Birdhouse in Your Soul [Imogen]

[Destyn]

Birdhouse in Your Soul

35 Ash, 122

Destyn sighed heavily.

"No, Imogen! Not fake Avialae wings for a costume ball, but fake Avialae wings for real flying! Torin is, uhhh... He forgeries with runes, you know? He is not like a normal smithy." At Imogen's next thought, Destyn was wholly befuddled.

"But... it was smithed, though. Is not forgery and smithery the same thing?" He blinked several times, then shook his head. "No matter how much I think I know of this language, my learning is never complete. Vexatious!" He repeated the word he'd used moments earlier to broach his frustration over his friends' aversion to leaving Kalzasi. Vexatious, he'd realised then, was a very fun word to phonate. He was pleased with himself for having already found another opportunity to express it.

Now that Destyn had done a lot of damage to the coconut meat and it was deeper down in the shell, he lifted it to his face and seemed to wear it like a mask for a few moments as he scraped more of the remnants with his teeth. When he'd done a relatively thorough job of it, he removed the shell half from a glistening, wet visage.

"This is, I guess, growing up." The Fae conceded, a bit wistfully. He'd certainly grown up enough to have learnt that one couldn't have it all. There were even bits of coconut flesh that were too much trouble to reach. He dropped the shell unceremoniously, and started to wipe his face with his hands.

"Yes, yes!" He clapped his now sticky hands, and his wings fluttered slightly with excitement at the prospect of a fresh adventure with a new companion. "No more dawd-uh-ling!" He didn't know what that was, and added a syllable but, like 'vexatious' it felt fun to say aloud.

"Wow! You can fly, too? Do you want to do that instead of walking?" He darted around her to check her back for wings, draconic or otherwise. "Where are your wings, though?" His eyes widened, hoping they weren't akin to the Avialae wings he'd been critiquing moments earlier. His eyes narrowed, though, because he stood by his assessment.

Birdhouse in Your Soul

[Imogen]

"Huh? Not for- oh, oh, Runesmithing, you mean." Destyn's confusion between words wasn't really that unusual. In the regimented care of the Sunsingers, Imogen had received an education about as good as any in Zaichaer could who did not have officers in the family, but many of the people she had worked with had muddier conceptions of the tongue. "Ah, yeah, they use the word 'forge' to mean two different things, is all. A runesmith uses a forge, but doesn't make forgeries, see. Pretty unreasonable, but what can you do?"

She'd had similar issues herself when she came to Ecith. Though her family had prided itself on retaining fluency in the old tongue and passing it on to each of their Orkhan children, her speech had still been pretty awkward from the moment she set foot on the pier in Drathera. Perhaps there should be a Cardinal Rune which allowed you to speak languages fluently, that would have been helpful.

(Something in that idea felt very dangerous, but she couldn't quite place her finger on it. Well, something else for the professors and sages to worry at.)

"Ah, well, even though we're made out of dragons, Orkhan don't usually get wings. But I picked some up a few months back. Just a second, this might look a little weird-"

Imogen quickly removed her shoes, placing them up on a flat rock, then hopped up next to it. The witch next removed her shirt, leaving only a short undershirt to cover her breasts, and revealing the arcane lines which covered most of her torso. She focused on one of those, the rune of Animus emblazoned on her navel, and a luminous green light washed outward, quickly saturating her skin and washing away her patches of opal scale. After several moments of infusion, Imogen collapsed quickly in on herself, her form shifting like some sort of aetherial molasses, falling to the ground.

In matter of moments, however, the former Ork's form had begun to rally, sculpting and re-molding until the rough figure of a bird was plainly visible. Moments later, whitish-grey feathers sprouted across her body, natural color growing to overcome the luminosity of the spell. Less than thirty seconds after she'd invoked the totem, Imogen was gone- replaced with a large grey seabird, or wandering albatross. It opened its beak, but instead of making the usual half-caw, half-squawk, Imogen's Zaichaeri-accented voice emerged:

"All done! I can leave my clothes here until we come back."

