Invocation

[amatsu]

Behold, O Muses, chroniclers of old:
Remember well the saga to unfold.
For future men, inspired, shall indite
The legend of the Mikaboshi’s might.
Record his golden eyes, his voice of brass,
That poets in the ages yet to pass
May sing, through you, of godlike Amatsu,
The August Star of Heaven born anew.

If all the gods of every pantheon had joined as one to flood the world once more, still they could not have mustered such a storm. Neither water nor winds could possibly have comprised that black tempest which engulfed the world in shadow and swallowed the heavens themselves. One heart alone was buoyed on that surging sea of darkness, tethered tenuously to a vessel of mortal flesh; if any deity had remained that had not yet drowned in the dark tides which blotted out the very stars, this lone heart surely must have survived on naught but that last god’s final blessing. For, in spite of the shadowed waves, the mortal being persisted, held afloat by the very prayer that had opened the door to this perfect darkness. Its course, driven by the storm, was set for the destination of all such wandering souls which refused to sink into the endless abyss of sable claws and glowing yellow eyes. At last the heart drifted ashore, and its ship of bone and blood, once anchored at safe harbor, was stirred from the nightmarish wanderings of its dark odyssey.

Amatsu Mikaboshi awoke, beholding an image of infinite stars. A vast expanse of endless darkness was all he could see, punctuated by the manifold spheres whose cold luminescence served only to remind him of the insignificance intrinsic to all mortal creation. Immediately, as he once had been wont to do during warm nights on his stately veranda, Amatsu’s eyes scanned the ether above, reading the midnight canvas as if it were a map, searching for those constellations by which he might orient himself and reaffirm his place in the cosmos; but as his golden eyes darted through the heavens, his smooth brow furrowed in anxious perplexity.

“Where,” he whispered, “is Aquarius, and Orion, and the Double-headed Serpent? Where are the Three Enclosures, and the Pathway of the Spirits? Where are those heavenly mappings by which mariners traverse the ocean’s inky breadths, the starry calendar by which priests have measured all the days of man?”

Amatsu tore his agonized gaze from these foreign firmaments to assess his earthbound state. He was still living, it seemed, still whole. Indeed, he was even dressed in his imperial vestments, just as he last remembered them: his crimson coat was untorn, his gloves pristine, his golden buttons and buckles untarnished. How, then, had he come to lose all sense of place, where not even the stars could guide his path? From himself he next turned his gaze outward, finding himself in a secluded cobblestone walkway. He attempted to rise, but was stopped short by a throbbing in his skull that felt as if he had thrust his head beneath Vulcan’s hammer. Settling to rest upon his elbows while blood pounded in his ears with the rhythmic force of Raiden’s drums, Amatsu scrutinized his surroundings and pondered as to his whereabouts.

As his flesh was intact, Amatsu was no spirit, and could thereby rule out most forms of afterlife. That he could see the sky, even a foreign one, it meant that he had not been lowered into any chthonic Underworld. There was too much stone and steel for this to be Asgard, not enough clouds for Olympus, and, in short, Amatsu had no idea where he had been transported.

He seemed to be lying spread-eagled on cobblestone floor, at the foot of a short stairway. Nearby he found his partisan, that trusty polearm with which he had banished one or two of those shadowlike demons before the teeming horde had completely swarmed upon their single prey. Reaching outward, he wrapped his fingers around the weapon’s gilded shaft and, drawing it near, he pressed its butt into the ground to help raise its master. The pain in his head had subsided somewhat, but now that he was attempting to stand, his body felt like it had been crushed by a fatal stroke of Thor’s mighty Mjöllnir; every muscle was sore, every ligament searing. But Amatsu clutched to his partisan and, using the spearlike weapon as a walking stick, trudged forward and up the stairs, one agonizing step at a time.

When Amatsu reached the top, he was not sure whether it had taken him minutes or hours, but at last he found himself at a sort of balcony overlooking a bustling town. Below, lamp posts of inexplicable design illuminated the square with a warm glow that defied the blackness of night. Under their brightness, Amatsu beheld in silent awe as strange forms in bizarre clothing moved about as if they were in any ordinary city, stopping to chat with other unusual figures or settling down for a candlelit meal at what must have been a nearby eatery.

