Heresy of Silence

She silently took to wandering the forest for herself, and was almost immediately gratified by what she saw in the first hour. She spotted a cardinal upon emerging from the warm spacious fir, and easily kept up with its dashing flight through the treetops. It lit on a dead sapling to rest for half a second. That second was enough. She easily leapt to the topmost bough with new found strength and came down carefully clutched the shocked birds. Her back mind told her she wasn’t supposed to do this, and within the same second of catching the cardinal, she let it go. She slowly oriented her hand so that when she opened her fingers, it wouldn’t fall. No sooner than releasing its wings from under her index fingers, it took flight, leaving her staring in wonder. She whispered to herself.” I wish I could do that.” ’You can.’ Before finishing her last word, she felt a horrid tearing sensation in her shoulder blades. With a cry, she fell face first toward the snow. She instinctively stretched her arms in front of her, and caught herself elbow deep in the snow. Her breathing became swift and shallow as her back arched. The tearing worsened, and she had no idea what was happening. It took all her self restrain to keep from rolling over into the powder soft snow, to put out that ripping and shredding on her back, so rid herself of that unknown pain from her back. She concentrating on drawing breath after breath, but she couldn’t help a feral snarl from ripping its way out of her throat. No sooner did the sound die away from the surrounding clearing did the terrible shredding stop. She stood up quickly and fell over on her back, blowing up a rather large cloud of white powder. Her new wings would take some getting used to.

I’ll just call it origins for now. The Lamentable Origins of a Tale of love and woe seems like too much of a mouthful, and copies off The lamentable and comical tragedy of pyramus and thisbe.

It sneezed. The sound seemed to echo through the frosted forest. Not a living thing stirred. The creature couldn’t remember anything before breaking the iced surface of the once-frozen lake. Before it could finish the thought, it turned around to a dry crackling sound. Its astonishing silver irises followed the ice’s progression over the surface of the lake. Before it could inhale again, the lake became what is was an hour earlier: a mirror. It didn’t breathe as it stepped back onto the ice. It silently bowed its head and folded its slender arms, somewhat disgruntled by the fact that it had no idea of why it came into being. It’s expression was reflected perfectly in the newly formed ice, and it frowned again, wondering why. ‘Why am I here?” it wondered, now looking at the snowy treetops. It took a moment to brush a finger down its right cheek, marveling at the coolness and smoothness of its skin. It then tapped its left foot twice, trying to make sense of the winter wonderland it found itself in. Getting impatient almost immediately, it tiptoed (more like glided) to a fallen tree on the other side of the lake. It circled it twice before finding non-splintery section and sitting down on it. It’s silvery hair flowed in the invisible breeze, distracting the creature for a couple of minutes. It tried again to concentrate on what happened before emerging from the lake.

After a tinge of pink appeared on the horizon, it realized it hadn’t taken a breath after seeing its reflection, and so inhaled deeply. It smiled. It tasted the sweet scent of buried pine needles, the huddling moose about six miles north, a gray squirrel watching it from above, even the remains of a foxglove freshly buried under the very log it sat upon. It curiously glanced upward, its silver eyes searching for the squirrel above. But it had long scampered away. Its smile dampened slightly as it tried to sense another soul nearby. Giving up after a moment, it instead bowed its head and turned statue still. Searching through what was left of its ravaged mind, before the wonder of the frosted timbers, before awaking and drifting under the ice, it came up with a blinding light. It squinted reflexively, as if looking directly at the sun. But it was lost already in its maze of new-found memories. Its lips parted in a grimace as it remembered a white-robed figure approaching it with a syringe half filled with a glowing pink liquid. It shut its eyes and braced against the memory as it placed its delicate face into the ice-cold palms of its hands. It cried quietly in the light of dawn, with not a companion to share her new pain with.

———-

She didn’t remember moving, but she found herself curled up inside the trunk of a spacious fir tree. She was warm, for the first time in eons. Waking up completely now, she reached up to brush some leaves out of her silvery hair. She noticed a glint in the dead leaves she lay on, and reached out to pick it up. She drew her fingers back in surprise as the glint left a little bit of moisture on her index finger. It evaporated as soon as she brought it up for close inspection. She felt her cheek, and felt the same moisture there too. The part of her mind that was working told her these were ‘tears,’ and tears came from ‘crying’. “So I was doing this crying while I was…” ‘Sleeping’ her mind filled in again. So this was what being alive was like.

