Being on the 1st floor of Fallens Cry, I thought I would get rid of the nagging feeling. Sah was up there in the square, unable to reach me. Yet, the hairs on the back of my neck were still bristled up.
This time the source of it wasn't hidden somewhere in the shadows.
The avier woman, her stare was truly bothersome and piercing. She watched me like a hawk while I ran the course that Deckard had prepared for me. She studied my movements as I was doing a stretching routine to get into splits and observed every twitch of my muscles while I jumped through the hoops.
Bloody annoying!
Even more so, her constant obnoxious humming. She criticized me for my behavior, comparing it to mutts and beasts, but I couldn't help thinking of her as a songbird. When she wasn't pissed, in which case she sounded so high-pitched it hurt my ears, her voice was lovely and melodic.
"So? What do you say Zer?" Deckard asked her when I finished the exercise set. Wiping my sweat-covered forehead, I took the offered canteen with water from him and perked up my ears. I endured her staring, so I wanted to hear what she had to say. Was I really just a beast with wings in her sharp eyes?
The avier woman thought and hummed some more. "Your apprentice is quite confusing."
Not what I expected to come out of her mouth. And judging by Deckard's reaction neither was he. "She's not your typical run-of-the-mill gal, but confusing?"
"How?" I asked, taken aback by her assessment. Many would say I'm easy to read.
"Hmm...how do I put it?" She bit her bottom lip in thought. "You are many things, Korra Grey. I see felines in some of your movements and the canines in others. You have the virtue of avians, yet I also see something of the lizards in you."
Did she name species of terrans or beasts? I couldn't tell. Either way, she wasn't far from the truth. But lizards? Really? Only my heart mutated nothing else. Not visually, at least. I checked thoroughly every nook and cranny and found no scales nor rough skin.
Still, I'd be lying to myself if I denied that the drake essence only affected my heart. None of the 'changes' was that simple. It wasn't just the wings, or there wouldn't have been feathers on my ankles and elbows. Sage didn't come alone either. Each time, there were minor things like a tuft of fur here and there.
The humming of the avier woman drew my attention back. What was her name again? Zer-someting. Zeraphe? No, that wasn't it. Damn! If she hadn't been pissed at me from the start, I would have remembered. Ah...Zeranyphe!
The moment I found her name in my mind, her humming changed. Judging by the high pitch irritated tone, she knew what I pondered. "Not Zer, Zera, or Nyphe. It's Zeranyphe."
Cursing my open body language, I gave her an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, Zeranyphe." What about Deckard and his nickname for her? Even though the remark was on the tip of my tongue, I swallowed it. Too late, though.
"He's a rude man, but one I'm willing to tolerate. Plus, he ruffled my feathers," she said, reading me like an open book. Annoying, but it went both ways. I'd have to be blind not to notice that the feathers on her ears, or rather the little wings that formed them, had spread slightly. Was she embarrassed? Hard to say. Despite all the changes, I didn't know the terran body language, nor was it a skill I had access to.
But, ruffle the feathers?! I didn't even have to ask what the expression meant. Deckard's intentions were more than clear last night. Good for her.
"So, what about my wings?" I asked before Zeranyphe reacted to my openly expressed thoughts.
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Lament of the Slave
الخيال (فانتازيا)The world is not always as beautiful and forgiving as one would imagine, and Korra Grey, a young florist, who is abducted by a creature of the children's books, finds herself in another world quickly learning that life can be even crueler than she t...