“All that can be concluded is that I have survived the great deluge,” Amatsu pondered aloud, “and my continued existence marks me as one who is blessed by the gods. Like Deucalion before me, and Noah, and Atrahasis, I was selected to live through a flood of darkness which surely has ended the world as I knew it. But to what end?”

To what end, indeed? Onto which foreign shore had he been sent, where neither time nor space was even remotely recognizable? Amatsu Mikaboshi gazed upon Traverse Town and pondered these questions, determining the most logical course of action and pondering over a thousand questions. He would, for the moment, await the answers; whether by chance of fortune or divine inspiration, it mattered not.

[Bluebird]

((I'm sorry! I got carried away! Feel free to skip THE ENTIRE FIRST HALF!!!))

A gloved hand pressed itself against a single stone block that made up the only freestanding building in the First District. It was one part of a whole, one block of many that, by itself, was insignificant and worthless, but together, made up an entire edifice.

Zephyr was no longer part of a whole. She was one, by herself. Alone, and insignificant.

Jispo gave a curious chirp, flapping from the perch he had taken on her wing to settle on her shoulder, and then proceeded to mash his head against her cheek. Zephyr smiled as she removed her glove to scratch beneath his chin. Well, she wasn’t completely alone.

The Arderian had reached two conclusions about her dream creatures that she was not sure she had come to during her first night. As a matter of fact, she didn’t remember very much of that night at all, though that could have been attributed to the head injury she had suffered, not to mention the severe traumatization of coming to the realization that her entire world had been taken away from her, her life extracted from familiarity and comfort to be transplanted in a frightening and foreign environment. Zephyr would much rather have woken up in the Core surrounded by a pack of drushes than in this town they called Traverse. Even so, snippets of that night were coming back to her at a steady pace, almost as though she were experiencing it all over again for the very first time….

“…” Zephyr said, and gave Jispo a look.

Jispo cocked his head.

In any case, the first conclusion she reached was that the dream plane had survived somehow, and if it were true that all worlds were connected, had been stretched over the expanse of the entire universe. What was once so concentrated was now impossibly thin, and that was why it was so hard for her to summon her creatures. It had to be.

The second conclusion was that if the dream plane had survived in this manner, then so had a part of the Moonlands, which meant a piece of her world still remained. If she could find that piece, if such a possibility existed, perhaps she could go home.

It was this slight hope—infinite in its scope, she knew—that drove her. If there was a war between light and dark, a precarious balance between the worlds that threatened to topple at any moment, Zephyr didn’t care about it. She would choose the path that would lead her home.

Her hand found its way back to that single stone, focusing on the granule surface and the way it felt on her palm and fingers. Warm, too. Zephyr rolled up onto the balls of her feet and peeked inside the window as she had done two nights running, and sighed as she watched the forge fires glow from within. What she wouldn’t do to be back in her own forge, just so she could hit something.

They called the creatures that ran the place “moogles”, though if you asked Zephyr, they looked more like little disfigured wyles. She had run into a few of them, uppity little things, they were, always fretting about their pom poms. Jispo had nearly gotten his head bitten off after attempting to play with one.

A deep sigh escaped the Arderian. She longed for that forge, and vowed that one day she would take this establishment and make it her own. She turned away from the building, her hand lingering as though it could part from her wrist and stay there forever. It would be hers one day, she would make sure of that.

Choosing at this point to end her irrelevant stream of conscious thought, Zephyr jumped down from the crate she had shoved against the building, her wings woosh-ing as they slowed her two foot descent. Unnecessary theatrics, she knew, but in her defence, the past few days had not given her much use for her wings, and the girl would take any opportunity she could get.

The Arderian paused a moment to pull her glove back on, allowing Jispo time to settle back on her shoulder before she walked on. It was at this point her feet had decided to get in the way of each other and perform a dance that neither knew how to lead. Her wings tried to catch them and conduct some sort of direction, but it was too late. Zephyr screamed as she fell down the stairs.

She lay in a crumpled mess at the foot of the stairs, failing miserably to hold back tears as she lifted herself off her wings, which had been twisted and hurt as though a kier had gotten a hold of her. What hurt most of all, though, was her leg, which had taken the full brunt of her weight on the hard, sharp stone corners of the staircase. El, it felt like she had broken something! She yelled aloud in both curses and incomprehensible noises as she clutched her leg close to her body, wanting to rub it but afraid of relieving the pressure that was keeping so much of the pain at bay.

