to go to the cottage and find her mother and tell her and endure the beating and the screaming because she deserved it. Because she is an awful, awful dragon that took her brother to a barren desert and killed him. “I have to go,” she tells the skydancer. “I have to go back. I have to. I don’t need my things I just. I have to go.” “Do you know the way?” “No, I just…” A desperate fury churns in the pit of her stomach. “I just… I have to go, I have to…” She backs away, then turns and tears down the hallway. Her footsteps pound against the stone floors. The door cracks like thunder behind her. She is back in her room. Tea. She needs tea. She lights the candle under bottle stand to boil water. She tears apart bits of jasmine and moor thistle and shoves them down the neck of a bottle. The first gulp is scalding. The coughing is violent. Her eyes water and there are needles in her throat. “Are you alright?” “Damn it!,” Star cries, “Why do you do that? Why do you need to watch everything I do?” The skydancer seems stunned. “Just go, get out! Leave me alone!” Star screams. “I’ll find you a map,” she says. The walls are cold and grey and it’s empty and dark and quiet and Star realises she will be all alone when she leaves there is nobody around there will be nobody around it will be dangerous because her brother will not be there her brother will not Her brother is not is not here "You've always wanted to go on an adventure," his voice says. "So let's go. It won't be dangerous because we'll be together." Her hands are wet and salty and slippery She needs to stop stop remembering She needs to stop remembering the day he died The day he died, they were ambling over the hard stone terraces of the Shattered Plain, back the way they had come three days ago. They hid from the harsh sunlight by walking in the long shadows cast by the drooping evergreens hanging over the edges of the Tangled Wood. The Pillar of the World rose to the West. There was no need for a map or compass. Her brother had managed to fit all the basic elements of an alchemy set into his bag: A compact, fold-out table, bowls, a mortar and pestle, a full set of different-size vials, two beakers, a bottle stand and candles to fuel it, and a small folder filled with handwritten notes. He was also carrying four pouches of ingredients. Three were dedicated to the unfamiliar fungi and strange-smelling leafy herbs that they had collected during their trip. Star’s rucksack contained what was left of their food, and bottles of drinking water. She also had half a bottle of her secret potion left, out of the four she had brewed. She sipped from it whenever her brother wasn’t watching. When he was walking ahead, or stooped over a plant. “You’re so brave,” he said to her on the second day. “I keep looking over my shoulder all the time, like something’s going to jump out.” Star laughed, brimming with artificial optimism. “If something appears, I’ll beat them up for you.” "You've never beaten anything up before," her brother said. “Well, unless you brought one of your healing potions with you.” “Rude!” Star said, knocking him over with a wing. The excursion had been his idea. A week before their mother’s birthday, he told her that he wanted to go collect rare ingredients for her, from beyond the Viridian Labyrinth. "I know you hate her, but you've always wanted to go on an adventure," her brother had said. "So let's go. It won't be dangerous because we'll be together." “Dangerous? I’m not scared,” she huffed. “Okay,” he said, “How about: You won’t get into trouble for sneaking out because we’ll be together.” Star grinned. “Alright, fine.” He had it all planned out. He woke Star up three mornings ago, before dawn, to sneak out. He had left a note outside their mother’s bedroom door promising that they'd be back in four days. Star doused her anxiety with liquid sunshine and followed him out the back gate. At nightfall, they made camp in a crevice in between two small ledges. They lit a blazing fire on bonewood and oil, and talked while their wings baked gently in the heat. “Guess we dawdled,” her brother murmured. “If she’s angry we’re late, I’ll tell her it was my fault.” Star rolled her eyes. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. I think we’re only a few hours walk away. We won’t even be a full day late.” “I know, I know. I just feel bad. I told her four days, not four and half.” “Four days and a few hours,” Star insisted. “It’s fine.” Her brother laughed. “Don’t slap me,” he said, after a pause, “But I kinda miss her.” She slapped him, gently. “Momma’s boy,” she snorted. “But you know, sometimes I wish I had your mother. It must be nice to have someone to miss.” “I wish you had my mom too,” he said. “There wouldn’t be so much yelling all the time.” They lay there for a while. The starry sky above them was framed by the silhouette of the rock walls. Her brother sighed and closed his eyes. Star took a long draw from from her hidden