Dragon Fly
Episode 2 of A Light in Her Violet Eyes
A Story of the Second Realm
By R.J. Davnall
Copyright 2013 R. J. Davnall
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The Second Realm
Season 1: The Second Gift
Season 2: Children of the Wild
The Rabbit Hole:
Episode 1: Through the Fire and Flames
Episode 2: The Sins of the Brother
Episode 3: Did You Never Dream of Flying?
Episode 4: Catch Me When I Fall
Episode 5: The Only Thing We Know is That We Know Nothing
Episode 6: We Have to Go Deeper
A Light in Her Violet Eyes:
Episode 1: Wolves at the Gate
https://itsthefuturestupid.blogspot.com/
Contents
Dragon Fly
About the Author
A Light in Her Violet Eyes
2. Dragon Fly
Pevan clung to Chag, fighting for the nerve, the wits, the calm to let go. He shook every time he flapped his tatty, failing wings, trying to drag them higher, further from the Court. His strength and stamina were limited, she knew, after the privations of his winter in the wilderness, and he was probably facing growing logic fatigue, too.
She knew she was. The tell-tale headache beat time against the inside of her forehead. Making the Gateways that had allowed them to escape the Court, forcing them into the elastic, obdurate Realmstuff of the Gift-Givers' fortress, had taken a lot out of her. Her thoughts hopped and skipped across a fuzzy landscape of mental pains.
There would be no going back. If she'd left the Court without Chag, perhaps there would have been a chance of reconciliation with Quilo, though the Gift-Giver had clearly decided to write off for dead anyone who tried to challenge the Separatists and their Clearseer. But if she'd left without Chag, she would have had no way of finding the Separatists.
Now, the thief was all she had left, unless she could rescue Rel and Atla. She could only hope that they'd been taken to the white cave, where the Separatists made their lair, and not to some other hidey-hole.
Rel had dashed off without any forward planning, taking Atla with him. Of course he'd go for a frontal assault. The Separatists would be unlikely to kill him outright - Chag had said they still hoped to recruit him - but Delaventrin would See him coming.
Dire though the prospects were, thinking ahead settled her mind. Without Rel, they stood no chance, in the long term, against the Separatists. Without Atla, in the short term, they were trapped in the Second Realm, unless they stumbled over a route to a Sherim they knew. Chag's body was beginning to hang vertical from the straining uplift of his wings, his ability to impose his will on the Second Realm failing as fatigue gained on him.
The cloth of his threadbare shirt rasped through her fingers as she let go. His shout of alarm and despair almost cut the top of her head off as it flashed past, but she held to her island of calm. She made herself wait, telling herself that the Second Realm couldn't provide a ground for her to hit unless she let it, until she saw him stabilise his flight.
Then she tucked in her right arm and leg, twisting so as to spin herself face-'down' in the air. Below, plains of riotous colour spread out to the limits of her field of vision. She forced herself to think of each patch as a field in its own right, as if the whole were a farm of unmatched variety; that made it seem as if she still had a long way to fall.
She revelled in the sense of height. Even in her maddest and most desperate actions in the First Realm, she'd never achieved this much altitude. Adrenaline surged, her skin coming alive with a slight tingle that seemed to lift away the worst edge of her fatigue. She spread her arms.
It took no more than a thought, borne on the rush of joy that flying always produced in her, to spread iridescent green plumage along her bones in place of flesh. They caught the air with a wrench, and she fought back, her first down-beat wavering before the battering force of her airspeed.
Her second stroke caught her hard against the sky, and she let her anger out in a burst of incoherent, shouted syllables as she began to climb. With her body level in the air, it was hard to crane her neck back far enough to see Chag, but she caught a glimpse of him circling, high above. Had he lost her amid the jumble of colours below? Above him, the sky was a dappled, smudgy grey-blue, but he stood out clearly, crow-black and fragile in his thinness.