“Worthless feet!” she screamed at her extremities, never mind how cute her shoes made them. “Worthless as a pylofuf! Owww!!!”

By the ancestors, she was in so much pain! She fell to her side, moaning as though she were a dying animal and trying to put as much pressure on her shin as possible, while tears ran down her face in rivers.

Jispo, meanwhile, had taken it upon himself to watch the show from the balcony railing, and if Zephyr had enough awareness of her surroundings to realize this, would have had something else to yell about. As such, the hinko was safe … for the time being.

[amatsu]

Still working through the agonizing remnants of the physical and mental fatigue with which he had recently awoken, Amatsu Mikaboshi could make little sense of the dizzying scene below him. Still certain he had arrived in some type of magical realm, he tried to match the various sights to the tales of old, but the results were confusing at best. There was an anthropomorphized duck walking side by side with a werewolf, and a he even spotted a tsukumogami in the form of a living mailbox, complete with a lolling red tongue. It was as if some trickster god had rifled through the bestiaries and folktales of every civilization, plucking out monsters at random and throwing them haphazardly into one city.

There were humans, too, but their apparel was so bizarre that they proved even stranger than those furry little gnomes with doilies on their heads. Here and there he recognized various vestiges of his own world’s global fashions, but amongst the crowd he could discern no logical pattern behind their clothing. Even in the citizens’ dress, this world presented a nauseating admixture of sandals with suits, turbans with t-shirts, and top hats with togas. If there was one underlying similarity which dictated their chimerical fashion sense, however, it seemed to be the arbitrary and all-consuming application of zippers. There were zippers everywhere, on everyone and on everything. Zippers on shirts, on sleeves, on pants, on pockets. There were even zippers sewn into hats, and as someone bent over to adjust their stockings Amatsu could have sworn he saw a pair of zippered socks. Had Amatsu not prided himself so greatly on his cognitive capacities, he would have long since decided he had gone entirely mad; nevertheless, he found himself altogether at a loss for any explanation.

Amatsu Mikaboshi had heretofore enjoyed the luxury of perfect knowledge; anything he did not know, he learned, and anything he did not have time to memorize was readily available within the vast library of his ancestral estate. For the first time in his life Amatsu had found himself as uneducated as the basest boor. Yet even a witless drunkard knew where to find the nearest ale house, and the coarsest churl could tell a goodwife from a good wench. Amatsu was at a greater disadvantage than the most rustic of rubes, and that thought perturbed him above all else. Compared to the hopeless misery of his instant intellectual impotence, the cataclysmic destruction of his home world was naught but a transient annoyance. The howl of the wolf incites the complacent shepherd to spring into daring action, but the flea, ever darting from the herdsman’s palm, proves a more tenacious and discouraging foe by far. It was with these dismal introspections that Amatsu heaved a piteous sigh and turned away, overcome by melancholy—

—And beheld, at long last, an approaching form which at once reaffirmed everything the young man had come to believe. A feminine spirit had appeared, from whose back sprouted a pair of gorgeous white wings. Here, he thought, was evidence of a divine plan behind these seemingly unrelated events, a messenger of the gods to provide meaning to all this madness. For his part Amatsu stood utterly astounded, as if petrified by Medusa’s stony gaze. But this young, delicate creature was far too comely to be a gorgon, and the astonishment which held him affixed was born neither from a basilisk’s glance nor a cockatrice’s stare. So it was that he, who by enchantment could force upon his enemies the heavy burden of Atlas, felt as if he suddenly had come to bear the weight of the very skies.

But though Amatsu’s feet had grown leaden, his mind moved like quicksilver, and before the ethereal figure had taken a single step he had analyzed every facet of her appearance, employing his acumen to its highest faculties. If his studies into the divine histories of the immortals had taught him anything, it was that when dealing with those of the Otherworld and beyond, knowing precisely how to interact with a given non-human entity was almost always a matter of life and death. And so, with an unprecedented mental clarity that banished his melancholy in an instant, Amatsu zealously endeavored to unravel the mystery of the being before him, before he made a costly mistake, as ignorant mortals were so often wont.

