The Sky Demons Part One: Journey

Chapter Fifteen- Floral death

Senka- Floral death

  

I watched Serefk’na and Tigre fly away and vaguely wondered what I might do to rescue them if they accidentally overstepped the line between flowers and grass.

“Umf, unnnngh,” moaned Asher. He rolled over and ended up on top of Gensan, who then proceeded to use his abilities to do a very good impression of a dying dragon.

Asher leapt up, reaching for his sword as Gensan charged into him with his antlers lowered, roaring like a tiliger. Asher fell back to earth with a thump and Gensan hopped onto his belly, chittering at him angrily.

“Do you have to make so much noise as soon as you wake up?” I asked, stroking the shade dweller’s nose as he rested his chin on my shoulder.

“Sorry” he said sheepishly then looked at Gensan, “Sorry. Hey, where are the others?”

“They’ve gone to read a riddle in the flowers or something.”

The shade dweller clip-thumped around to face me and leaned his forehead against mine, neighing for attention, his breath warm. I pulled my face away and scratched him behind the ears.

“It’s strange,” mused Asher, “whenever the lights came on in the cavern all the shade dwellers would screech and flee back to their caves, but he’s out in bright daylight and y’know, I think he might have been sun-bathing when I first woke up.”

“That would be because he’s blind,” I replied, pushing aside his mane and looking at the reddish-grey film over his eyes- there was scarring across the front of his face- I guessed he’d been blinded by some kind of animal attack. I’d done my best to wash out some of the wounds that still seemed to be infected but I’d probably need to do something a little more proper once we were in a forest where I could find herbs.

“Hey, Senka. Do you know the familiar spell?” Asher asked.

“Yes.”

“I think maybe the shade dweller might want you to ask him.”

“Maybe.”

“Well, why don’t you?”

I pushed the dweller’s face away and stood up, “I don’t know, don’t you think less than a day is too soon to decide to make him my familiar?”

“That’s your decision I guess, but unless you’re going to decide to make him your familiar we shouldn’t be bringing him with us any further, we’ll have to chase him back down the tunnels.”

I glared at him, but feeling the colour rise in my cheeks I looked away and stood up briskly.

“You’re right. I’ll do it now.”

“What? No Senka, you don’t need to-”

“I’m doing it now.”

Asher stayed quiet as I walked straight to the tunnel entrance, knowing that the shade dweller would follow me. As I thought I hadn’t gone more than a few steps before I heard him trotting along behind me. I pulled to a stop by the entrance and glanced towards Asher and felt somewhat relieved to see him staring fixedly in the direction Serefk’na and Tigre had gone. He looked kind of sad; I brushed the thought away as I turned my focus to the dweller.

“Right,” I said, turning to face the shade dweller and pointing towards the tunnel, “off you go.” The shade dweller took a step forward and licked the side of my head. Gross. I quickly began to realise that the dweller was not going to be chased away easily: he dug in all four feet as I tried to push him in the direction of the tunnels and as his hooves began to give way he quickly altered his direction so that I was pushing him to the left of the entrance.