Page 23 of Ruby
With my hurried steps, it doesn’t take me too long to find the tree her pod had gotten lodged in and I see that it is on a lower branch than it was before. I inspect the surrounding area cursorily before walking up to the tree, trying to get a proper look into the pod from below and when there are no signs of life, I start to panic for an instant.
What if she is injured or has fallen out of the cage?
The thought of being the one to sing of her death to Ree and Thivoll fills me with dread but I remember that I made a promiseto retrieve the woman and keep her safe, whatever condition she may be in so I steel myself to do whatever is necessary.
As I circle the base of the tree, it dawns on me that I have absolutely no idea how to climb one. Besides the fact that I used to be a winged creature dwelling in an aerie atop one of the highest hills, which made me have no need for it, it has also never particularly interested me.
It’s a skill I should never need, but I am accustomed to being called unskilled.
I let out a low laugh. The slight jab at myself amuses me and I use that as motivation to get myself moving. The tree is thick and sturdy, almost unharmed from the storm except for parts of its branches that look to be broken off and I hope that it can carry my large body. I reach both of my left hands to the lowest branch while simultaneously steadying myself with my other pair of hands and grab a hold of it, swinging my weight forward so that my other hands can hold onto the branches above that and so on.
I make sure to aim for only the thicker branches and only miss a few times before I get somewhat used to the process. It is tedious and uncomfortable so I make the unfortunate mistake of trying to use my feet as support. The pain is immediate and excruciating, shooting tendrils up and down the length of my legs, making me yelp in pain.
I’m much closer now so I force myself to move through the pain and rely more on my arms. Looking up, I can see that there are only a few more branches to scale and the view of the silver cage is even clearer than before, but I also note that it is broken on one side, likely from damage done by the storm or the fall.
I try to climb quicker until I reach the cage. The state of it scares me, because I don’t want to find her dead.
“Greetings,” I call out to her and she lets out a screech that almost makes me lose my step on the branch with how loud it is.
She is frightened and I want to help her understand, but the closer I move, the farther into the cage she retreats. I realize that my voice might have startled her since she has been alone for a while. I avoid talking further to allow her to stop making the awful noise.
It is short lived, but then there is only a tense silence.
Her breathing is labored and she has only one pair of hands and five small fingers that are pressing tightly to disproportionally too-long legs.
She is strange looking. Clad in the same black material her sister had been wearing, and has bright threads from her head too but instead of purple, they are a bright red color, falling away from her head and twisting around her in a long cascade of brilliance.
It confuses me that the females of their species have threads with such vivid colors, as that trait is almost exclusively male with mine, and such long swathes of red being uncommon, but I remind myself that they are a different species. It takes me a moment to realize that her screeching has stopped; her eyes are wide and a slightly darker red than her hair.
I cannot recognize the look on her face but I can already tell that it is a face I will not forget so quickly.
Until this moment, rescuing this fragile creature has seemed like a quest to keep me from thinking about all of the painful changes that have happened to me in such a short time, but as I stare into her eyes, I realize that I might just have been wrong.
I would not have needed a reason to meet this interesting creature.
9
Ani
While being stuck up here, I’ve had some creative liberty to think about my next steps and have come up with… nothing new. My choices are extremely limited to thinking I can jump out and swing from tree to tree like Tarzan or climb out and hang on to a tree while making a torturous descent. And most likely falling.
To make matters worse, I haven’t had anything to eat and my hands are shaking from a lot more than just fright.
Suddenly, I hear the sound of rustling and a high-pitched whistling sound just outside my pod. Slowly raising my head, I come face to face with a giant, bright yellow and blue-speckled head. I’m instantly screaming, but it doesn’t last long. As I pant for breath, for a long slow moment I wonder why. Perhaps it’s the wide look of its eyes or the strange stillness it has upon seeing me.
There’s something almost human in the intensity of its gaze, and the soft, bright-turquoise skin around its eyes makes it seemapproachable. It helps that there are no visible teeth waiting to tear into me.
Seconds that seem like years pass as not a sound transpires between us. It gives me long enough to move past my initial enthrallment with just how gorgeous it is to wonder how the hell I am going to get away from it.
I heard somewhere that if you stay still enough you can get animals to leave you alone. Controlling my breathing as to not attract its interest, I keep my eye on the creature and slowly move my body toward the far edge of the pod.
Its eyes are mesmerizing. Big, and deep set under a long brow, with striations of blue and green, pupils slitted horizontally, like a mix of a goat and a cat.
Except its face is far more like a salamander than a mammal. Except more pointed and sweeping up into a heavy ridge of a brow, so maybe more like a dinosaur… except that doesn’t feel right either. I stop trying to make comparisons to things that probably don’t even exist here, and just soak in its features.
The feathers on its head shift and they catch my attention. Mostly blue-green, but with some red feathers with orange tips mixed in, they rise slowly from a backswept mohawk, long feathers starting at the back of its smooth triangular shaped skull, the tip sweeping down slightly to a pointed nose, long slitted nostrils flaring and closing completely as if they are taking in my scent.
Odd, soft-looking dark-blue bumps start in the point between its two nostrils, interspersed along the top of its otherwise smoothskull. Its lipless mouth is impossibly large and mostly a bright yellow that continues down the front of its long, thick neck until coming to a complimentary V shape at the base of its throat, giving way in large blotches to varying shades of cobalt blue before disappearing under the long sweep and fall of beautiful, shimmering feathers. It almost looks like someone splattered two different shades of blue in big circles and then gave it turquoise eyeliner.
