Scouting Basra's skies

[Dermott]

placed when Caipra sends Dermott away from Bryn's room


Dermott was looking at Caipra and at an unconscious Bryn from the parapet of the open window. He was unwilling to leave at first, because of his concern about his friend’s condition.

But he finally come to the conclusion that Caipra was right. She always was. They needed privacy, so that the old sorceress could take care of the younger one, without any male presence to meddle in their affairs. And Caipra perfectly knew who the hawk pretending to be a scouting pet really was. It wouldn’t have been gentlemen-like to stay, despite all his good intentions.

Something strange had happened to Bryn. Something related to magic. Oh, Caipra didn’t say anything, but he suspected it was about magic because he felt his mistress tiredness. She was …like in a limbo. And she was that way only when she used too much her powers. Dermott wasn’t able to perceive magic, he could only use telepathy. But instead he could somehow feel emotions, in an emphatic way. A gift due to his cursed condition, because once he became a bird and left the human world to be part of the animal one, he also gained their capability to feel other people feelings and states of mind. That same way beast creatures usually do.

He wasn’t with her when it happened, she wanted to be alone, and alone she went for a walk. That evening, inside the tavern, Bryn became suddenly gloomy, and sad, and she closed their mental connection for a while. This was one of those days when she needed to be on her own. He didn’t think there could be many dangers in Basra during daylight, so he didn’t follow her, granting her longing for space and privacy.

In any case, he did worry now, seeing the way she fainted. And not knowing the reason for her unnatural sleep.


He gave a last look to the room, full of worry and anxiety, and then he flied away. He couldn’t be of any help here, but if there really was somebody or something who reduced Bryn in that state, he was going to find out. So he started to scout the sky in search for anomalies possibly related to the whole thing.

[Dermott]

Placed somewhen after Caipra casts the spell which triggers the rip in the veil


It came suddenly, like an unannounced, devastating rip in his soul. He nearly fainted and saw everything black for a while, almost falling from the high distance that separated him from the ground. His heart beating wildly, his body trembling and freezing, and his feathers as if stricken by a lightening fire. It lasted for several minutes which though seemed endless. He planed on the branch of a tree, trying to recollect himself and wondering what could have happened. It took several everlasting minutes before his heart could slowly work again according to his habitual rhythm, and the sense of anguish and dizziness which flood over him previously was fading away.

Then everything started to calm down, because whichever phenomenon was at work it slowly lost its intensity, and the feeling to be broken in two reduced progressively at regular breaks.

Anyway, as soon as his forces came back, Dermott started to realize there was something wrong. He wasn’t feeling anything. As if that sixth sense he gained since he turned into an hawk was gone. He couldn’t feel the presence of his fellow animals in the nearness, nor the familiar, constant presence of Bryn in a corner of his mind. Even if they often shut down their mental contact, like today, their connection was always there.

The hawk started to panic.

He had been so used to the way beast creatures communicate in the animal world, sensing each other through empathy in perfect interdependence, that now that this ability was gone, he was feeling as if he had suddenly turned blind and deaf. It was the same state of mind he faced the day Rumina changed him into a bird. In the blink of an eye he had been cut out from the human world, unable to interact with anything and anybody, and trapped in a cage of feathers.


He still remembered how helpful his new abilities had been to cope with his burden. They enabled him to understand how everything was linked together and that everybody was connected to one another. Trees were alive, water had a memory, air had her own voice, and fire could often be a conscious force able to channel and materialize men’s and every other creature’s sorrow and rage, but could also be a tool of light. And if a single member of the natural world was hurt, happy, or in danger, everybody felt it, and was affected if it happened to be nearby.

And later, when Dim Dim taught him telepathy, so that he could be able to communicate again with his sister, he started to think that the way creatures of nature interacted with each other wasn’t less effective than human’s, just different, and to a certain extent even more complete.


He wondered if he was the only one feeling this lack of connection. If it depended on Rumina spell. Could it be.. that it was weakening and he was coming back to his human way to perceive things? Living in blind bliss without being able to recognize the interconnection among everything on earth? After a moment he thought that this was impossible, because even if this was eventuality the case, he would have still felt Bryn’s presence inside him.


He tried to stay calm and think carefully about it. And maybe because he was feeling less weak now, or because he realized the impact he faced was too big to be only related to him, for the first time he gave a look around. Dogs were barking desperately, bees and other insects were flying crazily without any logical coherence in their usually perfect dances, and for his fellow birds it was the same.

“I’m not the only one” thought Dermott with a mixture of relief and concern “The whole animal world feels this strange wave of power. And at the same time we have lost every ability to communicate with or perceive each other”


He remembered something Dim Dim was used to say during his years in the Isle of Dawn, that the planet itself was a living conscious being, and if something big happens to her, the whole animal world, and magicians too would feel it. The hawk wondered if this was the case, and if the strange nothingness he was experiencing was related to the planet’s powerful energies.

The vision he had the previous day came to his mind. He had feared for an upcoming sort of physical accident. A battle, a fire hazard, or something similar. He never occurred to him that maybe the warning concerned not the physical, but the spiritual world. As always visions were unpredictable.

He tried one last time to look into himself in search of Bryn’s presence. Nothing changed. It was still the same wide, dark silence as before.


It was time for him to come back to the tavern.

[Dermott]

Placed somewhen after Maeve and Caipra leave Ziad's post



The bird was heading to the tavern. Seen from the sky, Basra was beautiful and full of life, and the thought of the dangers the powerful energies from before could have brought upon its inhabitants made the hawk shiver.


He couldn’t wait to reach his friends to check out if they were all safe, and confirm with Caipra whether nothing really risky had happened to their world. But with his utmost relief the more he came near to The Crown of Ogotay, the more he started to perceive voices and feelings from its surroundings once again. The blessed interconnection with its brothers and sisters from the animal race was there, even if still more like a whisper than a real, steadfast certainty. However, it was a relief nonetheless.


Then the last missing piece in this puzzle came back, even if weak, and the still unperceivable but familiar emotion inside his chest that was Bryn’s presence surfaced.


“She is worried too” noticed the bird as the connection kept on strengthen at every wing-beat. “And I can’t blame her, especially after what she had to went through today”. For Dermott, trying to reach Bryn’s mind in order to reassure her was a natural thing to do, but when he was on the point of re-establishing their mental contact, suddenly something stopped him.

Caipra was in the near district, he could recognize her warm, gentle aura, strong as a rock. Which was indeed different from Bryn’s still unsteady but powerful one. And together with hers, he was feeling another presence.


And with a sting of pain he tried to elaborate how could it be possible for this odd, yet terribly familiar and fiery, but also wounded aura to be perceived here, in Basra. He was so shocked, and overwhelmed by a strange, hopeful and at the same time fearful mix of emotions that he unintentionally forgot about Bryn and the crew, changing the course of its flight for the place where the long lost feeling was supposed to be standing still.


He didn’t know what to think, or if it was for real. A cruel illusion created by the previous wave of power, playing with his longing and his memories. In any other ordinary circumstance he would have simply reached the mind of this aura’s owner to confirm his hopeful suspicion. His wishful thinking. But he couldn’t resolve to do it. He was afraid to reach for her, just to discover this wasn’t true, that it was a mistake, and that if he would have dared to speak out his mind, his source of buried hopes would have disappeared.


So he kept on flying towards it, rushing in an aching anticipation as he moved nearer to the link severed one year ago, in a night of storm.



Continuing here: distandlands.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=outside&thread=393&page=9