[open quest] there's thunder in our hearts - round three

[Areane]

The stillness that had settled, that they had all seemed to find after surviving the storm of nightmares, feels wrong. The air that hangs around seems to cloy at her dark skin, already damp with sweat of the excursion that they had just endured. Something in Areane wants to believe that after something so terrible, surely what comes after can’t be worse.

Her amethyst eyes glance around those gathered within the eye of the storm, searching for some kind of assurance to this thought. They all look like her, dazed and unbelieving, haggard and tired. It has to be over, she thinks. They survived the worst and now the storm must dissipate.


She finally looks to the Fairy that had summoned them all, hoping that what she would find waiting there would be a comfort. It’s all she wants now, to fly away from the nightmares and seek out the embrace of something solid. A shoulder, the ground, just something that isn’t a wild wind full of horrors.

But the clouds begin to shift in warning, circling around them like a predator might. It is the first time that she has ever felt trapped in the sky and her chest tightens, constricting her earlier hope. It comes closer and closer, wrapping around them tighter and tighter, unforgiving in the choice that it offers them: wait to be swallowed or decide to brave the vortex. It will come for her either way.

So Areane dives down, thinking for a moment that she might slip low enough to escape the harsher currents. But it yanks her, turning her sleek form around and around, almost taunting her for believing that she had any control in this situation. Her body twists and turns in so many directions it feels impossible that she could still be whole. When she gains the ability to open her dark wings again, Areane does her best to push herself up.

For every stroke that lifts her, there is another gust of air that sends her tumbling down further.

Tears have begun to form and they leak from her eyes, moving down her face as fast and furious as she wished could fly. This is how it ends, she thinks. Her first real adventure - her first chance at proving that she was ready to be something more than just a daughter or a sister - and she is failing. She is failing and falling; it is a descent towards doom and her beginning will be gone before she has even had a chance to know any sort of ending.

This is her true nightmare: she will never amount to anything.

There are tentacles that wrap themselves around her forelegs. The glowing eyes of a monster still torment her from the shadowy walls of the storm. Something strikes her and Areane can smell her blood in the damp and angry air. It would be easier to fall than to keep suffering from this. Defeat is so close, and she is so tired.

Areane begins to close her eyes, letting her body succumb to the gale swirling all around her. Now, the sensation prickling at the edges of her tired wings seems to say. She keeps spinning, having no notion of what was up and what was down. The world was a blur. It was swallowing her whole, and yet, the awareness came again. Go, it seemed to say.

These feelings were always fleeting, never lasting more than a moment. But Areane had never fought them before, and having such little fight left in her, she gives one last effort. Her onyx wings open wide and she follows the feeling, battling against the sense of drowning despite being in the air.

Up (or perhaps down) she goes, struggling until the darkness leeches away and the storm rages without her.

please scramble her lunar glowing and immortality!