Orion

Paired for life with Aquarius.

***

To learn the magic of the winds that cross Sornieth is to listen. They whisper over the serene steppes, howl through the cleft hilltops, sing through the reeds, and to the astute ear, they tell the stories of their travels. A gale gossips about the heat wave a hundred miles away; a breeze flirts with a caress of a cheek, holding tomorrow's tempest behind its back.

The first lesson taught to novice wind mages is an idiom of wings and hurricanes. Every caress of a breeze across a cheek or a lifting updraft pressed hard into a dragon's wings is but a moment in the middle of a journey, a link in a chain of events, a spark in an unfurling chaos that began with the dawn of Sornieth itself. Thus, they are taught awareness, the acumen to trace every action back to its source, to anticipate intersections and interruptions, to consider every aspect of their environment when they work. So, too, are they taught of consequences, and the responsibility they have for the stewardship of their workplace (and, of course, wherever the wind mage can breathe is their workplace).

To learn the magic of the winds is to sit in quiet contemplation before a mill, taking mental note of every gear spinning in the machine, churned by the power of even the slightest stirs of the air. It means taking in every component piece of the machine and building a mindset, a worldview wide enough in scope to accommodate it. And then, it is to fly high above the land, through the clouds, and apply this mindset to all of Sornieth. To watch the boiling air above the Ashfall Waste whisk its summery heat to the domain of the Gladekeeper and catch a swirl of leaves, then whistle through the Crystalspine Reaches to eventually sink into the dense drafts rolling out from the Southern Icefield; thusly, it is to know just where to flap one's wings to bring a needed rain to the fields of the Millmeadows in the center of it all.

When Orion began his study of the winds, he often considered, lying on the dusty wooden floor of a mill, the currents that carried him to the clan of Respite. With no memory of his infancy, he relies on the stories he is told; tumbling playfully through the tall grass into the borders of a newly-established clan, he landed at the feet of its founder, and instinctively, he nuzzled into her warm, fluffy coat as if he were her own child. He exhales, feeling the cold of the mill. It is spring, but winter digs its claws into the ground on its way out. His mother hibernates still. He is alone, and when he grows restless in the dark mill, he flies in circles outside just to watch the clouds roll past, pretending he is the gear driving them across the sky.

In time, Orion would make for himself a place in his clan; in fact, his clan grows with him at its center. He flies high, and when stray dragons catch a glint of the sun or stars glittering over his iridescent scales, they sometimes follow, just to ask him what he's up to. And he tells them all the same thing: to learn the magic of the winds that cross Sornieth is to listen. He has been collecting the stories carried along on the currents and gales, and over fires and under the stars, he will gladly tell them to anyone with a ready ear.