Beginnings Ch1 Part 2

“Kaelish!” She shouted, startled, and covered the ten strides from one side of the Finger to the other in a single leap and looked down over the edge. Even as she knelt to be able to look further down, she knew he had acted to elicit just such a response. Kaelish Nelmos was very skilled in the art of shifting, yet he constantly sought to challenge that skill. There was water at the base of this side of the Finger, she now gazed, with eyesight and weave sense, to try to find if he had chosen a fish or avian form. The growing cries of the skriil made her decide avian and her attention focused on the flock rising up from the fog below.

He would be one of them, Aalila was certain of that. Just which one would be the difficult part. The skriil were roughly the same, grayish white bodies and wings tipped with black; their webbed feet flat up against the underside of their bodies. Some were a bit larger, some slightly broader in wingspan, but eyesight alone was not going to solve this riddle so she shifted fully into weave sense. In this manner, she could detect are more minute differences; the number and size of individual feathers, how their beaks moved, where there eyes gazed...

“HA!” She exclaimed and exhibited her own skills. Eyes shining bright with her weave sense, Aalila caused the fog to billow upward and around one of the skriil. It was not the largest nor the smallest, not the longest of wing and, as the fog swelled around it and grew more and more dense and thick, the skriil did not attempt to fight or flee. In fact, by the time Aalila had raised the ball of nearly solid fog back to the top of the finger, a rather crouched and cramped Kaelish Nelmos was huddled within it.

She raised her trap a bit further up from the stone before she dispelled it, giving him enough distance to, barely, land upon his feet. He embraced her just a moment later after taking on her form. She did the same, greeting one another in the typical Krendaarri fashion, though the length of their embrace, and their kiss, was far more intimate.

“How did you know which one I was,” He asked after they had separated and taken on their own forms once again. “I made certain to be as like the rest of the flock as I could manage.”

Aalila kept her silence for several long moments until he had said, “Please, tell me,” almost half a dozen times.

“You were the only one looking back at me,” She finally admitted, laughing as his pointed ears drooped slightly, his skin flushed slightly greenish and his scent turned the slight tang that proclaimed the depth of his embarrassment.

“Kaelish Nelmos Viraane Tienaak Giren,” Aalila stated formally, using the names of his father, father's father, and fathers before that as she pointed towards the sun now burning the fog away quickly, “Zaal's Eye as my witness, you are glorious and wonderful and I love you as I could love no other, but you have to be the most foolish Krendaarri ever to be born; falling like that.”

“I knew I could shift in time,” He responded. His scent was nearly bitter now and her withering gaze made him admit, “I was mostly certain I could...”

Aalila held him with a look for a few moments longer then just shook her head.

“Glorious fool,” She admitted, smiling.

His scent grew sweeter and warmer by the moment. At least until a rather noisy grumble further marked the extent of his foolishness.

“Ah, yes,” She responded, a hand reaching into her sack for one of the dark green fruit she had picked earlier. Her claw tips pricked through the tough skin and she squeezed it just enough to start the juice oozing out of those punctures as she shoved it into his mouth, “I should have realized that you weren't content just to tempt time, but an empty belly as well.”

Kaelish managed to blurt out, “I have-” before Aalila had stuffed his mouth.

Teni fruit!

Bitter as it was, he knew she must have sought out the ripest, most bitter ones she was able to find. Not that he was able to accuse her of such, now. His lips had instinctively puckered at the sour taste and that only served to push the fruit further into his mouth. All he could do now was to try not to show just how sour it was as he chewed and swallowed and accepted his punishment for his folly.

Zaal! How he loved her!