l e p i s
up in the city until the stars lost the war
With Kestrell spending the winter night with Altum to watch the meteor shower, Lepis wakes to an unusually chilly morning. There is a moment of stillness, when she reminds herself of why there is no pied body sharing her nest, and another long moment as she savors the rare ability to stretch her wings wide as she rouses more fully.
The alcove in which she now stands is just long enough for such an exercise, with a few scant inches between the golden tips of her feathers and the rough red stone. The sun has not yet risen far enough to rouse her – or to warm her – so the dun mare fluffs out her golden wings as she moves toward where the sun touches the sandstone of the stone cliff, pulling her feathered appendages to her sides for warmth. The weak winter sun is enough to warm her face, and she closes her blue-grey eyes for a moment to soak in the quiet world around her.
Birds call in the trees below, but the kookaburra that nests in the baobob below is not yet awake. When she reopens her eyes, some of the glowing winterblooms below are just losing their sky blue glow to the grey light of dawn. The air smells of frost and steam, the latter caused by hot spring that gurgles over the ledge and down to the distant earth below. Crystallized salt deposits glitter in the sunlight, and Lepis wishes for the thousandth time that the spring as freshwater rather than brackish. ‘No place is perfect,’ she reminds herself, pointedly not thinking of Fort Hideaway.
She takes to the sky without much ado, ignoring the ache of age in her bones as she flies.
Her direction is toward the southeast edge of Loess, where a round lake sits amidst a thick (for Loess, anyway) forest. She lands there, and by the time an unfamiliar winged stranger emerges from the woods of the Common lands, the queen has washed the dust from her dun hide and her navy-and-white (and grey) mane has dried all to one side of her neck. This leaves the far side, with its thick navy scars in the shape of hooves and teeth, uncovered.
Lepis forgets this the moment she sees the stranger.
She moves toward him at a slow walk, but it is direct and purposeful. Her face is set in a welcoming smile, as befitting a greeter, but her eyes do not match it until she is close enough to see his. They are silver – not green and blue. He is not the danger. Well, at least he is not that danger. By the time she is close enough to converse, she is as happy as she looks, the soft buzz of the emotion a comforting warmth in the back of her head.
“I’m Lepis,” She tells him. Even standing tall she is not near his height, but the way that she holds herself is confident, and perhaps it might seem as though the scars across her neck are signs of the many battles she has won. Yet she is smiling when she asks: “What's your name?”
@[Mesec]
The alcove in which she now stands is just long enough for such an exercise, with a few scant inches between the golden tips of her feathers and the rough red stone. The sun has not yet risen far enough to rouse her – or to warm her – so the dun mare fluffs out her golden wings as she moves toward where the sun touches the sandstone of the stone cliff, pulling her feathered appendages to her sides for warmth. The weak winter sun is enough to warm her face, and she closes her blue-grey eyes for a moment to soak in the quiet world around her.
Birds call in the trees below, but the kookaburra that nests in the baobob below is not yet awake. When she reopens her eyes, some of the glowing winterblooms below are just losing their sky blue glow to the grey light of dawn. The air smells of frost and steam, the latter caused by hot spring that gurgles over the ledge and down to the distant earth below. Crystallized salt deposits glitter in the sunlight, and Lepis wishes for the thousandth time that the spring as freshwater rather than brackish. ‘No place is perfect,’ she reminds herself, pointedly not thinking of Fort Hideaway.
She takes to the sky without much ado, ignoring the ache of age in her bones as she flies.
Her direction is toward the southeast edge of Loess, where a round lake sits amidst a thick (for Loess, anyway) forest. She lands there, and by the time an unfamiliar winged stranger emerges from the woods of the Common lands, the queen has washed the dust from her dun hide and her navy-and-white (and grey) mane has dried all to one side of her neck. This leaves the far side, with its thick navy scars in the shape of hooves and teeth, uncovered.
Lepis forgets this the moment she sees the stranger.
She moves toward him at a slow walk, but it is direct and purposeful. Her face is set in a welcoming smile, as befitting a greeter, but her eyes do not match it until she is close enough to see his. They are silver – not green and blue. He is not the danger. Well, at least he is not that danger. By the time she is close enough to converse, she is as happy as she looks, the soft buzz of the emotion a comforting warmth in the back of her head.
“I’m Lepis,” She tells him. Even standing tall she is not near his height, but the way that she holds herself is confident, and perhaps it might seem as though the scars across her neck are signs of the many battles she has won. Yet she is smiling when she asks: “What's your name?”
