Aeolia

41: Follower

Spire awoke suddenly. His eyes opened with a mechanical flick, as if he was a clockwork cuckoo. Something was amiss. The pink petals still looped around him, subsiding and whipping up again with the wills of the wind. He narrowed his gaze through the flurry. He wasn't alone any longer. Someone was moving through the forest, quickly.

     Whatever it was, it made no effort to conceal its movement. Spire heard it trampling through the trees, just barely west of him.

     And Spire didn't want newcomers. He wanted his privacy. He just wanted to sleep and dream of crackling dark—charged with pulls and releases, like the boughs he nested upon. Swish, sway. He wanted nothing more, only lethargic solitude in a fractured world. But it wasn't fractured to him. It was home.

     Spire cocked his head to listen. The being's footfalls were inconsistent and heavy—like its mind was leaden, overladen with Mist.

     That vaporous Mist wasn't good for anyone. The south was a silly place, with all its cursed fog and those tall, tall trees. No one needed so much Mist. The northern burrows were drier, clearer, and much more practical.

     He'd always meant to go there, he realized—to the north. He'd heard years ago that it was home to a kind and ancient ground-snake, with scales black as a rich summer night. He'd heard it loved to listen, loved to help.

     The songbird was shaken from his thoughts by an increase of the being's volume. It was still flattening the foliage beneath it, crushing dry leaves to dust. Spire winced. The intruder's belabored pace and funneled breathing clenched like iron roots around his hearing. The thing sounded as if it was infected, with a swollen, swollen mind.

     Spire decided to follow it. He shook his stiff wings and hopped off his branch. Hovering above the forest, he caught a glimpse of the staggering animal. It was a bird, but unlike any he had seen before. It wasn't like the little gray things that had flown away earlier. No, as he swung closer, he saw that this bird was comprised of blue feathers, with occasional bars of white and rust. Its plumage cascaded from its form like rain halted mid-fall. Spire fluttered closer. The large bird's eyes glinted with a distant light, like sunrise through a hearth-glass. Its body was compact and muscular but light enough to harbor the miracle of flight.

     The thing revolted Spire. But it piqued his interest as well.

     He tilted his wings, heaved a weighty flap, and soared through the cover of leaves above the lumbering bird. It never veered off its northward course. Though it seemed sick, strung limp with lethargy, it knew where it was bound to.

     Slowly the forest around began to lose its lovely color and its leaves.

     Spire followed the sick bird to a white place.

     Now the land was riddled with low hills and sharp rents in the ground, with snaking ditches and yawning holes. Spire looked even further north and saw the sharp, jagged mountains there. He glanced up and saw not only the sun in the sky, but the moon too. They hung beside each other, one red, one blue. The light from the moon was white as white. Spire didn't think it strange. He thought nothing of it at all.

     He returned his gaze to the ground and found the large bird wasn't there. Where, then? Had it fallen into the earth?

     Yes! something in him shouted with grave intensity.

     He didn't know which hole had swallowed it, but he darted into a random one in pursuit of the intriguing bird. He entered vast and immediate darkness.