Cypress

She knew her body was resting heavily, could feel the heaviness of it and the cold stone beneath it. But she was also standing upright in the open, the brittle grass beneath her talons. Flexing her wings, she winced with the burning ache of long unused muscles. How had she done this? Could she do it again?

Cypress is a ffriendly, upbeat dragon who is affected by all the magical energies that charge through her. Eccentric might be a bit mild for Cypress, but her heart is good and she makes friends easily. Though her methods are strange, she seems to always accomplish what she needs to through them. A true child of the Windsinger, her spirit is happy wandering the wilds, though her captivity saddens her. She does her best to assist the dragons she comes across in her astral travels. Though she sometimes seems facile and insipid, she’s ferociously bright and always watching and listening. While most of her eccentricity is genuine, she can sometimes put a bit of it on like one of the small tunics she crafts for her frog and toad friends.


Cypress was born with an incredible aura of magic hovering over her. As she grew, it manifested in various ways that her clan found inexplicable and a bit frightening. She might suddenly appear in the boughs of a tree when she’d just been standing in front of someone a heartbeat before. Others in the clan often whispered about her parentage when they spoke of how strange she was. Of course she was odd, they said, it was in the family line to be odd. Cypress’ strangeness, however, seemed to exceed their ability to cope and provide for her. Sensing that, she set off on her own.

As she traveled, she gathered an entourage of frogs and toads, creatures that seemed naturally drawn to her from the mucky safety of their swamps and ponds. She provided for them as they made their way through the wild. As she neared the borders of the Plaguelands, she fell into company with an elderly Imperial from the Shrieking Wilds known only as the Keeper. He did not seem to mind Cypress, her frogs, or her oddness. She, in turn, enjoyed his kindness and his stories. The Keeper carried with him an old, scarred tome with a glowing rune etched into its cover. He said it was the most valuable thing his clan possessed and pressed into its pages were secrets beyond count.

One evening shortly before they might have made camp, they were ambushed and captured by an armored mirror dragon and a pair of guardians that seemed to be under his command. As they were being marched away, the Keeper hastily pressed the tome into Cypress’ hold, rasping that she must protect its secrets now. He told her that she could find things in there that might unlock knowledge about herself and her power. Confused and frightened, Cypress clutched the tome to her, reassuring herself that she and the Keeper would escape.

That was before they had been thrown into the Pit. It was deep and massive, topped with a mesh of woven bone and hide that magically sealed the top and let precious little light trickle down. The Keeper’s health, not tremendously vigorous to begin with, declined precipitously. Before he left to join the Gladekeeper, he again impressed upon Cypress the need to keep the tome safe. Tearfully, she promised him she would.

Smiling, the Keeper said he wouldn’t be surprised if she found a way to see him again, as in touch with energies as she was. And she did seem to feel his presence depart her when he finally died, it was a warm smile and a gentle pat on her shoulder. There were several other dragons in the Pit with her, and with them she made friends as best as she could. On occasion they were lifted from the Pit, but no one ever came for Cypress. Her days passed with regular monotony, and to escape the grim surroundings, she cracked open the tome the Keeper had entrusted to her. One fateful day she read a passage that dropped her body into a heavy sleep, but let her mind wander free. Alarmed, she snapped immediately back to herself. But she had felt, for the briefest instant, the moonlight on her skin with no bones between it and her. It wasn’t long before she found and read the passage again, escaping her confinement. Since the initial discoveries, she has been at work to perfect the art of projecting herself, being able to go farther and farther afield from her physical body and appear in the most unlikely of places.

The shaman of Tva’Kadith badly wants the tome Cypress has been entrusted with, but mistrusts and fears the energies that surround the Wildclaw. It is to Cypress’s advantage that the shaman is still relatively green and has no notion of how to go about taking the tome. However, Cypress
feels a pressing urge to disperse the tome’s secrets and spells throughout Sorneith so that they don’t fall prey to the talons of Tva’Kadith. So she remains in the Pit, her body prone and attended by her circle of frog and toad friends as she takes on her task.






7th Gen Naomi Descendant

Naomi > Willow > Mara > Chasm > Hawks > Fortinbras > Me

art by Michaelaharsh09 1413