Leander couldn’t be sure of the number of weeks that had passed since he’d crashed upon the mountainside. Time seemed to have warped while he encountered his dead sister Rhy in the world beyond – it was the only explanation for how he had roused as though from a long and peaceful sleep afterward, nestled among wildflowers on a gentle slope overlooking Pangea. Somehow, despite having hurtled headlong against a cliff in the middle of a storm, he had also awoken unharmed. Lee suspected he had Rhy to thank for that. For a while, he lay there with his broad wings tucked about his two-toned body, a distant look in the brown of his eyes.
Then he stood, leaping from the precipice and taking to the skies in search of family – something he had done countless times before.
But Lee soon discovered that not all was as it had been before. Strange occurrences seemed to be following in his wake. While he searched Beqanna’s skies for his niece as Rhy had instructed, he encountered summer storm after summer storm. They came out of nowhere as he flew – cloud would gather and darken until lightning cracked and thunder boomed all about him, seemingly with every beat of his wings. They grew so great and terrible that he was often forced to touch down in defeat, his frustration nearly tangible in the stinging sensation he could feel like pinpricks just beneath his splashed skin. At this rate, he would never find Rae.
As weeks passed and the storms continued to render his efforts useless, his mood only darkened. His niece was somewhere in these lands – in the skies – and here he was, being grounded at every turn. As a child his father had taught him the dangers of flying through storms, pointing out the fact that even the birds took shelter from lightning. Though derived from a separate source of electricity, Riagan himself had scars enough to prove its dangers to his young son.
Unfortunately, today was no different. He was soaring near the borders of the Pampas in appreciation of the clear blue skies surrounding him when it started. He could feel the air changing by the very taste of it on his breath, by the feel of it beneath his speckled wings. He considered alighting right then and there – perhaps he could find Noah and wait out the storm while catching up with her – but as the clouds thickened ominously before him, that same feeling of frustration sizzled beneath his cream-and-white flesh, causing his ears to flatten stubbornly. Lee tossed his head in open defiance of the oncoming storm.
Suddenly, thunder was crashing all around him – so close as to be deafening – and then he saw it.
A pair of broad wings sliced through the darkness ahead of him – wings dipped in blue.
“Hey! Wait!” he cried, though he feared the sound lost in the rumbling thunder. The wind twisted violently, abruptly stealing the air from beneath him so that he veered downward in an uncontrollable spiral, dropping like a stone before he could right himself again. Gritting his teeth, he clambered upward with broad strokes of his wings – thunder loud in his ears – and as he raked the ever-blackening cloud for some sign of her, he called out in near-desperation, “Rae?”