[Destyn]

Birdhouse in Your Soul

35 Ash, 122

Destyn crossed his arms over his bare chest and narrowed his eyes, as if either disbelieving or in disagreement with Imogen's correction.

"But that does not make sense, though." He replied, poutily, as if the linguistic peculiarities of the Common tongue were a personal and conscious affront to Destyn in particular. "Vallasren is not this way." In fact it was far, far worse for non-native speakers, but Destyn had grown up with it and thus had no frame of reference for any of that. His own mothertongue was as mercurial and chaotic as the race that spoke it, full of convoluted allusions and poetical turns of phrase that were far more aesthetically pleasant than they were practical or efficient as a means of getting a clear point across. But to those for whom it was normal and natural, it worked beautifully.

Destyn giggled at Imogen's verbiage.

"You make it sound like someone chopped up some dragons and stitched Orkhans together out of the pieces!" He grinned, shaking his head at his own tangent. "I found a dragon once in-..." He paused and clapped his mouth shut. "No, I must not say. It is a secret." He frowned, because he really want to tell it, but he fought off the urge.

"Oh. Allright." Destyn's arms dropped to his sides and he watched intently as Imogen started to undress.

"Are we going swimming?!" He started to unfasten his breeches, but then he took note of a Rune that started to glow. "Oh." And decided this was something else. He redid the buttons, as he watched the luminescence overtake her body and begin to modify it. His eyes went saucer wide as the alteration took a sudden, downward leap. He smiled and his wings fluttered a little, excitedly. By this point he understood what was happening. There had been several Animists in his clan, though their techniques of transition were different. It was always fun to watch someone new practise their Craft. The fun bit at the moment was trying to guess what Imogen would emerge as during the process.

"Tree anole! No... uhh... Anteater! Mm... seagull! Big seagull! Bigger, oh... One of those big seagull things! I do not know this in Common, um Albatras?" He blinked when Imogen spoke,

"You can still talk normal when you shift?! This is, you know, amazing! I am very impressed. That will make our trip much more fun if we can talk while we fly. Shall we?" Destyn crouched to a low squat, before launching himself up with the power of his legs and catching himself mid-air with the power of his wings which, like his personality, were noisy and caused a great deal of chaos to the immediate vicinity.

Birdhouse in Your Soul

[Imogen]

"Talking in other forms was hard, at first, but I figured it out." Albagen Ward sounded a bit smug about this, "Animus is much easier than Reaving. Swords are very complicated, but birds are quite simple."

If anyone had ever taught the witch that some things which were easy for some people were hard for others, she did not reflect upon it. Birds were famously bad at introspection anyway, so she chose instead to play to her body's strength and begin flapping, quickly taking to the air after Destyn.

She had experimented, of course, with flight in humanoid form. It was possible, but ungainly; Orkhan were not built for aerodynamics, and achieving lift required a truly enormous amount of flapping with proportional wings. Albatrosses, on the other hand, were precision engineered by time and divine will to sail easily through the air. It would have been a tremendous violation of Imogen's work ethics to try to roll that bolder uphill, as it were. Still, she felt a pang of jealousy as she observed how easily Destyn picked himself up.

"Yes- I'm an albatross right now, that's what the sailors call these. Aside from being quite large birds, they were recommended because they can fly for very long distances without trouble. I can even nap a bit, in the air! It is much more convenient for travel than trying to get train tickets, especially out here in the jungle where there are no trains."

There were many other excellent things to be said about the Wandering Albatross, but the Zaichaeri Audubon Society had declined to pay Imogen for advertisements on account of their unceremonious and complete destruction two months prior, and the Kalzasi branch had probably all been imprisoned as conspirators by the Iron Queen. It was hard times for bird lovers all over.

"Let's fly over the jungle a bit, shall we? I've already been all the way up the shore." She angled herself in a north-westerly fashion as she flew. "These jungles are quite strange, you know! They're much shorter than the ones up north, where my family came from. I've got a theory that it's down to dragon dung. The man who taught me Animus, Chief Oping, said that the great size of everyone in Ecith is because of aether-rich fertile cycles, which are 'cause of the Green Dragonflight. Maybe these trees are so small because there aren't many living down here."

