It was pouring rain, and I couldn't see anything except the darker-than-night outline of trees, dunes, and hills that made up the island. I couldn't even tell how big an island it was. There weren't any lights or torches.
Itek dragged himself to his feet, wings soaked and too exhausted to fold against his sides. I stood next to him with a hand on his ruff, and yearned towards the sky. No Korr, no Ethat. No bugs. No Asund.
I gripped the Trinket still around my neck, wincing as the barbs cut into my skin, and releasing it before it did damage. My hands were sore and raw from gripping Itek's feathers.
We had to go look for them, except Itek was too exhausted and soaked to fly. He couldn't even lift his wings out of the sand.
I didn't want to leave the beach, but we had to find somewhere for Itek to dry off. But it was dark as the inside of Korr's asshole, except for the occasional flash of lightening that gave me second-long glimpses for an island that wasn't anything except dunes, dangerous rocks, and tough grasses. I didn't even see a tree or anything even close to a tree. I walked up the beach a bit. Little bits of seashells crunched under my feet.
There wasn't anything. I turned back around and a flash of lightening illuminated Itek. He stood head down, wings in the sand, exhausted. And still no Korr and Ethat and Asund. Beyond Itek the ocean churned in triangular, white-froth waves that rushed and crashed against the shoreline. And we were hours from daylight.
I went back to Itek. "Come on," I told him through the rain. I grabbed his ruff and tugged. He stumbled after me, grunting as he heaved his huge, soaked wings. I tried to lift one, and it was like lifting cement. The wings dug deep trenches in the ground.
"Well, you're useless when you get wet, cat-bird," I tried to joke. "Just made of sugar, aren't you. Come on!" I grabbed the edge of one wing and pulled as hard as I could while he dragged himself through the thick, wet sand. "Come one!"
His fore-claws buckled and he beak-planted into the sand. I grabbed feathers to try to haul him up, and the wet feathers sliced through my hands, but I didn't care. He managed to get up and drag himself another few strides before collapsing again, and we repeated this shitty process for I don't know how long until he managed to collapse against a dune.
And it was still raining, and the rain stung, because that's what the rain did. I huddled next to Itek, knees ot my chest, and watched the storm. They said that once, a long time ago, rain had been cleansing and washed away sins, but I'd only ever known a fetid rain, or rain like this: rain that wore at rock, scalded skin, made you itch, brined your plants.
Where I'd grown up (at least, what I remembered) there hadn't been hadly any rain, and everyone dreaded it when it did come, because it'd kill crops and you'd need a new roof.
Maybe the rain was why everyone had left the coastal city. That and the fucking bugs.
Itek nibbled me with the very edge of his razor-sharp beak. I touched his soaked ruff. He kept nibbling, then started to make bird noises in his throat—gryphons weren't terrible dignified like dragons—and scooched towards me.
"What?" I asked as he nibbled me for the hundredth time.
He jerked a wing, then pressed his murder-beak along my back, pushing hard towards the wing.
"Get under your wing?" I asked doubtfully.
A purr-cluck.
I obliged him, crawling under his soaking wing and squishing myself in the sand between his warm body and the little space created by his wing. It wasn't exactly drier under here, but it got me out of the rain. I curled up against his side, tucking my front along him, and touching his soft, velvety coat.
We had to find the others. My heart cried for them. I touched the Trinket in my other hand. I'd know if they were dead, right? That's how it worked?
Was that how it worked? I couldn't recall that being how it worked, except something told me that's how it worked.
Wishful thinking.
Itek was purring.
The rain stopped after I don't know how long, and Itek and I waited, and morning eventually came, the sky turning orange behind us as the clouds lifted and drifted away.
I stood up, Itek still nestled into the borrow of sand and grass we'd hollowed out, and I dusted the sand off my ass before climbing to the top of the dune.
"Nothing," I said, despairing. The island we'd landed on was small enough that I could see the other side of it in the distance, and the southern edge of it to my left. I couldn't see the northern tip, but I sensed it wasn't far away either. So from here I could see everything: just a dune-tumbled, grassy thing interspersed with large, churned-up spears of rocks that would have broken my leg if I'd tried to explore in the dark.
I still had my bag. That hadn't been torn off in the tumbling. I slid back down the dune.
Itek, still weighed down by his massive, soaking wings, blinked at me.
"I'm going to go see if I can find some rainwater," I said, glancing at my forearms: they were badly scalded from all the rain. "Something to drink."
He clucked.
"You look for... for Korr and Ethat," I said, trying not to get tearful about it. There was nothing we could do until Itek's wings dried. Until then I needed to not act like an idiot. "Like watch the sky. I know you can't fly."
He could barely move he was soaked so through. Those wings were useless, and for whatever reason he hadn't shifted back to human form. Maybe he couldn't shift with waterlogged wings. Maybe he was too exhausted. Maybe he had an injury he wasn't telling me about.
I dug out two of the waterskins from my bag and scrambled up the dune again, and headed for a cluster of rocks. With all the rain there was a good chance I could find a puddle or something.
Lucky me: I did find a deep puddle on some sandy, rocky ground. The water tasted awful and made my gums burn, and I wanted to vomit, but I managed to keep it down, and then fill both skins so I could return to Itek.
By the time I got back the sun was up and burning hot, making the sand too hot to walk on, but there was nothing but sand, so... oh well.