Most immediately evident were her broad, beautiful wings, but so numerous were the mythological accounts of winged women that there was little to be gleaned from the feathery appendages. He counted through the angelic hierarchies: from archangels and principalities, to powers and dominions, to cherubim and seraphim; but such celestial divinities would surely appear more modestly clad than in such brazenly revealing (not to mention garishly colored) garb. He set aside his wonder over her wings, therefore, to let his mind race across the rest of her personage, and to deduce her identity by determining what she was certainly was not.

Her toned musculature and the hammer at her side implied that she was a maiden of the forge, and though the blacksmith god Hephaestus was known to have employed golden women of his own creation, the woman Amatsu faced could not possibly have been a mere simulacrum, no matter how delicately formed. The intricacy of her equipment, such as her elegantly sculpted gloves, allowed Amatsu to overlook those societies which had not attained such expertise in metallurgical craftsmanship.

The amethyst eyes and indigo hair presented a singular peculiarity to the puzzle, for in all his learning he had not read of any such coloration, except perhaps in a few of the more obscure entities from the far and exotic reaches of the Orient; but once more the clues before him led only to a blind alley, for the shape of her eyes were far too large and rounded to indicate an eastern physiognomy. Likewise, her four-fingered hands further perplexed Amatsu, for he had heard of many beings—like the titanic Hecatoncheires, or the demon king Ravana—who possessed hundreds of hands and hundreds of digits more, but of those whose fingers were too few, Amatsu was entirely clueless.

Given all these considerations, Amatsu was about to conclude that the feminine spirit was a valkyrie in the service of the God of Thunder—but in an instant, the spell was broken by the calamity of her unexpectedly violent descent. In a heartbeat the mysterious valkyrie had tripped, and fell, and had begun to cry, and it was only then that Amatsu began to see her for what she really was: a girl, alone and confused and afraid. She was no goddess but a mortal, just like him, and in all likelihood they were roughly the same age.

The poor lass was bawling now, and he thought he heard her curse her feet for being “worthless as Polyphemus”—an apt comparison, considering the handicapped fate of that blinded Cyclops—but beyond that he could not even begin to decipher her mewling cries. Reverential awe was replaced by human empathy, and whereas he previously had been turned to stone, he now found his feet moving of their own accord, and soon he had removed his gloves, tucking them into his breast pocket, and was now kneeling at her side.

“If I may,” he ventured, and when she did not object he placed his hands upon her rumpled wings. Amatsu’s experience in the medicinal arts was limited, but as a boy of noble blood he had practiced for some years the sport of falconry, and so, remembering the time his bird had taken a nasty dive, he tenderly felt along the woman’s wings to smooth out a few errant feathers and, once satisfied that there had been no breakage, he looked downward to the girl’s legs. Gently, he removed with one hand the woman’s grip on her shin, and with the other hand felt along her lower leg. Amatsu was no surgeon, but it just so happened that he had studied the exact effects of gravity; the physiological effects, to be specific, of falling down stairs. The information had proven vital in ousting a certain duke, and it was a private little irony that he was now using that knowledge to heal, rather than to harm.

“Hold still, my lady.” He lowered his voice in an effort to comfort the distraught girl. “This will cause you some minor discomfiture, yes, but the potential damage must be ascertained at once. Upon my honor, I shall not harm you in the least.”

He soon concluded that her no bones had been broken and her ankle had wondrously avoided sprain. It would hurt for her to put weight on her foot for a few hours at most, but there were no lasting injuries. Whoever this girl was, with her amethyst eyes, she certainly had fallen more gracefully than that treacherous duke, now buried in a world that Amatsu was certain no longer existed. He pushed aside any further recollections of the past and gave the girl a reassuring smile.

“There is little cause for alarm, madame. So long as you do not overtax yourself, you shall undoubtedly recover promptly and completely.” But his smile faltered somewhat as he considered his own situation, which was not nearly so hopeful.

“Unfortunately, from this point I fear I shall prove to be of little service; for, truth be told, I have not the foggiest notion of where I am, or how I came to be here. We are fellow-sufferers, it seems, for if my theory is correct, you are nearly as new to this world as I.” He rose, and offered her a hand with which to rise and an arm on which to lean, at least until this fascinating woman could stand on her own.

