Fire Scarred *Un-Edited Version*

Chapter Twenty-Six

"How much farther?" I impatiently asked. The sun was peaking over the tops of the trees adorning them in halos. My brain was numb from the pounding in it and fatigue. A worry I'd been carrying for a while, that he wasn't really helping me at all, yanked inside of me.

Zoyhe paused, his face not showing any kind of weakness. "You are tired. I will give you a ride."

"No, no," I protested expecting him to try to grab me up and carry me. "I'm fine."

"It's no problem." The boy then crawled to his knees under my speculations. His body began to grow and shift. His legs and arms trippled in length, and his shoulders broadened and thickened with coarse muscle. His face elongated and squared off into a snout. Snow white hair grew from his scalp down the nape of his neck and his spine, sprouting from there all over the rest of his body. Zoyhe had taken on the shape of an elephant sized horse. He shook out his mane and stamped his feet on the ground. At last, a horn crept between his bangs, and his transformation was complete.

"You're a. . . No. Freaking. Way." The child in me sprang out, and my eyes widened into sausers. Wasn't it every little girl's dream, in fact, to ride an unicorn?

Zoyhe chuckled, bowing his body down to an accessable height. "Get on."

I swung one leg over the side of his thick neck, and slid back down to his mid back. He stood, and began walking.

"We are almost there," he said. "Hang on." He took of into a gallop. The trees around us shook, and I gripped on to his mane fiercely.

Branches whacked against us in an annoying and hampering way. I closed my eyes and tried to focus. I felt the wind and its presence all over. The way it touched me, the way it flew through my fingers. My arms reached out from my sides, but I no longer felt the rough plants there. I pushed the wind from within me covering Zoyhe too. We flew through the forest as shadows of the wind. Nothing could stop us. We floated through boulders and trees and rustled the leaves. We were a part of the wind, of the atmosphere, of the air.

It all came to a stop leaving me dizzy. I slid from the creature's back and looked around me. Nothing about this place seemed special at all. Nothing said this was the kind of place where a nature spirit would hide. Maybe that's what made it so great.

"Thanks," I pat Zoyhe's neck in gratitude.

He shrunk down back into his human form, and stretched out his spine. "You are very welcome."

"So, where is he?" My eyes glazed over our surroundings. Along with the hammering in my head, I had begun to feel like cotton had been shoved from my ears into my skull. I knew that feel from the first time I'd met Ciris. "I can sense him."

"I do not know," Zoyhe answered. "But I feel him, too. His power at least. That's how I know he's here. I don't know where precisely,"

Then I did the only thing I could think of doing. "Ciris! Ciris!" I shouted.

My companion stared at me from the corner of his eye like I had grown a tail or actually lost my nose.

"Ciris! It's me, Cora! I need your help! Ciris!"

I stood and listened. I just wanted some kind of sign or way of knowing he was here at least. "Ciris!" I crumbled to the ground onto a protruding tree root with a frustrated huff.

"Geez. Get off of me, child!" An aged voice grumbled.

Scared out of my wits, I jumped up. "What the-"

A man rose from the growth, his eyes shifting from a brilliant blue to brown. His black hair fell into his eyes and over his deeply tanned skin. His body was covered in course lines of muscle that pushed against his epidermis. His wise voice didn't match his youthful appearance, and it threw me off in shock.