bottle. The warmth that washed over her made her happy and brave. She could feel soft wisps of fire licking her back. The dusty night air smelled like strawberries. She wanted this to last forever: Her and her brother together, a crisp night full of twinkling stars, with a blazing fire, and sunshine snakes crawling in her skin. She stood up. “Hey. Can I tell you a secret.” “A secret?” he murmured, rolling onto his elbows. “Yeah. Nobody else knows about this. You’ll be the only one, and you have to promise not to tell.” “Who am I gonna tell? Mom?” Star grinned. “Alright, remember that sedative we made around last year? The one that made me throw up all over the nightshades?” “Yeah, of course. Why did you even drink it…” “Nevermind that,” she said, “Give me your bag.” She took it before he could reply, and pulled out several vials, the bottle stand and a candle, and the foldout table. She grabbed ingredients out of her own smoke-grey pouch. She didn’t take out the measuring spoons. She began to work. Her brother watched her as if she were diving through treetops of the Starwood Strand. The attention made her work faster, and with more flourish. She tossed the ingredients into the air and caught them with the beaker. She flipped stoppered vials in the air instead of sedately swirling them with two fingers. For her brother, she used sugarmelon juice instead of water, and added a gooey spoonful of honey. There was no fanfare when the potion was finished. Star made up for it with a dramatic twirl. She presented the bottle of dark amber to her brother with a low bow, as if he were a prince. “Behold! My secret potion,” she said. “It’ll make you fly.” “Right,” her brother said. He sipped slowly at first. “Oh, it’s good,” he said, then took a large gulp. Star watched him, wide-eyed and eager. “You like it? Don’t drink it all at once,” she said. He put the bottle down after draining about half of the potion. Star could see it take effect. His entire body seemed to droop. His expression became placid. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. “Feels like sunshine,” he murmured, “but coming from the inside.” He did a little dance on the spot. “Watch this.” He took to the air and whirred around the camp in a wide circle. His undersized wings buzzed, but they were barely able to lift his feet off the ground. Waves appeared where his tail dragged across the sand. He crashed into the rock wall. Star doubled over laughing. “What are you, a hummingbird?” “Sure!” He said, shaking the dust off of himself. “I’m a hummingbird. The bestest, greatest hummingbird. Buzz buzz.” He picked up the half-full bottle and held it out to Star. “Hold this up. Watch.” Somehow, he got himself back into the air. Star held up the bottle. By some miracle of coordination, he managed to grab the opening with his mouth, but then the miracle ended, and there was a gulp, a clattering, and coughing. Star couldn’t breathe - she was laughing too hard. The bottle, empty, was on the ground. Elixir was dribbling down her brother's chin and chest. It didn’t look like he could breathe either. “You spilled your nectar all over the floor,” Star said. Her brother tried to slap her with his wing, but fell over. Star laughed even harder. There were tears in her eyes. “You bully!” her brother giggled, tackling her. He collapsed next to her. Star draped a cotton blanket over him. He rolled over twice to wrap himself up in it. “You big baby,” she said, before brushing a kiss against his forehead. He swatted at her with a foot. She kissed him again, and lay down beside him. “Star?” he said, after a while. “Are you awake?” “Mmm...yeah?” “Can you hear the stars? They’re twinkling, like windchimes.” Star giggled. “Ding, ding, ding,” she whispered. Her brother didn’t reply. She leaned into his breathing. She could feel the rosy smile on her face. “Goodnight.” Star is sitting in front of her brother's fold-out alchemy table. The candle under the bottle stand is flickering on a lifeboat of wick. There is an arrangement of different size vials in front of her, next to a flask of dark amber. Star hates herself. She holds the trembling flask up to her face and inhales. Her lungs are filled with ash smoke and copper and lemon. It opens its arms like an old friend offering her a warm hug. "Star?" The glass almost slips out of her hands. She whirls around. "I told you to leave me alone!" she snarls, "How long have you been standing there?" “A while,” the skydancer says, “You looked so focused.” Star doesn’t say anything. She holds her temples between her palms, and holds her breath to stop herself from screaming. The skydancer sits down next to her and waits. Star wrings out her lungs. "What does it do?" the skydancer asks her. “Nothing,” Star says. “It’s a drink.” The skydancer takes the bottle and smells it. “Don’t drink it,” Star laughs bitterly. “It’ll hardly have any effect. My potions are useless, remember?” “We’ll see.” Star does not move when the