She'd heard that there were dragons living on the east side of the continent, but people in Drathera couldn't say much about them. Perhaps they'd all died out- it certainly seemed that virtually nobody came down to the continent's nadir. The desert people might know, perhaps, but she'd been given the very strong impression that they were mostly fantastic dicks about everything and wouldn't be much inclined to share such information.

[Destyn]

Birdhouse in Your Soul

35 Ash, 122

The son of Summer shrugged.

"I do not know Reaving. There were Fae in my clan who knew Animus, but Reaving was, for us, not common. When I came of age my Rite was for Summoning, but... it is now lost to me. After my clan was killed, it became," He struggled to come up with the word he sought in the Common tongue. After a few moments he gave up, unfulfilled and settled on, "Difficult." He grimaced slightly.

"This is my only Rune." He suddenly seemed to realise that he'd just usurped Imogen's moment for himself, and shook his head at himself, before getting back on track. "But that is very impressive that you can talk when you are a bird!" He didn't stay on track for long, "But some birds do talk, I suppose. I know that ravens, magpies... parrots... Anyway, but you sound just like when you are not a bird when you are a bird and that is very impressive. Those in my clan who practised your Craft would not talk when they were animals. They would still communicate, but not talk like people do."

Once Destyn had lifted off, he went up a few metres and flew a bit out of the way so the pulsing wind created by his wings would not inhibit her takeoff too much. A bit of breeze was one thing, but wings like his were built for much smaller creatures and so at his size the amount of pressure they engendered could cause ordeals. And it often did.

When she was aloft and high enough, the noise wasn't quite as bad- as there were fewer leaves and such whooshing around, so he flew closer and a bit under her so they could continue their chat, albeit perforce at a louder volume.

"Oh. I did not know it was the same in Common! We call them, also, albatras!" At the albatross education he seemed awed, "You can sleep and fly at the same time! That is incredible! I did not want to criticise you about how my wings are better and yours are like avialaeses, but now I see yours have, also, you know, advantages! I can definitely not sleep! My wings are much too loud!" Obviously that wasn't the main reason he couldn't sleep and fly, which was that the beating of his wings was a conscious action, but it wasn't the first to come to the mind of the young Fae, so it wasn't broached.

"Sure!" Destyn was content to fly over the jungle, if that what Imogen's whim. He tended to be rather aimless, and a bit of company capable of articulating complex thoughts was very welcome, though he'd never tell that to the plant life... because they wouldn't understand such a complex thought.

"Oh! That is very interesting!" Destyn acknowledged, "And also very disgusting!" He wrinkled his nose, trying a few times to mimic his albatross companion's mode of flight, and simply tumbling a few metres, before catching himself and rising back to his previous altitude. He gave up after the third failure.

"This is my first time in Ecith. I do not know the difference between its parts. I have heard of primal and that there are many dragons and that some of both of those are cute and friendly, and others of them are scary and mean. And some are cute and mean, and... I could go on." He sure could. "How is this part different from the part you know? Aside from poop stuff, I mean, which is gross."

Birdhouse in Your Soul

[Imogen]

One could, perhaps, point to the two modes of flight as metaphors for the two fliers themselves. Imogen might have done that herself, had she thought of it; she liked metaphor as an explanation for things. Albagen's wings hardly moved as she advanced over the canopy, feathers making minute adjustments as slight thermal changes in the atmosphere rocked the light-weight bird form, to keep steady and serine. Destyn fluttered, wings beating rapidly to create precise positional changes, moment to moment. As Destyn flitted from thought to thought and mood to mood, Imogen lazily sailed through the doldrums of life.

"Huh. My teacher is a Summoner, but I've never seen him actually summon anything. I've always been curious about it; it must be interesting to leave the world, to speak to spirits, surely? They must have interesting stories to tell, themselves."

It wasn't a Rune she had personally considered; while she thought of herself as a bit of a shrewd negotiator, Imogen detested the idea of ordering a squadron about, of men or of spirits. Still, having someone always available to watch your back...?