“Ah, but I forget myself, yes? I am Amatsu Mikaboshi, and it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Might I be so honored as to receive your name?” He glanced at the small, aerial animal that had witnessed the entire exchange and added, “And I should like very much to meet your curious little companion, as well.”

[Bluebird]

Never in her life had Zephyr felt more miserable than she did lying on the cold, hard, cobblestone ground, while tears streamed down her face in rivers and sobs came in uncontrollable waves. It was no longer about her leg, though it had been the straw that broke the junjertrug’s back. So much had transpired the past few days, and the poor girl had not an inkling of how to cope with it all. Her world ripped out from under her, her creatures removed, as well as her ability to fly—what good was living if you couldn’t fly?—it was all too much. She cried like she had never cried before, not caring if anyone saw her or if she was making a scene.

So wrapped up in her sorrows that she did not notice a man approach and tend to her feathers as though she were a broken fledgeling. Suddenly she realized that she did care if someone saw her and notice if she was making a scene. She swallowed a sob, which made a noise far worse than if she had left it alone, and pushed herself upright, wiping her nose on her arm and sniffing in a way that would make an ooze arboll recoil.

She wanted to tell him to go away, that she was fine, and she just wanted to be left alone, but every time she tried to get words out she sniffled instead. It was quite embarrassing, when she was trying so hard to maintain some sort of aura of fortitude.

“ ‘M fine,” she finally managed to mumble, and realized it was a lost cause.

His hands were tender and delicate, and despite her resolve did feel rather nice, so she did not object to his care, instead taking the time to settle the sobs that still afflicted her body, bringing her to convulsions as though a Collar of Despair had been placed around her neck. When he bent down to take a look at the damage she had done to her leg, her hands shook as he removed them, for without the pressure to keep the pain at bay it came at her full force. She blinked back hot tears, and although one or two escaped, they were disposed of quickly with the inside of her wrist. Her leg she saw, while not broken, had suffered a nasty gash, though she had staunched most of the blood flow. She sniffed again, and her lip hurt with the way she was biting it.

Taking his proffered hand, she allowed him the satisfaction of helping her to her feet, although in all honesty she was quite done with this man’s help. She was not finished feeling sorry for herself, and this interruption into her cry was unexpected and unwanted. He had already seen her at her worst, and this truly was Zephyr at her worst. All the girl wanted to do was leave and forget this mess had ever happened, and she tried it, but after putting the slightest bit of weight on her leg she found it useless, and that the man was now supporting her entirely.

“Zephyr,” she said at the request of her name, her demeanor bitter and embarrassed that she could not remove herself from the man’s company after he had witnessed such ignominy. “And that unsympathetic lump of fur and leaves is Jispo,” she continued, indicating the tree hinko who had not moved from his perch on the balcony. The creature chirped and took flight, landing on Zephyr’s left wing, which she proceeded to shake, forcing him off where he then settled on the top of her head, which was the next thing to shake. The hinko cried in protest, but he had gotten a firm grip on the straps of her goggles and therefore survived the trembling.

“Oh, now we decide to be sweet? Well, too bad! I don’t want your pity,” Zephyr hissed, but gave up trying to drive him away. He was only perpetuating the scene. The Arderian took a deep breath, which filled her with some confidence, but it was broken with the way she shuddered at the end of it. She sighed—how mortifying.

“I apologize for the display you saw. It has been a while since I last used these idiotic appendages!” She yelled that last part, stamping her good foot and stumbling a little in the process. Amatsu Mikaboshi helped regain her balance, which she hated. She pushed away from him, not so far that she could not rely on him to keep her upright, but just enough so that she wasn’t completely dependent on him, all the while not bothering to hide the grimace that had set root—if she was trying to hide it at all, which she wasn’t.

“This place you find yourself in is called Traverse Town, an abhorrent land that will take everything you have ever known and loved away from you.” Jispo barked in protest, but Zephyr ignored him. “It has reduced me to a lost and sniveling balamant pup, and I have become as clumsy as a yebed. I swear, I wish I had woken up in the Core chained to a gorath than in this detestable city.

“Your world, if you are as unfortunate as I, has been destroyed by creatures called heartless, or so I have been told. They are hideous beings, agents of the darkness, and far more frightening than a cawh ever could be.” There was no sympathy in her voice, just bitterness and hatred. If this man’s world was destroyed, then he was in the same boat as she, and thus did not deserve her compassion. If his world had not been destroyed and still existed, then he was far better off, and therefore it was she that deserved his compassion.