Grunting, straining, enjoying the hard, breathless physicality of the motions, she hauled herself upwards, wing-beat on wing-beat, in a tight spiral. Her heart began to burn in her chest, the Second Realm's not-air sharp and dry in her throat. Her eyes watered, blurring the tiny figure above until the sky almost swallowed him. No point trying to shout for him, with the odd way sound tended to travel - or not - in Second Realmspace.
Finally, he noticed her and dropped into a steep dive. She pushed up a few more feet and levelled out, settling into a steady glide. It wasn't long before Chag fell in beside her in an awkward flurry of feathers. It took him a while to get steady; he kept turning to look at her before he was stable in the air, then beginning to slide away before catching himself with a mad burst of flapping. Carrying her had clearly taken its toll on his wings and strength.
When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. "I thought you'd... I thought I'd lost you." The words fell away, spinning like leaves or shreds of torn-up paper below them.
She turned so that her voice would pass beneath him rather than flying straight at him. "Ye of little faith." The humour left flashing scarlet ripples in the air. Chag flinched as they passed his face.
"Sorry to have doubted you." Even with the wind of their flight whistling in her ears, she could hear the sardonic edge to his tone.
"Do we go up or down?" Humour was nice, but if they flew too far they risked losing his Route to the white cave. Flying had odd effects in the Second Realm, rarely covering much distance horizontally, but climbing and diving always caused drastic changes in the terrain.
"Up first." He clenched his jaw, face grim. His words turned silver and corkscrewed far into the spread-out landscape below before vanishing. "I'm looking for landmarks. Then we'll need to dive."
They took it in stages, fighting upwards for a minute or so, then gliding in slow, wide circles to get their breath back. Chag's flight grew stronger as they ascended, his dishevelled plumage recovering a bit as he relaxed and let it. For a southerner and a Witness, he was a strong-willed and confident Gifted, when he allowed himself to be. Pevan found herself wondering what he might have been able to do if he hadn't lived all his life in his brother's shadow.
Below, patterns came and went amidst the colours of the 'ground'. Her careless eyes picked out shapes, crude drawings of a house, a tree, a dog, and for the most part she didn't try to blink them away. Only when there were faces, eyes that might come alive and reach for them did she fight the images away. One benefit of Rel not being here was not having to worry about the possible deranged offshoots of his Clearsight.
She was about to call another rest when Chag threw himself into an energetic new burst of climbing. For a second, chills cut through her and she scanned below them for any sign of a Wilder, but there wasn't anything obvious. The look on Chag's face was one of alertness and hope, not apprehension.
By the time he levelled out, they were both wheezing like exhausted horses. It took the better part of a whole circle, gliding, before Chag managed to say, "See below? The red star with four points?" His question flapped butterfly wings and dropped away below them, curving around towards exactly the pattern on the ground, so far below, that he'd described.
> He went on, "We dive down at it until it grows another point, then level out." His face tightened. "It's a vertical dive, head all the way down. Are you... is that okay?"
"Which of us is afraid of heights?" She grinned. "Are you okay with it?"
"I'll manage." He rolled his eyes at her. "Good to go?"
She swept her wings forward, bringing her body up in a sharp rear, stalling her airspeed. As she snapped her wings shut again, tight against her sides, she had a brief glimpse of Chag making a less showy job of the stoop, and then gravity claimed her.
The dive accelerated until she had to narrow her eyes tight against the stiff, chill fingers of the wind. There was no air here, really, but her body and her logic expected air resistance, so she felt it anyway. It became difficult to convince herself she was still breathing, so harshly did the draught sting her nostrils.
Below, the patterns and shapes that had shifted and merged so smoothly on the ascent began to jitter and dance, like a kaleidoscope being spun too fast. Pevan focussed on the red star through the fuzzy haze of her own eyelashes, waiting for some sign of change. Tunnel vision set in, the rest of the view blurring out of thought.
She was only dimly conscious of Chag's presence somewhere off her right shoulder. It would be a bad idea to shout and check if he was holding it together; even if the words didn't get blown back in her face,