~
Several nights after the solstice Hwedolyn suffered a terrible nightmare.
He dreamed that he cradled the dead body of his cousin in his arms, and was weeping disconsolately for grief. A storm was twisting the sky above him into a black whirlpool, as though the hand of a god was tormenting the clouds. A single bolt of lightning ascending from the ground and cracked open the dome of heaven, and through it came a bright light. But his cousin’s body crumpled and turned to grey dust in his arms. Then he awakened.
Several hours later, Atdaholyn flew to Hwedolyn’s eyrie and said, “Come, cousin, the wind is high, and the stormy gusts blow with strength and ferocity. It is the unrelenting night, and no mage or elf will see us when we fly. Let us ride the wings of the wind, and be thrown about on the eddies and currents that blow forth and back in the turbulent heavens!”
“I fear that it will all end ill, Atdaholyn,” said Hwedolyn. “Last night, as men reckon time in the solstice, I dreamed of this storm, and I was cradling you in my arms, for you had died, and you turned to dust in my arms. I fear that this dream is an ill omen, and so I would rather not – not tonight, cousin, please. Let us do it in some other hour, some other day, when such an ill omen does not darken my heart.”
Atdaholyn replied, “Come, Hwedolyn, your dream is but a disturbance of the digestion. You had three-day old goat for dinner, or too much mead, it is nothing more than that. Fear not the visions that come at night, for they are merely phantasms of the upset stomach, ghosts of the mead you have drunk, spirits of the honey-brew. Were you not the one who told me not to listen to foolish fears, who told me long ago to brave the wind and the storm and the sky beyond my mother’s eyrie? If you had not given me courage, cousin, perhaps I would still be crawling within a wings’ span of the cave.”
And Hwedolyn continued to argue with him, for fear and awe of the nightmare had taken hold of him, but Atdaholyn continued to laugh at his fears, so eventually Hwedolyn himself laughed and gave in to his cousin and went aloft with him. They flew to a plain in the north, a place where they had flown the wings of the wind many times before.
For many hours that night Hwedolyn and his cousin Atdaholyn made mighty sport on the high winds, letting the currents throw them up and the eddies dash them down, while they chased one another in a glorious aerial game of tag, roaring lion-eagle cries to the heavens, but in the midst of it Hwedolyn suddenly became uneasy, and called Atdaholyn after him. He flew aloft to hover above a black, inky cloud, watching and listening, for he fancied that he heard a fell cry upon the wind, but Atdaholyn had not followed him. He made a great cry – “Atdaholyn!” – for his cousin to join him above the clouds, and listened again to the sound of the howling wind. As he listened he fancied he could hear the fell laughter of the elf-mage, meandering up from the distant plain below.
Suddenly a lightning bolt split the air in two, ascending from the earth like a pillar of fire. Atdaholyn was below him to the southeast, and the lightning struck him and his bones and organs were lit up from within by great a red flash of flame, like a sword, fresh from the blacksmith’s forge, still upon the anvil, and Hwedolyn gave another great cry. And the very moment the flash occurred Hwedolyn fancied that he glimpsed the elf-mage from the corner of his eye, on the ground at the source of the lightning-bolt, holding aloft a talisman, but Hwedolyn cast the thought from his mind for Atdaholyn his cousin was plummeting down to his doom on the rocks below, his wings limp and useless by his side.
Hwedolyn dove down with his wings pressed tight against his sides and caught his cousin as he fell. He landed gently, his wings full of air, and held him tenderly to his heart, and called his name, but his cousin failed to answer, for the breath of life had left Atdaholyn’s body.
His cousin’s mighty wings and head were hanging limp and no breath came from his mouth, and Hwedolyn listened at his chest, but he could hear no heartbeat. He thumped his chest to try to start his heart again, for that is what gryphons do when one of their number has recently died, for sometimes the heart starts again and the gryphon coughs and begins breathing. But Atdaholyn did not move or take another breath. After trying for some time to restart his heart, Hwedolyn finally realised that he was dead.
Weeping, Hwedolyn lifted the limp form of his cousin in his foretalons, cradled him under his wings, and ran his beak through his mane. Then he said, “I know this was the elf. Cousin, I will avenge your death!”
And though the rain fell heavily, Hwedolyn stayed there, for how long he did not know, holding his cousin’s body in his foretalons and crying out to Ellulianaen, “Why? Why did this have to happen?” But Ellulianaen did not answer him. The heavens remained silent but for the sound of the howling wind and the rain spattering onto the stone…