“Where are you from, Amatsu Mikaboshi?” she asked, stumbling a little over the sheer magnitude of his name. She squinted her eyes and looked at him for the first time. He was rather tall, and dressed in regalia. She wondered if he served on a council. His skin was the same color as hers, so outward appearance made him trustworthy, at least. She relaxed her eyes and looked downwards, her free hand flexing as she tried to dispel the sudden hope that had arisen from within.

There was a moment’s hesitation before she looked back, hooking a tress of hair behind her ear with one gloved hand while the other gave the slightest squeeze at Amatsu Mikaboshi’s arm. Her mouth curled into a small smile, as though amused at the way she was setting herself up for disappointment.

“I suppose it would be too much to ask if you are from the Moonlands, yes?”

[amatsu]

Amatsu Mikaboshi had been too hasty in dismissing Zephyr as completely mundane. She was mortal, of course, but as she continued to speak, Amatsu realized her world was nothing like his own. He had studied every bestiary, mythical and natural, but never had he heard of such creatures as those to which Zephyr continuously referred. Her pet Jispo was evidence enough; it was a fascinating animal, and it seemed to possess a nearly human intelligence. He fixed his gaze upon them both, and his interest was piqued anew.

He listened to her brutally honest tirade with keen interest, for it seemed that, as he had guessed, that Zephyr and Amatsu had experienced the same recent loss. It had been simple enough to theorize that his home was gone, but to hear it spoken aloud in unequivocal terms gave the death of his world a reality he could scarcely fathom. He focused on looking interested rather than distraught, and he kept his eyes wide to preclude the gathering of tears. To be unable to hide the weakness of his emotions would be an unbearable dignity, and he imagined that Zephyr was as proud as he, making her passionate display all the more pitiable. For her sake and his own, he kept his composure as well as he was able.

“I come not these ‘Moon Lands,’ no. My world is—was known collectively as the Dominions of Logemist, but that is inconsequential. Though I lost an empire, still I would not reclaim one world at the cost of the stars.”

Amatsu would only look ahead, he told himself, and ever upwards. He would inwardly mourn the destruction of his home and the dissolution of his gods, but here, it seemed, there was an entire galaxy to explore, a completely new universe full of knowledge the likes of which Amatsu could never have dreamed existed. He wanted it all—to know it, to possess it, to conquer it—and he could never move toward his destined future if he was fixated on the past. Still, the pangs of loss were difficult to overcome, so he devoted his attention toward reasoning out just who Zephyr was, and where she had come from.

“I am very much intrigued by the Moonlands. I gather from your rather vehement complaint against legs that your people prefer aerial ambulation. I can further deduce, you see, that your wings alone are insufficient to the task of flight, nor can it be that your world itself is gravitationally bereft.” Otherwise, she would be much taller, less muscular, and her legs would be vestigial. Out of politeness, he kept those conclusions to himself.

As he was studying the girl’s physiognomy, Amatsu noticed that the gash on Zephyr’s leg had resumed its bleeding, now that she no longer held it. “I am curious,” Amatsu said, “as to whether my own abilities have been dampened, and I hope you will not take offense if I put my powers to the test.”

While keeping Zephyr steady with one hand, Amatsu crouched and placed the other on the girl’s wound. Recalling months of studying and tireless practice, Amatsu closed his eyes and let himself bask in that unnoticed yet ever-present tug toward the world’s core. Concentrating, his lids fluttered open as they honed their golden gaze upon Zephyr’s trickling gash. To summon a lesser version of the Gravity spell was a delicate procedure, far more complex in its execution than an indiscriminate burst of magical energies, but Amatsu kept strict command the gravitational forces which he now bent and redirected under the indomitable strength of his will.

Rising, Amatsu relaxed his knitted brow and exhaled deeply. Zephyr would feel a moderate yet painless pressure as if an invisible hand was placed firmly over her shin. The blood flow halted completely, and no contaminants would breach the unseen bubble of gravity which now shielded her healing wound.

