Soaring Over The World (Soaring Saga #2)

**Chapter Thirteen~**

"Whoa, are you alright?" Ari asked, noticing my panic.

"I am, but a lot of people won't be soon," I reply, not looking away from the full moon.

"Uh oh," Ari muttered, seeing the full moon, then he turned back to me, "Listen. Cirocco. I'm sorry if anything bad happens to anyone you care about, but there's nothing we can do at the moment. The Terrus is super-smart, and they have Willow helping them. Those two would honestly be unstoppable if they needed. The Super Kitsune Duo! Then they also have the Phoenixes, and literally the whole Silver Council at their disposal. And clearly this should be a big enough deal for them to help, so I'm pretty sure Woodleif is well protected, even if they have so clue they are. The thing is, we're also acting like Lio is telling the truth. And not going to lie, Lio's a weirdo. So in the off chance the kid's right, everything will be okay. Not to mention the human military and government. Seriously, the full moon doesn't have to mean a thing if they don't let it, which they won't."

     I let that sink in. I really wanted to believe those words. Majority of my brain says yes, he's right, Woodleif is protected, even if unprepared. And majority wins, right?

"Y-you're right. It'll be okay. Hazel and Carlos and them will be okay. They can handle themselves. If Lio is even right about the plans."

     But, what if we were underestimating the PardusFighters? Or Lio was wrong with what they were doing there?

     No. It was okay. The Terrus would figure it out.

     But what if the Silver Council didn't let them do anything? They were one vote out of... actually, I'm not sure how many cities were in Arjentum. Too many and not enough at the same time, for different reasons.

"Let's hope we're right," I agree with Ari, putting a brave face back on, "Did you want to continue?"

"Not esspecially," Ari muttered, looking away again as waves of dread returned. I sighed. One day, I'd figure out this guy's reasons and what he hates talking about. For the time being, I'll respect his privacy. I voiced those vows, then we walked back to the camp.

****~~~~****

     We got back to the campfire, had some fun there, then I went to bed as quick as possible so I could think clearly about what I was learning from Ari. All I came up with was that anyone who dared to bully any of my friends would probably get a punch in the face if the friend was permanently bothered that much. Once I finally got to sleep, my brain clearly wasn't done worrying about Woodleif and it decided to voice that in my dreams.

     Then, when I woke up, just when I thought our morning would be alright, we were late for our set time we would start to make our way to Memphis, due to obnoxious raccons ransacking our newly packed things. Then we decided to take one last look around the town (we were in Italy, after all!) before we set limits for our flight and finally got going.

     We'd taken a lot of breaks, but Ari and I didn't exactly appreciate that the others seemed to do it mainly for us. We were fine! It was just an overuseage of Essence, not a real concussion. It was also twenty-four hours ago!

     So after multiple hours of hussled flying, many frazzled breaks, annoying amounts of mixed emotions from many different people, and a seagull-induced crash (don't ask, I doubt Dex will want to talk about it), we finally made it to Cairo. Very tiredly, I might add, but we made it to Cairo, Egypt.

     Even though its thirteen-degrees-celcius winter felt like a thousand after being in minus-twenty-celcius places for months, I'll have to admit Cairo was pretty. It looked like most big cities, with tall metal-and-glass buildings everywhere, it was scattered with some smaller stone ones, some very old looking, reminding me of the Italian town we just came from. There even seemed to be an almost castle-like structure with dome roofs and fancy-balconied towers. It even had trees and other flora scattered around, creating gardens and parks and much-needed shade. One of the coolest parts about Cairo though, was that you could see a couple pyramids in the distance-- no joke! There were two big ones and a smaller one, and their silhouettes stood in the background of  the city view, like mountains or cliffs would back in Norway. Like they were trying to blend in and be hills.