Audrey could tell that Cordia did not want her to make a big deal out of anything, and for once, she obliged. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not from around here.." Audrey sighed, holding back her strong, desperate emotions for home, where she understood and knew how to act. "Azora has been kind enough to help me, although I obviously haven't been the best company in the world." Audrey glanced at Azora, but looked away shyly. Audrey had no idea why she was revealing this to Cordia, but she felt she could trust her; it was something in her eyes.
Azora's eyes flicked back and forth steadily like a metronome. Audrey, Cordia, Quinic, Audrey, Cordia, Quinic. Cordia and Audrey began to chat, and Azora slowly reached over and placed his hand on Quinic's back, finally freeing his eyes from their cycle of staring. Azora gave Quinic a short, quick inspection like it was second nature for him to check for wounds, all the while listening to Audrey and Cordia. Finding none severe and wanting to take his hands off the beast that probably didn't care for the inspection at all, Azora stepped away. Abruptly, he stepped closer to Cordia after Audrey caught his eyes.
"Cordia, she has come from another world, in short. Without conscious purpose, supposedly, and with no notion of how she landed here," Azora sighed slowly. He hated speaking this much, and the way he shifted his weight from one foot to the other gave away his discomfort. "I've no idea which world, but I know someone in a city a day's fly from here that is rather adept at understanding and manipulating the other worlds and their portals. The curse won't let me stay in one form, and in my other I am weaker. I need you to accompany me-- or, us. I don't understand her, and she certainly doesn't trust or understand me. I'm a Sky Guardian with a curse and hefty magic to lug along, not a chatty merchant. My most frequent company are the birds and thieves, neither of which happen to be sociable."
Azora huffed, apparently tired after speaking so honestly and with care to be sensitive and unoffensive.
Cordia placed gentle but comforting hand on Audrey's shoulder. "We're all strangers at one point or another, dear." Her focus shifted from the girl to the girl's 'escort' as he spoke. "I figured as much when I sensed a old portal open for a moment." She stood stone still as she thought for a few moments.
"All right," She said finally. "We'll make for Maridin" She looked at Azora. "Tomorrow." She smiled. "And Azora, others would like you better if you were a bit less gruff upon meeting them."
It felt good to allow herself to cry, even though she knew that even when it was all over, it wouldn't have made anything better. She would still be a mostly useless girl, and Faylen would still be out of reach. Perhaps it was getting time to leave, like some of her friends had. Staying around here seemed so pointless when she could be exploring someplace new and exciting. Maybe she could go back to find that strange girl and go to her world whenever she made it home. That meant that she would have to face Azora again, though, and she was fairly certain she hadn't made the best impression last time with her stuttering. He probably didn't recognize her anyway, it had been a long time since she saw him.
She sighed and tried to slow her tears, unable to regain control until she felt something touch her back. With a startled flinch, she looked up and saw Faylen kneeling not even a foot away from her. Her golden eyes took in the other girl's tears for about two seconds before it really sunk in that she was here. Faylen was here, telling her not to cry, while crying herself. Naoki scrambled up onto her knees and wrapped her arms around Faylen's shoulders in a tight hug, not caring if it was dangerous or not. So what if her old best friend had mood swings that could kill her? All she wanted was to forget everything. "Oh, Faylen.." she managed to say, quivering.
Azora's jaw clenched, and he fought the urge to roll his eyes at Cordia. Although he respected her to a certain point, she never seemed to figure out what exactly his curse entailed, which would lead her to understand his rough, bitter nature. He had never told Cordia, or anyone else, what his curse had done to him. But to Cordia, he had briefly opened up long enough to drop hints about "other forms", "weaker form", and "can't hold off the curse for two days straight".
Before Audrey could speak, Azora began speaking again. "I enjoy flying freely, Cordia, which I am asked to refrain from as I patrol the skies. There are only two other Guardians for this entire land; I may as well have no free time with as often as I work. I was irked when she appeared before my free flight. That is all."
