Frost on the Grasslands | Shelha Series 1 | ✔

After the Wind

The food beside him never went away, so Jay spent the next few days sleeping and his waking moments moving the new wings. Already they were integrating into his consciousness, and he could fold or unfold them at will. Rolling onto his front revealed at last the cause of the lightness that was making him so dizzy. Even with two extra limbs, he had not changed weight. Jay flicked his tail, feeling its new, almost airy lightness. He had lightweight bones now, like Whipper. Flight bones.

He could fly.

That was weird. Deciding not to think about it for now, Jay finished the last few leaves and put his head down. Like it had since he had first reawoken, sleep hit like a wall. It felt so good to no longer be tortured by the wind.

At long last, he was strong enough to stand. As night fell on the third or fourth waking day, Jay leaned against the wall, watching the cusp of the moon push its way above the horizon. He closed his eyes. He was starving—he had never not been since last full moon—and still sick from whatever fledging process he had gone through, but he had to leave. It was not safe to stay in one place for long with Hyenars in the South Forest for the first time in three hundred years.

Opening his eyes, Jay pushed away from the wall and found his balance. He practiced walking back and forth across the cave until his sense of his redistributed weight had resolved itself. Then, switching to the next priority, he sat down and inspected his fur. He had not groomed in over a quarter moon and his pelt was a mess. He gave it an experimental lick and spat on the floor. Rock flat dust coated his guard hairs, and his undercoat was sticky with salt. He would need water to wash this out. There was a stream he could reach by moonhigh, so he set out for that, collecting anything he could find to eat along the way. He had a sizeable pile by the time the chuckle of water sounded through the trees.

Or was that even a sound?

Jay stopped. It was like he could hear the stream, but he was not in hearing range yet. The stream was somehow imprinted on the wind, its air-stirring coolness and smell of water moving like stream-ripples in the air. Jay followed them. He found the watercourse and settled beside it to eat what he had collected, then waded in and lay down. The water stripped the dust from his fur. It didn't reach his back, so when his belly and flanks were clean, he rolled onto his side and rested his head on the bank. The water felt wonderful.

The next morning was cloudy, warm and almost dry. Jay groomed until sunhigh, then fanned his wings, relishing the swirls of air they created. It was time to test these. He got to his paws. A few experimental hops gave a sense of the wind's resistance. Jay tried a short glide. He landed with a stumble, but it was as much from weakness as anything. He tried again and this time landed well. He would need practice, but it seemed a basic knowledge of how to use these came with the wings themselves.

Even basic flight skills proved exhausting. Jay played around for a bit, then napped right through till sunhigh and awoke half dead from hunger.

Energy-intensive too.

He had exhausted the sustainable resources on this stretch of stream, so Jay pulled himself to his paws and began to follow it south. He had gone barely a hundred tail-lengths when a faint signature crossed the breeze. Like the 'sound' of the stream, it was like a scent without being a scent... but it was definitely a creature.

Breathing. He was detecting some creature's breathing.

This was going to take some getting used to.

The signature was faint, but something told Jay it was warmer than it should be. He turned in a circle, trying to find the creature's actual smell. It was still too far away. Finding the breeze's direction, he followed it upstream. In another hundred tail-lengths he found the scent to match the signature, and again stopped dead. Ryatzi. The copper-furred Drakon hunter was somewhere here, right along this stream. He was still alive.