Submission (#3966) Approved

Elnin: Lunarity ELN1432; with a brief featuring of Lilu ELN2792.
Region: Silveil
Wordcount: 1250
Feature: Sure.

Edit notes: In that case, it's probably best if I just remove that particular note entirely - is this a bit better? :O

Silveil was an island city that never ascended from its midnight embrace, even as the moon and Dusk rose and set just like they should. It didn’t mean the sky was always clear of weather. Lunarity had been in the forests around the city for days, checking the book of foraging he’d bought on his way through town before he went and ate anything he didn’t recognize.

Ah, for the love of the sky and the forest and the twisting labyrinth of pathways he could take, and he took them all. He hadn’t thought to grab a book of astronomy when he was last in town, and was debating doing so: that being said, if he could find his way back to town. He hadn’t seen a single other elnin since he’d run into the forest, and had kept company with no one but his new pomu.

Part of him thought it was a bit of a concern, with patterns of raindrops and scales and waves across the mask of their face. He didn’t do water, and his pomu clearly did. It didn’t help that the little feathered creature was very firm on finding every mud puddle and stream Silveil had to offer every time he looked up to study the stars.

Three bright stars formed a triangle almost directly overhead. He scanned the lazy loop of stars around them – the branching hourglass, the box with five stars below it that echoed to legs, the perfect hexagon, the meandering oval. He was sure that these constellations had names, although he hadn’t bothered to learn them. The hexagon was to the right of the high triangle, the box-animal charging to the left. He was facing south, then, towards Bellmoril.

It would be good to get back to Silveil City soon, much as he did enjoy field rations. He might end up with stars in his pelt the same way his leg fur had simply decided it didn’t want to stay short and not keep him warm after his trip to Strynhalde. It didn’t take as many days as he thought it might for the land to have an opinion over what his body should look like.

That, and most of the food in Strynhalde had been imported. He’d been eating nothing  but what he could dig up from the ground or harvest from the trees for days – maybe a week, at this point, it was difficult to say without a proper day-night cycle – and he was sure that eating the wild food was a bit stronger on getting magic into him than simply breathing the air and using what little mana he knew how to work with.

He sighed, sitting down for a moment so he could scratch his ear with a back paw. His pomu, ever smiling and ever thinking of mud puddles, drifted around his shoulders. He looked over at it. It looked back at him.

“We should head back to the city soon, so we don’t end up with stars all over us,” he remarked. The pomu chirped. He hadn’t given it a name yet – hadn’t decided on what might be appropriate, or if the pomu wanted to name itself – and he’d been happy, so far, with just not using a name at all. It wasn’t like they’d seen any other living creatures that could be talked to. It froze, alarm sweeping through the air like so much a heavy breeze.

He turned, looking in the direction it was looking in. Just there, inside a bush, was a pair of glowing red eyes, and a low snarl rumbling through the air. The magic in the air wasn’t deadening, but Daeva weren’t the only things that ate elnin, he was sure.

“Run,” he hissed, and bolted.

He could hear the footsteps behind him, just as fast as he was, if not more so. His pomu had dove into his shadow the moment he’d turned to run, and he had no doubts that it would be safe, so long as he wasn’t caught. He might well be caught.

Navigating by starlight without training wasn’t hard, if you spent a week in the forests of Silveil and wanted to return to the same spot every few hours to nap. Navigating by starlight when running for your life and the clouds were threatening to take over the sky was much, much harder. He ran, eyes in front of him and eyes on the sky, zigzagging through the trees and pathways. He didn’t care whether he was going to get lost in the Overwilds, it was high summer and miasma virtually didn’t exist in Silveil at all this time of year. So he ran, feeling his mane brush against his shoulders and chest with the effort, running like he’d never run before.

He dove under a blackberry bush, his mane snagging on the thorns less than he expected. That could only be working in his favour. He needed as much luck as he could get.

The path ahead of him was deepening into fog, and he could still hear his chaser running behind him, bigger and heavier and probably just as determined for a meal as he was to not get eaten. If he could get into the fog, maybe he would lose them.

He dove in and bolted abruptly to the right, following a winding path barely as wide as he was into the mist. He couldn’t see more than two feet in front of him. The clouds had covered the sky and the ground while he’d been running. And without fanfare, they opened up in rain.

The most questionable rain he’d ever seen in his life. Rain was wet and sometimes warm and usually transparent water. This was rain of shooting stars, light in iridescent drops splashing against the ground with the chiming of a bell. In moments, he was surrounded by raindrops of multicoloured light, chiming like the world’s greatest windchime store.

He bolted up the nearest tree, clawing at the navy-blue bark up as high as it would go. He’d need shelter from the prismatic-coloured rain, and he absolutely needed to be away from whatever had been chasing him.

The tree was fortunately softwood, and he scrambled up it easily, five feet, ten feet, twenty. Deciduous, enough so that the branches weren’t hard to reach. When he’d climbed some thirty feet in what seemed like mere seconds, he dropped onto a branch wide enough to support him, and gasped for breath.

From halfway up the canopy, watching the rain strike the ground and the trees, he had to admire it. The clouds above, despite the darkness of Silveil sky, were barely dark at all, throwing rainbows to the ground.

His pomu climbed out of his shadow, looking concerned but otherwise unharmed. Lunarity looked at it, raising an eyebrow. The rain, filtered through the canopy, plunged into his shadow. It didn’t chime, or bounce, or splash. As though it too could pass through his shadow.

“Is that normal?” he asked. The pomu chirped an apology, the closest thing to an “I don’t know” noise he’d ever heard from it.

He groaned, dropping his chin to the branch, settling it over his mane. “We need to get out of this forest,” he said firmly. The pomu chirped in agreement, nodding its head vigorously.

“We’ll wait out the storm, then head back,” he said, just as the shining, rainbow rain stopped as abruptly as it started, leaving Silveil Forest silent once more.