"Plus, of course, the spirit you always keep with you, what do they call those? That seems very nice, to me. We were just talking about friends who stay too far away, surely it's good to have one which does not leave. That would make long flights a lot less boring, I think."

The two reached the jungle in good order, and Imogen allowed herself to curve lazily as she looked at the trees below. They were mostly broad-leafed stands, and mottled with vines and strange, colorful moss. She did her best to breathe in deeply and smell the misty air, to gather the jungle's scent; alas, the albatross was not gifted with such olfactory powers. She did not respond to Destyn's question about the differences between the north and south of Ecith right away, allowing the question to float within her mind for a time, to add observations to it.

"I have met," she replied at last, "only one Primal. Well, one and the ghost of a second, I suppose. They were... big."

For the first few hours after Imogen's brief confrontation with the Vonaid Koid, she had been too shocked even to think about it. For the next several days, the briefest mention of it would bring the entire instant where her eyes met the great pyroclastic beast's eye flooding back, as if she were still in lemur-form, perched on the edge of that volcanic cavern, feeling the intense insignificance of a mortal standing in the bower of a god. But now, the memory was old, and she felt only a little catch from trepidation in her voice when she spoke of it.

"Not big in the way that I am big, big like how the sky full of stars is big. To look at them... it forces you to understand that you are small. I tried to explain this to Avamande, that it is not correct to think that they are just large elementals, but I don't know that they understood. And in a way, all of the northern jungle is like that, a little bit. The trees are taller than the palace in Kalzasi or the Presidium in Zaichaer, the mountains go up past the clouds. All of the elements seem more vast than they do in Karnor."

Imogen floated a bit to the side, taking a slightly-distracted interest in the sound of a waterfall below. A momentary investigation showed that it was a very small falls, little more than a spring leaking out of the side of a hill and pooling into a grotto, but she chose to circle it anyway and see what she might spot. Spots like that were popular for large animals of many descriptions, which needed ready access to fresh water.

"Here, the land is gentler. The trees are not so tall, the mountains are not so tall, the rivers are not so wide. There are no primals. It is... missing something wild and dangerous."

[Destyn]

Birdhouse in Your Soul

35 Ash, 122

Destyn frowned somewhat,

"Not all of them speak, though." He noted a bit regretfully, "Or not as you and I speak." He left that vague, because to go into specifics would make him sadder than he already was at the failure.

"In Common you call them Aidolon, but in my tongue they are 'Spiorad scáth'. It means 'Shadow Spectre', but not because they are of Shaeoth, but because they are as your shadow- always with you. I think Shaeoth is not always with you, but..." He glanced down, realising the shadow he cast was very, very large right now and if Shaeoth heard him diminishing his domain, he might be very cross. He loudly called down to his shadow along the canopy of treetops below them, "I AM SURE HE IS VERY WELCOME IF HE IS!"

He looked to the Imogen-bird apologetically.

"Just in case he is listening through our shadows." He said, more quietly, in hopes that the distance of the shadows would prove an obstacle to the hearing of a deity who almost certainly had better things to do than eavesdrop on this exchange.

"Anyway, I never got my Spiorad scáth." He informed her, grudgingly, "Now, I only see spirits other people Summon. Like my friend Sivan Sunrunner, who is a elf. He might be a secret elf prince, but we don't know annnnnd I probably should not have told you that, so please do not speak of this. You seem very trustworthful, though, so I blurted it without thinking. If you were suspicious I would not." He questioned himself, then. "Even if you were born under the realm of Industry, you are also a witch, sooo... that cancels it out, I think?"

Destyn did a little barrel roll, which set him back a bit, then flitted to catch up again.

"YOU HAVE MET A PRIMAL? But Imogen! You are amazing! You have pledge promises to Raxen and you have met two whole primals??? I do not know what I am doing with my life. I am glad we are on this adventure together to day, because it means that maybe we will meet something big and special!" He shut his mouth, letting her continue. She sounded awed... harrowed by the experience.

