Quzil Scarlett & the Kingdom of Durkinbird

Chapter 2- Gateway to a New World

The giant golden tree had opened into a golden gate while Quzil stood there, stunned by its sight. He clenched his feather tightly and a wide smile spread across his face.

“It’s here” he whispered. “It’s finally here!” His eyes opened wide like an owl, “the ticket to my adventurous journey is finally here!” he screamed in delight and at once dashed into the gate and kept running into the light.

Suddenly he realised that what he was running on seemed to be a wooden bridge and around him was the blue sky but that didn’t stop him from running and then he jumped!

Without a second thought he jumped and looked like a ballerina gracefully flying in the air when he realised the air was unusually cold and a bit foggy. It were the clouds. Quzil found himself standing in the sky among the clouds, thousands of feet from the ground.

“Uh oh” he said. He didn’t have the courage to look down below him and decided to turn back but when he turned his head to see the golden gate, it shut close and the wooden bridge he was standing on vanished.

He started falling down towards the ground screaming, yelling out his lungs as the wind hit his face. He helplessly cried for help as he fell when he noticed a rock like thing floating in the air in front of him. As he got closer he realised that it was, in fact an island. An island that was floating in the air, there was some sort of a town on top of it and its foundations looked like an inverted mountain top. He passed by it but couldn’t full grasp its elegance but as the fell further he saw something even more elegant and astonishing.

He saw a whole swarm of it, a huge assemblage of floating islands spread in the air like a bunch of lotuses in a pond, it looked beautiful and for a second Quzil almost forgot that he was falling from the sky, until he saw another floating island right below him. There was nothing he could do but swing his hands around in false hope as the distance between him and the island cut closer.

He saw pillars on the island and tall trees which had windows in them and people too but they were different from the ones he knew in his world. They had wings attached to their back. Some were walking and some were flying when a few of them noticed an object in the air that was coming towards them with great speed.

“Help me!” screamed Quzil as he fell. He got so close that he was about to hit one of the tree tops in a few seconds. The tree top was just inches away from Quzil when suddenly he stopped……… or rather he was stopped.

He looked below him and saw the branches of the tree waving in the wind and noticed the strong grip on his shoulder. His body began to move and now he was flying above the trees when he looked up to see who had saved him. It was a girl with brown hair and brown wings that had saved Quzil from getting his nose flat.

“What’s happening?” he inquired.

“Shut up and stay still, or we both fall” the bird-girl scolded him. Her hands had grabbed on to Quzil’s shoulders so tightly that he had to spread his arms open that made him look like a scarecrow in a cornfield. Quzil had tons of questions to ask this girl but he had been asked to not speak and so he let the little birdgirl take him where she thought would be safe ground.  She flew him over the floating islands while he stared at all the bewilderment he couldn’t take in.

They were all covered in greenery, the vast lands that were masked in trees and tall grasses and a lot of skyscraping treehouses too. From below the islands slipped streams of water which broke out into sprinkles and watered the tangled roots below it . It was just like he had read in books.

One by one they passed several islands where each one had a diverse and radiant difference than the previous one and each one seemed to have birdmen with different coloured wings. Some of them he saw had jet black hair and black wings that resembled crows, some had dark green wings that resembled parrots while some had light brown wings with dark patches in between that resembled owls.