Em knew what to expect when she heard Jance trotting through the underbrush. Toby was frantically whimpering and bouncing around him as Jance half-heartedly snapped at the little blue pup. “Boss, boss, Jan-sir, Michael-man, you’re alive!” Toby cried excitedly as the forest resumed the rustling of leaves and chatter of blue jays.

“It’s Michael. Not Jance, certainly not Jan. Otherwise, shut up.”

“Yes, sir, master-guy, yah.”

Michael grimaced as the puppy accidentally ran over one of his forepaws, the one with a broken claw. Toby thought nothing of it, but began licking his wounds on Michael’s front left leg as he lay down beside the great hollow tree. A soft carrying sigh greeted Michael as Em silently stepped out from her little niche. Her eyes, as brilliantly rosy as ever, certainly made the battle with Emerald worthwhile.

Her foxy tail made the loveliest of swishes in the dry leaves as the miniature breeze whisked the leaves around her delicate paws and ruffled her fur. Warren sighed contentedly as was about to fall asleep as Em silently tiptoed closer. Toby was whimpering happily as the forest birds sang a song of revival, of Emerald’s death. He ran away toward the Noddy mountain, and when he came into view, he let loose a ripping howl that frightened the cardinals and blue birds so that a beautiful cloud of red and blue feathers rose and floated toward the edge of Faeriewood Forest. Em had laid down beside the sleeping Jance and placed her right paw on his slowly-rising chest. He shifted in his sleep as she channeled her thoughts into him, dreaming pleasant things again. Toby was really singing now, and Em found herself humming along with him as she kept her silent watch over her sleeping pack leader.

Thanks for reading thus far, and hope you had a pleasant day. I’ve had fun reading and writing this story all the way.

Just as soon as Emerald had shrieked her last, the storm broke as suddenly as Michael found himself falling in air. Seeing that Emerald’s skull had been bashed through, her wings would be useless now. The silvery light of the moon streamed down with the falling pair. Michael had amazingly still kept a hold on his spear as it stuck from the misshapen serpent skull. With grim realization that he almost certainly going to die, or suffer an excruciating moment of pain before blacking out, he surveyed what he could in the air. The great flapping wings were of little help; there was no muscle to glide on, and Emerald’s great body had gone limp. However, his sense of self preservation led him to finish what he started. He clambered atop the skull, and with a gruesome and gory yank, pulled Talberd up. In the process, he was splattered with the unsightly serpent’s blood. It stung him where it made contact with his snout, but he ignored the burn. He took a wild leap, and knowing there was no time to lose, heaved the spear’s point at a half-torn wing ligament. It worked. Now Michael clung to a wide sheet of scale as Emerald continued to plummet. The severed wing was unruly, and nearly impossible to control. He struggled to straighten it out and make it horizontal in the air, but it would not cooperate. It almost bucked him as if the creature’s hate embedded itself in the detached sapphire wing. On a stroke of inspiration, the clever Wulf jammed the point of the spear into the cold blue flesh, and buried the hilt in a point of bone intersection opposite him. He took a second wild leap, and caught hold of the spear. It flipped the wing upside down, but it kept horizontal. There was a horrible moment of panic when the spear point slipped in the flesh until it settled to dig into a tough ligament in the wing. Michael Jance was hang gliding.

The wild mountain gusts made the wing hard to steer. He pulled himself to he clung to his spear from above, but sheltered by the wing from the still rumbling mass of clouds. He leaned forward to accelerate upward at an angle, to glide back to the bloody ledge were his seemingly dead body once lay. The wing wobbled precariously as Talberd nearly cut through the snake flesh. It held for the next couple of moments, just as a thermal spun the scaled sheet upwards. Michael lost control when the wing veered sharply and scraped against the chasm’s rocky wall. The thermal blew him 20 feet above the ledge, just as Talberd did its job. Another awful moment passed as the wing fell, Michael with it. When the wing had almost passed him in its crumpled fall downwards, Michael kicked sharply out at it, sending him crashing yet again against the bloody stone wall, and the wing to the opposite side of the chasm. He was against standing in a pool of crusted blood when he heard a muted thud of a two-ton body meeting the bottom of Noddy Mountain. Michael quietly observed the silver sickled moon while he listened to a flapping wing, scrapes, rocks coming loose, then finally a splash. Talberd lay beside him, shining radiantly ruby in its recent bath in Emerald’s blood and flesh. Blood dripped quietly, forming another fresh pool around Michael’s paws. His thoughts turned to the silent serene forest below as he wondered how many packs had been saved from Emerald’s wild and furious rampages.

A soft whispered voice of an angry angel rang through his brain just then. ‘Wake up Michael. I did not heal you and protect you just to give up.’