"W-w-w-was it a nice primal, though?" He inquired, a bit anxious to pose the question. If something was so big as to instill the sense of astonishment that was clear in the voice of the albatross, it had the potential to be very dangerous. But then, if it was as big as a sky full of stars, then perhaps it was just as austere and unconcerned with such small creatures as they. Or maybe it was like Destyn to a tiny bug- A ravenous devourer.

"I am hungry again." He decided, although they'd just finished the coconut. not long earlier.

As Imogen listed into a new direction, Destyn contentedly followed along.

"I like gentle, though. Gentle is nice. Do you not like gentle?" 'Wild', Destyn was keen on, but he'd had a bad few bouts with 'dangerous' that left him a bit wary.

Birdhouse in Your Soul

[Imogen]

"Mmm." Imogen replied, plainly unbothered by Destyn's sudden outcry about Shaeoth. Well, it was hard to read a bird's reactions at the best of times, but she gave no real impression at all that she was even aware of the many ill stories. "Eh, gods are like the wind or the storms. No point in worrying about what they're up to until they... uh, happen." Well, that certainly sounded stupid. Whatever. If any gods were judging her choice of wording, the joke was on them for wasting their time on this.

Destyn's next words, however, provoked more of a reaction:

"Sivan? You don't mean the nice apprentice alchemist who worked at, um... what was that? Jacan's?"

It had been a year prior and Imogen's memory for names and Elf faces blurred much more quickly, but Sivan had made an impression- the warming draught he'd brewed that cold Frost evening had, quite literally, saved her life. Well, saved her life from being miserably cold for weeks longer, which might have been a fate surpassing death, now that she thought about it. He hadn't struck her as a secret prince, though, and identifying secret princes was supposed to be one of the traditional functions of a witch.

"Are you sure you're not thinking of his friend, um, L..." Imogen tried desperately to recall Laurevere's name, and put forth a truly heroic effort to land on- "L...aurence? He seemed sort of nobbish."

She readily agreed to keep the speculation secret in any event; the chance that any person's secret identity as an Elven-Prince would ever be relevant to her business seemed quite remote, but a Sunsinger's word was absolute and an Ecithian Ork's word was also absolute. It followed, therefore, that whatever she chose to do with the information later couldn't be breaking any promises. Another win for deductive reasoning! Old Master Kühn, who'd taught Rhetoric, would have been proud.

(Unless he'd perished in the destruction of Zaichaer, which seemed likely for even a spry swordsman of seventy years.)

When the topic came 'round to the Primals, Imogen might have shrugged, except that an albatross in flight can neither shrug nor even attempt an avian variation of the exercise.

"I met one which was very dangerous and one which was slow and gentle; people talk more about the former than the latter. Did you know that if you break a Primal's body apart, it does not die? The Orkhan fashion them into special tools, and their spirits won't let any but the strong warriors who bested them take them up again. It is a harsh way to make a weapon, but the Orkhan need such weapons to keep the other Primals away. Except in Drathera, where the Primals do not venture because there are more dragons than you've ever seen, not to mention the Orkhan gods."

Well, the dragons were definitely there. The Triumvirate had been notably absent during her visit, though. Imogen wondered vaguely what important work had kept them away from their city for so long, but that was another one of those questions you couldn't answer by pondering, so she moved away again.

"Hungry, is it? Good idea, let's find something new to eat. What kind of food should we look for?"

[Destyn]

Birdhouse in Your Soul

35 Ash, 122

Destyn did a loop in the air for no apparent reason.

"I do worry, though! Not only about gods, but they come into it. I do not think I so much did until I met one..." Though the Fae may have conflated that moment with the reason for his recent wealth of worry, it was more a matter of the timing and nature of that meeting that caused it. Talon had appeared as saviour, rescuing the traumatised and very wounded Destyn from the onslaught that claimed the lives of his kinfolk. He hadn't much of a worrier before Zaichaer had given him profuse purpose to be thus.