Once more, Amatsu glanced upward, toward the moonless night, and for a moment he lost himself in contemplation. He considered the lunar tides, and of the tremendous pressure in the ocean’s depths. He pondered over the lightness of the clouds and the weightlessness of space. He thought about gravity, that elemental force which bound man to the mud from which he was formed. But Amatsu was not content to squander in the dirt. The Mikaboshi yearned to escape this cage of clay, to spurn the physical forces that dictated that men must walk on the earth and die there as well. Zephyr was no goddess, but she had once possessed a special gift—that of levitation, of Anti-Gravity—and Amatsu wanted to find out why.

“Tell me more about the Moonlands.”

[Bluebird]

((Auto done with permission of Amatsu’s author. Thaaaanks! It was much appreciated! ^^ ))

Zephyr’s eye twitched at Amatsu’s deductions, but that was all that betrayed the storm that was brewing within. The more Amatsu talked the more Zephyr’s internal temperature increased, and to see him manipulate his magic without falter and hesitation while she stood there landlocked and unable to summon and cast spells made her fume.

So she waited for him to complete his show, exit stage right as he rose to his feet, a smile plastered on her face to give the illusion that she was eternally grateful for his aid before she kicked him as hard as she could in the shin.

“What do you know about my wings?” she screeched as she kicked him again. “What do you know—” kick “—about my wings!” kick.

Amatsu was on the ground now, but Zephyr refused to cease her assault, kicking him in the stomach, ribs, anywhere her foot would get good, full contact with his body. It was one of the reasons she loved having metal plates bolted on the top of her shoes.

“My wings are strong! My wings are pretty! And they are perfectly—capable of keeping—me—aloft!” Each word was emphasized with a kick, until Amatsu was left gasping and reeling on the hard cobblestone street.

Satisfied that she had defended her honor and made her point clear, Zephyr sat down on the bottom step, folding her arms over her knees as her veils pooled in bunches around her.

“Though I suppose you’re right,” she said as she watched him struggle to pick himself up. “Levitation is an innate power all Arderians possess, although the ability doesn’t manifest itself until maturity. Only a few of us have wings, and while they can be strong enough, they lack the stamina to keep us afloat for long. They’re really more for speed and agility.”

She sighed. It was the same way with her legs. Their use had been so infrequent that when Zephyr finally needed to use them it was as though they had forgotten what their purpose was. She had tried to fly with her wings, but it was too taxing, too exhausting, and Zephyr found she could barely walk the districts without gasping for breath. Was she really that out of shape? By the ancestors, she was a Ringsmith! She could pound the hammer all day without waver, but El forbid she walk somewhere. It made her sick.

“Magic is different here than on the Moonlands.” Her head was resting on her arms, and her eyes were focused somewhere off in the distance, as though if she tried hard enough the blurred bricks and cobblestones could become clouds dusty and tinged red from the sands of d’Resh and the bright lights could become colorful dream creatures … as they all remained inanimate and lifeless. She sighed again. “I can no longer levitate, my spells have been all but forgotten, and my rings are practically worthless. The only one I’ve been able to call has been Jispo—” Her eyes shot up with her head as she indicated the flying hinko clasped to her goggles and flapping his wings with the sudden movement. “—but I can barely even sense the others.”

She paused for a minute before she closed her eyes, a look of intensity crossing her features. One of the rings on her fingers began to glow, but it was dim, noticeable only because of the darkness. Her warlum was there—Zephyr could could feel something—but she was hazy and out of focus, and as much as she tried to concentrate, refused to clarify. The Arderian let go of the dream plane, the glow on her ring winking out, and released a frustrated noise.

“I have not yet met one other person who has had this much difficulty; it seems as though I am the only one who has been stripped of their magical prowess. It is aggravating, it is disconcerting, and it is not fair!” She punched the stones that made up the staircase, her metal plates ringing in the quiet district.

“Thera is there, I know she is; I can feel her! But it is like catching smoke.”

The Arderian sat there in desolation as Jispo made a nest out of her hair and settled down in it. She took a breath and exhaled, although it wasn’t quite as pathetic as her previous sighs. Despite it all, her flying hinko had an uncanny knack of settling her nerves, and at this moment it was the only thing stopping her from throwing another tantrum. Her head itched with the desire to shake, but she did not allow it for fear of disturbing the hinko, so she expelled the energy with a shiver of her wings, instead.

“I just do not understand what makes me so different.”