The Elitra: Book One

Chapter Eleven

She screamed, her voice getting caught in the currents. It was sucked from her throat and she was spinning and turning and watching as the treetops that looked like tufts of grass along a new landscape now looked like sharp spikes that were waiting to impale her.

At the last moment she was grabbed around her waist; luckily and unfortunately, by Faelin's talon's.

"Where did you get those stones? Everything was taken from you people when we conquered you," he shouted.

She had to twist to look up into his steely expression. The glares of light from the set suns cast his fast in eerie shadows.

"They were in the castle," she said. She didn't want to be dropped again, and in the event he let her crumble to the ground or missed getting her, she didn't want to chance either.

The only sound she could hear was the flapping of Faelin's large copper wings. The feather's seemed to whisper against one another with a smooth scrapping sound. It was an eerie sound that matched the look on his face cast by the fallen night.

"Where?" he asked and shook her with bends in his knees as he brought them up to his waist.

"The king's study," she mumbled. When she felt his claws loosening, this time she was careful to pay attention with his grip on her, she shouted up to him. "In the king's study!"

"Are there more stones in the study?" he asked.

"Yes!"

Faelin grew silent above her but instead of hovering there and thinking over what she had said he turned and flew off in the direction of the mountain. To the village she said was on its base.

Silistra only had one moon which rose every few days. It was always bright, and always full. She was waiting to see the moon, it having not risen for some time, it would be soon or the next day's night when she would see it again. It was a beautiful moon of a pale blue luminescence that seemed to have an ethereal glow around it. It was one of the few celestial powers they worshipped as a land. But when the Thracian's came in, all of their religious artifacts and temples were burned and taken away from them.

Airena hadn't seen any even in the room she had been. They'd left the decoration on the ceiling and the blue furniture but had been very distinct about making sure their celestial gods were gone.

Even though by flying with Faelin's ability, the short time it took them to get to the mountain's base, the suns' light had fully set. It was pitch black when Faelin set her down on a stone path.

She blinked and squinted trying to see her surroundings. It was difficult to make out the shadows of the weathered and worn houses but she could tell at first glance the village was abandoned.

"There's no one here," she said flatly and looked down both ends of the road she stood on.

Faelin kept to the air, flapping his big wings gently. He sent buffets of air around her. She moved away from under him so she wouldn't get all tangled within the currents he was creating with his wing beats.

She tried pulling her fingers through her hair like a comb, but it didn't help. Her fingers caught snag after snag. Her hair must have looked like a rats nest, at least that's what it felt like while she was trying to brush through it.

"Well, I just need a map. Where do you think I can find one in a village like this?" he asked.

She looked up at him and saw he was looking over the rooftops, as if looking for it to just appear to him.

"I don't know many who would have had a map. Our best bet would've been back at the castle. I know where some are in the study, but elsewhere, we'd have to find someone. Or we can just head south and when we find a border to another land, ask the first person we see," Airena said with a shrug. Soon she wouldn't be able to see the area had grown so dark and the moon had still yet to rise.