He looked at Audrey now, stern but gentler than previous. Why cause further social complications? "Audrey. You will stay in this town tonight, Cordia will find somewhere for you to stay. No one is malicious here. Even if they were, they won't be now that they've seen you are under my protection. You will be safe." He turned to Cordia and shrugged to hide the pain beginning in his body. "She's your responsibility until morning. I've held off the curse for too long. I will meet you right here at dawn."
With that, Azora stepped away from them and sprinted down the empty dirt road, preparing to take off. His wings quivered before bursting open with a powerful snap that lifted him into the air at once and sent fluffy white down feathers everywhere. He was fading into the night sky within moments.
Quinic stood quiet as the uppity Feathered, or Azora, seemed to be looking over him. He had experienced this before when he was given his necklace and save for a few twitched and his ears following Azora's movement he was not going to give trouble.
There came a slight whinny from Quinic, almost like an equine chuckle at Cordia's comment about Azora's gruffness.
At the mention of leaving in the morning, Quinic's ears perked up, "I join?"
The feathered seemed eager to leave just then, and Quinic could sense he was in discomfort, though he did not know why.
Thinking about it though, he was sure he had seen this before, or at least something like it. Quinic couldn't remember where though, and decided to think about it later.
Most of the villagers were heading to their homes by now, but the patrolling guards still gave him suspicious looks and the chances of him staying in a stable was probably naught. Oh well, he was used to staying outside anyway and missing out on one night sleeping on soft hay wasn't going to kill him. "Quinic will stay just outside of village... Not cause trouble." he said.
Audrey could hardly comprehend the words that Azora and Cordia exchanged. She heard Quinic speaking softly, but hardly understood him either. When Azora addressed her and what she was to do, she stood up straight and brushed her hair out of her eyes, blushing slightly. When he flew away, Audrey turned to Cordia, she was aware that she was to spend her time with Cordia until morning, but was unsure of the curse they spoke effortlessly about.
She decided to keep quiet and avert her eyes to Quinic, the sweet little animal by her side. She wanted him to come along- wherever it was they were going- but she was unsure if the others would agree. Audrey sighed and looked Cordia in the eyes, allowing a small smile, even though she felt utterly perplexed and useless, like a child needing constant attention.
Faylen stood frozen for a moment as Naoki threw her arms around her. Faylen let the warmth from her body cover her skin before she wrapped her own arms around Naoki's waist. Faylen stayed quiet, tears sliding down her face and landing in Naoki's beautiful, soft hair. All she said was "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Faylen had forgotten what it was like to be loved, and she realized that she missed it terribly, she hadn't noticed the missing piece when she was standing, being hugged by the cold, hissing shadows, but here, in the middle of the day, being hugged by a girl of light, what was left of her heart ached.
Cordia frowned as she watched Azora fly away. She worried greatly about him, though she worried about everyone that was 'under' her. A deep sigh escaped her lips, but was replaced by a heavy smile. He did have a good heart. Quinic's request to join in on the journey snapped her back to the pair in front of her. Her smile became real. "Of course you may come. Now, if you'll both came with me." She paused and looked at Quinic. "You're not trouble at all, so don't you start thinking otherwise."
Naoki sobbed against Faylen's shoulder, feeling her old friend wrap her arms around her waist. Her knees were tucked up under her body, her shins pressed into the cool grass of the field they had spent so many hours running through when they were young. She managed to pull back enough to look up at Faylen when the girl kept apologizing, seeing that her own face was just as covered in tears as Naoki's was. It made her feel like maybe things could go back to normal, how they should have been all this time. Just the other day she had been warned about Faylen again. Her friends had been concerned that the girl would try to lure them in, but Naoki didn't believe that Faylen could hurt her.
Then again, she had hurt her earlier with the shadow.. No, that was a fluke. Maybe she had been aiming for the other girl, the new one from some other place. "Faylen, you don't have to apologize. Everybody makes mistakes. All you have to do is come back to the place you should have been all along," she said, pleading with her friend. She glanced up when the sun dimmed, seeing dark clouds gathering above. Strange, she hadn't been expecting a storm today.. She looked back at Faylen, waiting for her response, hoping that the darkness wasn't due to her.
