[open] hear that lonesome whipporwill

[elio]

elio

some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

Lepis’ request had been a simple one: seek out a good-natured magician. Nerine is a welcome, mostly familiar landscape, but Elio cannot say he is particularly ecstatic about braving the land’s reputable weather to find a man he does not know. Still, he puts on a well-mannered face and heads to the neighboring kingdom, certain that whatever his mother needs from Brennen is important enough for him to not sully it with a bad attitude.

Elio takes his time through Taiga, stopping beneath a particularly tight grouping of trees to peer at an old indent. The years have changed his childhood summer napping spot. Where there was once soft soil and pillow of pale vines, there are now pine needles and only the barest hint of a child’s sheltered body. Elio allows himself to fold into the memory of Taiga’s relieving shade on a hot day, then opens his eyes to find an opening in the canopy big enough for him to fly through.

Wings make his trip much faster, but heavy gray rain clouds loom ominously over Nerine’s rocky terrain. Elio stumbles to a landing upon a dark green patch of grass, steely eyes looking to the sky just as rain begins to fall. The air smells of a coming downpour, so Elio shakes out his already dampened and tangled mane before trotting to what might be a rocky outcropping. There he takes shelter beneath a thin overhang, everything around him deafened by the weather and the crash of the angry ocean beneath him.

“Welp,” Elio says loudly to himself, eyes flitting first to the dark stone above him then second to the fickle pebbles beneath him. He laughs and pulls his crimson wings tight to his side, wondering if he thinks hard enough he can grab this magician’s attention without soaking himself in some vain search.

@[Brennen] and any!