"Sivan Sunrunner!" Destyn replied, as if repetition equated to confirmation. While he was excited that Imogen may have a common acquaintance with one of his best friends, it did make his little slip-up about the potential of his being a person of political import into a greater faux-pas. "But I just made that thing up about him being a secret prince. He is not really one." That much was true- Destyn had derived the conclusion from circumstantial evidence that arose after an attempt on Sivan's life that smacked more of assassination than simple murder.

"No! Sivan Sunrunner..." He knitted his brow, "What is a nobbish?" He wondered aloud.

Destyn listened attentively as Imogen educated him on primals. He loved to learn about different life forms and, though he was sad to discover there were none in this part of Ecith, he hoped to encounter one some day. Ideally one of the slow and gentle variety.

"What?!" His body froze, including his wings, for a split second- which made him dip a bit before catching himself and rising to his prior altitude. "But why would you do that, though? That sounds very horrible for the primal, to be broken apart and made into tools! They sound so majestic! Why would people do that?" Destyn was suddenly a very concerned primal rights activist for someone who knew so little about the creatures. Still, by Imogen's brief description, Destyn found the notion cruel and selfish- the sort of act he might expect from humans of Zaichaer, but not of Orkhan.

"I hope no one does this to the slow gentle primals and only to the dangerous ones, but even then it seems like a terrible fate to have your body turned into a helpless tool for someone else to use as they will." He paused, "I like dragons, though. Maybe I will go to Drathera someday and visit them." His smile returned at the question of food.

"I like to eat buggies and fruits! I never saw the ocean before this trip and I did not know about the giant buggies that crawl out of it. They are yummy, but their shells are so thick I cut my mouth on them until I realised I can break them open like coconuts. But the giant buggies are not in the jungle, I do not think, so I will settle for regular sized buggies or fruit. What do you like to eat? Do you like the same things when you are a Albatras as when you are a Ork?"

Birdhouse in Your Soul

[Imogen]

"I do not think the Primals can be made to do anything they don't want to do." Imogen replied, thoughtful. She seemed undisturbed by the raw outrage filling Destyn's voice; it was an interesting angle to the subject which she had not thought to interrogate previously. The strange fae boy had something of a knack for taking an issue and presenting hitherto-unseen facets of things, it seemed to her. "Even when they are made into tools, they will refuse the touch of most. But it is a curious thought- the Orkhan pride themselves on many things, but perhaps freedom above all. It is a terrible faux pas there even to say something like 'this is my friend', for it imputes a claim you have no right to make. It would be passing strange if their society of vaunted choices was founded on enslavement."

Yet, hypocrisy was scant evidence against a thing, as Imogen well knew. The Zaichaeri had built their society upon harsh ideals of the rejection of Rune-craft, of the stigmatization of every practice which might relate in any way to magic... but how many of the wealthy officers who sent their children to the Pfenning's expensive dance lessons flouted those same restrictions, using magic as a tool without concern as they sentenced others to die for the same offense? Imogen preferred to believe that Chief Oping and her friends back upon the Gihah were better than those rank sophists in the Zaichaeri army, but if they had to choose between subjugating one great beast and being destroyed by another, did she really think they would accept obliteration?

"Ah, now you're asking some very good questions." Imogen said, returning from reverie. "Albatross will eat most anything, they are not picky. But my soul is still Orkhan-" Not strictly true, once you started modifying it with runes and totems, but right enough. "So I like my food clean and sweet. No worries, I've got just the thing."

The albatross touched down gingerly in one of the high boughs of a tree, then began to melt and blur anew. This process was much faster, as Imogen altered little in the way of size and mass; after only a few seconds, a white lemur sat on the branch. Well, most of one. Imogen had assumed a chimeric form, and the lemur-totem still bore great grey wings, sprouted from the back. She gave them an experimental flap, then began running across the length of the tree, sniffing the air.

"Albatross..." Imogen huffed as she ran, "Have a fantastic sense of smell, but mostly for offal out at sea. Lemurs..." It was much harder to talk while running and jumping than it was while gliding- "Are very good at finding fruit. Put them together, and I should be able to sniff out something a mile away. Hmmph."

The lemur scrambled up another branch and stopped, closing her eyes to sniff in the wind before pointing due north. "That way. Probably."