Michael stirred again. He saw no slithering green beast waiting for him, just a yawning empty stretch of bare rock, stained with his blood. There was still the crevice, and Talberd still lay, out of reach, still glowing eerily. His sight was clear except for a ridge of red lining his vision.

He twisted around slowly, expecting the stabbing pain to shoot through his limbs again. No response from his hind legs. He shifted uncomfortably again. Still no pain. He blinked, surprised.

‘Wake up…’ the voice whispered again. It faded after those two words.

Michael got clumsily to his feet. Everything tingled and itched. He paid no attention and looked around before spying Talberd. He rose stiffly, and quietly retrieved his spear. Everything was dead silent. No crickets, no birds. ‘Ah, I forgot,’ he murmured before reaching up to undo the clawed necklace that was strung about his neck. ‘No limitations, Emerald. None…’ and with that silent remark, he tossed it aside, where it fell with a clatter that echoed all around the narrow canyon before rolling onto the spot where his bloodied body once lay. Anticipating the lunge, he dove toward the crevice, where the serpent reared once more.

This time, the winged wyvern made full use of her advantage of being in home territory. Navigating the boulders, she persistently pursued Michael, who in turn negotiated her movements and attacked not with fang, but with spear. When he’d leapt on an unprotected section on her back, she took to the sky on her sapphired wings, a mountain of scaly flesh suddenly pouring itself skyward, rising in an iridescent column of sparkling scales.

Michael clung to a particularly large bronze spike as the great wings beat and swirled in air in whirling gusts around him. The world righted itself and Emerald swung around to knock Michael off. It was an aerial battle now, and Michael, with neck-breaking speed, stabbed the beast in her eye and he leapt clear of the head. Emerald emitted a sound that knocked Michael off his feet. He clawed and tore a hole in one of her wings, and clung yet again and she rocked and bucked in the air still sounding that thunderous screeching. It nearly knocked Michael unconscious, but sheer will kept his conscious to keep from falling to his death. Emerald thundered and screeched again, but her call was not as harsh as the first. This time she seemed to ignore Michael and sing to the skies. As she sang her song, the cloudy night cleared a path for the moonlight to reach Noddy Mountain. The sickle crescent hung lazily over them as Michael slowly made his way up Emerald’s wing to stand on her broad left shoulder blade. The moon turned his fur silver with a glowing outline, making him even more conspicuous, but Emerald seemed not to care. Not at that moment. Her song had not ended, and as her tones became more hurried and changed octaves, the clouds gathered and faded to black. Michael never had any warning of her storm powers or flight ability since everyone who encountered Emerald never lived to tell the tale. He could do naught but watch in awe as the wind whipped his silvery fur around and the clouds become darker and darker. The storm began rumbling angrily, and Emerald suddenly went silent. She glided underneath the atmosphere, but paid Michael no heed. In fact, she turned her head, and smiled wickedly, her serpent tongue flickering in and out between her teeth. Michael knew not what to make of this until she flipped and went into a spectacular roller coaster ride as the clouds started to cry. Lighting flashed ever so slowly and brightly, periodically turning his fur a golden yellow as he clawed at her wing joint, trying to sever it from her back. Emerald was silent as the rain and wind buffeted the wulf this way and that, and lightning bolts struck closer to home. It took Michael all his limb strength to dodge the bronze spikes, and even worse, the lightning began striking the spikes, energizing Emerald. She seemed eager, and flew a little higher, waiting to bathe in electricity. Michael, realizing that he must bring her down before she could, began dashing up her back, avoiding the bolts that nearly struck him. Grasping Talberd, in a great flash of lightning that momentarily turned his entire being gold, he took a break-taking pounce from her neck, and brought the spear, hilt-first, down. The clouds instantly stopped crying as the Mountain and valley below echoed her cry of death.

Em was still in unconscious, but had long stopped twitched. Toby just watched her now, too frightened to take her paw again and see Michael dead. However, as if an invisible wind swept the forest, all the birds, squirrels, rabbits, and creatures take flight. They fled, and for a moment, the entrance hole was obscured by the scurrying woodland animals. The wind had not escaped Toby as he froze, trying to fight the instinct that told him to flee. It was a cry of death that drove the surrounding forest empty. Not a breeze disturbed the serene green quiet. He himself did not whimper or cry. Only, he turned his head slightly as Em shifted in the leaves. Her body made a soft comforting swish in the leaves. She stared at him with her wide rose quartz eyes. ‘It’s not over yet,’ she seemed to say.