skydancer raises the vial to her mouth. She can only stare. In her mind, she screams at her to stop, but her voice dies on her lips. Star watches in horror as the potion takes effect. The vial is two-thirds drained. The skydancer’s entire body seems to droop. She closes her eyes tight, then opens them again. Her tail flicks twice. Star can pinpoint the exact moment when the skydancer determines that she has been poisoned. Her eyes spark silver. There is a weak fluttering of angry runes in the air. "Wait, I- I didn’t mean-," Star says, shuffling backwards into the stone walls. “How dare you,” the skydancer whispers. But then the runes fall away, and the skydancer folds. Star remembers, suddenly: The skydancer has a guardian. Without thinking, Star lunges forward and tackles her. She loops her arms around the skydancer’s head to clamp her mouth shut between her elbows. There is a frantic fluttering of cerulean feathers and dragonfly wings and lisianthus flowers. Under the folds of her robes, the skydancer is bony and small. Star pins her to the ground with ease. She doesn’t struggle for longer than a few minutes. Eventually, she holds still, but there is an involuntary jitteriness in her wings and tail. Then her expression becomes placid and she goes limp. Star stays on top of her, breathless and staring in horror. The skydancer feels warm, like a sun-soaked stone. The panic sets in. Star clings to the skydancer’s head, and presses close to listen. She’s still breathing, and there is a slow drumbeat in the skin under her jaw, yet Star is sure, positive, that she will die. She has to run. She can't move. She has to run. She has to get out. It has to be in the middle of the night, when the candles go out. She can't be seen. They'll punish her. Star has poisoned their leader and now she is dead. They will tear her apart. "You deserve it," her mother's voice says. Her brother was a white cotton cocoon. Star could only see his antlers peeking out of the cloth folds. It was a cloudless, windy morning. She draped her own blanket over him, and stepped out into the sun to gather up a makeshift breakfast. He slept well into the afternoon. They'd be more than a few hours late, after all. She packed up her brother's fold-out table and all the glass vials and beakers, and put them all in her own bag. There was no more food, and only enough of her own alchemy ingredients to brew a day's worth of her amber bliss. She had room. An hour later, Star shakes him gently. "Up, up, up," she said in a singsong voice, "We are unbelievably late. Better get going." He doesn't move. "I’m not going to carry you. I’m already carrying all your stuff. Come on.” Her brother still does not move. "Wakey-wakey," she said, nudging him harder. "You there?" "Hey... Are you alright...? She balled up a handful of blanket in her hand and yanked. He fell out of the cloth and landed with his feet outstretched into the air. He was beginning to grow stiff. Her mother is standing over her. The hazy orange air smells like sugarmelon and burnt honey. She can feel fire running through her veins. She can’t stop shaking. "Explain." "It was an accident," Star says, "It wasn't supposed to do that. It wasn't supposed to do that much. I should have diluted it. I should have diluted it. I should have. It was an accident, please.” She doesn't look up. She can't. She can't face her. Her trembling fists close around bedsheets and she presses her face into cloth. She braces herself for a punishment she deserves. A blanket is being drawn over her. Star opens her eyes. The skydancer is looking down at her. Her antennae drift as if floating in a breeze. "Damn it," Star murmurs, burying her face back into the bedsheets. "Did you see it all?" she chokes. "Did you see what I did? What I've done? I'm awful. I'm awful..." "I didn't see anything, Star," the skydancer says. “Skydancers aren’t telepathic.” They rest on a grassy cliff, between the crumbling walls of ancient ruins. There is a line of gold, glowing across the horizon. The sunshine in their veins is warm and carefully diluted. Star is laying against a mossy piece of wall marked with faded engravings. Her cheek is resting against the skydancer's velvety feathers. A blue-grey sky stretches above them. "We missed the stars, Wren," she whispers. "Did you know? If you listen, you can hear them twinkling. Like wind chimes." "What about the sunrise?” the skydancer murmurs. “What does the sunrise sound like?" Star inhales a lungful of the lavender wind. "I think... it sounds like... The beating of hummingbird wings." "Hummingbirds?” the skydancer echoes, musing. “There's a bird called the Starthroat Hummingbird. This lair is full of birds, if you wish to stay.”
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Thank you pbirds and glacevoleur, for all the proofreading help! I use and modify layouts and assets made by Necra, PoisonedPaper, and Archaic. |
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