Itek clicked his beak and chirped as I made my way over the burning sand. He'd re-arranged himself a bit and used his beak to rake up the tough grasses into kind of a makshift nest so I didn't have to fry my ass on the burning sand when I sat next to him.
"Here," I said, offering him the waterskin. "It tastes awful, but it's better than dying."
He clicked, clearly saying we'll see about that, then reluctantly let me pour water into his beak like he was a hatchling. Except for some deep gouges in his haunch from where the bug had raked him during the flight, he didn't appear injured.
"Ouch," I said as I examined the raw wounds. He clicked, dismissing the injury.
I fiddled with my trinket, watching the sky, and waiting.
"Do you know what those things were?" I asked him.
He shook his head.
The sun was in the west—and my stomach was growling--by the time Itek stood up and stretched his wings. He walked down a bit to shake sand off his shiny pelt and then carefully stretched his wings, first one, then the other.
My heart caught. He was so beautiful.
He carefully folded his wings against his side, stretched, gave a few test flaps. He was missing some feathers, and some of his feathers were pretty battered and ratty looking. He swished his tail.
"Can we go?" I asked, jumping up from my grass mat.
He clicked at me, then headed off towards the dunes.
I followed after him. He made better time moving through the sand than I had: his big cat-paws didn't sink like my feet did, and he could sort of hop with his front claws. He looked silly as hell but I bet I looked stupid falling and tumbling after him.
He guzzled what was left of the rainwater pond, then lowered his wings and clicked at me.
Time to get out of here!
"Let's go find the others," I said as I jumped onto his back.
He walked up onto a flat rock, looked around, and with effort, launched into the air.
His wings faltered, a few hard flaps, and the sea air caught him and lifted us up into the sky.
I still hated to fly, and held on as I tight as I could while he gained altitude, giving me a view of the island: just a slip of sand and rocks in the dark, ugly sea.
He glided out on the warm current back the way we'd come (I think), and we both searched the dark water for anything. Ethat might be hard to spot, but Korr would have been gleaming white. He swung back around and we flew back towards the coast, and we flew a bit along the necklace of islands before, exhausted, he landed on a rocky outcrop on one of them, maybe four islands up from where we'd started.
His wings drooped, and he craned his neck around to look at the gash on his haunch.
"Is that why you aren't shifting?" I asked. The rocks burned my hardened feet. There was no water anywhere I could see on the island.
He nodded.
"What are we going to do?" I asked. He was the experienced hunter. I was just a weird mutt-grunt that couldn't do anything. The Trinket had worn open sores between my breasts. I pulled it out and put it on top of my shirt. I wasn't used to wearing it.
Itek cooed in his throat, then nodded towards the south.
"You mean, go to the pantere priestess?" Panic rose in my throat. "You mean give up looking for them?"
He nodded.
"I'm not going to just abandon them!" I shouted. "We have to find them!"
A rumble, and a brush of his tail, and a sympathetic look.
"No. I'm not abandoning them. I'm not even abandoning Asund. Even if he kind of deserves it."
He twisted his head in the cat-bird gesture of rolling his eyes.
"How can you just leave them?!"
He looked around as if to say what else can we do?
His eyes spoke for him, telling me things he couldn't say, and I sat down and buried my face in my hands. He moved to shelter me in the shade of one wing. The soft feathers had been ripped and torn up by the violent storm.
We rested about an hour before he nudged me to get back onto him. We winged our way across the islands, stopping when we saw a puddle of water, which made me feel gross and my skin peeled up and the entire thing was generally miserable, until he spotted another out cropping on another island and we rested there for the night.
No sign of the others. It rained again. We huddled under the rocks so Itek's wings wouldn't get wet again, and set off in the morning, starving and thirsty and I was sun-baked.
"Do you even know where we're going?" I asked him when we stopped during the hottest part of the day.
He shrugged.
I examined his haunch. The deep wounds were healing. His wings were battered, and he had to work extra hard to fly with them missing feathers. And we just kept heading further out to see, following the line of islands hoping to find whatever this big island was they thought was out here with the pantere priestess that knew about dreams.
"I'm sorry I'm so useless," I said, voice thick with emotion and dehydration. I couldn't do anything. I had no magic, I didn't have wings, I didn't have sharp teeth, I couldn't shift, I didn't know a damn thing about the ocean or islands or what those bugs were. I couldn't read, write, I didn't know history or the law. I didn't even know if Theia was my real name or not.
He purred and nibbled my hair gently, crooning.
The only reason any of them were with me was because of the trinket around my neck. If not for that, I'd still have been their weird little pet, with those horrible maids who thought they were better than me, and chided me for not hiding my scars. And once they'd gotten bored of me, they'd have let me go.
I was nothing. Whatever had been done to me had made me nothing.
I tucked my face into my knees and silently sobbed while Itek sang to me.
/********
PEEPS
So this is a situation currently developing in my kitchen:
My husband jokes that I can't do simple things like make a loaf of bread, but give me a complicated 20 step process and I'll execute it perfectly the first time. I failed at making a loaf of bread yesterday, so today... I'm attempting cinnamon buns from scratch.
Kludge Kitchen 2020 continues. The pineapple chipotle tacos were a fail. Do not recommend. (I mean, they were perfectly edible, so there was that at least) Tonight I'm doing tikka masala to win back some points and assert dominance.
~Merry
(Pineapple nope pantster)
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