It was nearly dark when Azora soared into the clearing where his simple cabin stood. His skin was paler than ever, and pain twisted his usually blank face. He clenched his eyes shut and tumbled the last ten feet to the ground, too weak to exert enough energy to slow down his descent or land on his feet. He hit the ground on his hands and knees, trembling with the effort it took to crawl into his cabin. Sweat beaded on his forehead, catching a few white hairs that had escaped from the tight knot on the top of his head. The door was hard to open, but thankfully easier to shut. There was no way he could make it into the loft, so Azora pulled himself along the ground until he reached the cushions on the right side of his cabin and collapsed on them.
The rolling nausea in his gut told him that the curse was about to take over whether he wanted it to or not. He clumsily pulled his hair from its ties to let it stay comfortably loose, and managed to unbuckle the straps holding his sword between his wings. He sat up the slightest bit and let it clatter to the ground, then collapsed back onto the cushions and laid still.
Darkness had fallen now. He hadn't had the strength to light a lantern or fire, so only a few faint moon beams trickled in through the window on the other side of the cabin. Azora didn't care at this point. He never liked to see what the curse did to him. His white skin, shiny from a layer of cold sweat, quivered as the bones in his body seemed to shrink. A sound like trees swaying in the wind came from his bones, but he mouth stayed in a thinned line, determined not to cry out. As his bones shrank, the skin and muscles did so as well, from his face to his feet.
He slowly turned and peeked at his wings with one eye. He exhaled shakily seeing they were still there and turned to hide his face in his arm, waiting for more pain. It came like lightning, and sensations collided with each other all at once. Fire seemed to break out at the wide base of his wings that expanded one a half feet down his spine on both sides, where soft white fluff turned to skin. At the same time it was like a boulder had been dropped on his wings, crushing the bones to pieces. The worst sensation was the twisting, ripping, and pulling of every ligament, every tissue, every muscle, and every bone in his wings as well as his body. His lips parted and he cried out in a pitiful voice that was not male, female, child, or adult.
For half an hour, the curse had tortured him until he could only lie there on the ground in his own sweat, yellow eyes half-shut in exhaustion. He was small, now. The size and shape of a child. But his face was not childish, rather it was a smaller version of the first pretty, adrogynous face of his that Audrey had seen.
His wings, had they been extended, would not have gone more than half a foot beyond his sides. They were little and frail now, with tiny black feathers that would not allow him to fly at all. His hair was longer than his height, and had turned black.
Now though, he didn't much care to fly. Azora's eyes drooped shut, and he fell into a sleep that would be nearly impossible to interrupt for several hours.
http://www.animegalleries.net/img/261678 This is Azora's base form, the one from which his two other forms borrow traits. For Adult Androgenous and Adult Male forms, add in; yellow eyes, much larger yellow and white wings, and stupidly long white hair. This particular picture is his adult androgenous shape. Adult Male form; bulkier body, jaw is squarish, face generally more masculine. As a child, imagine the person in this picture about three feet tall, with tiny black wings and black hair but a very similar face.
Seeing Audrey's look in her eyes made him feel that he could understand her and what she was going through. Like him she was lost and needed guidance in the right direction to find their rightful place, or was it purpose? He didn't know. What he did know was that he was an equine who always thinked too much and his suspicion was that it was due to his necklace.
He was delighted to hear that he could indeed join and an excited high pitch escaped his throat. It surprised him a little that the woman had asked for them both to follow her, and he wondered why? Perhaps they had to stay in another part of this town and if he were to stay outside she'd show him where so he could find them easier in the morning.
Quinic could almost blush at Cordia's kindness as she told him he was no trouble. This was something he was not used to, really. As they began moving Quinic stayed at Audrey's side, feeling somewhat protective over her.
