Journey across the Sea
Chapter 5 of Azra's Tale
A blow-out celebration, followed by a quirky tale of faeries falling in love.
After our friends had a good night sleep, they got up and found the whole forest valley in a mess. A good portion of the valley had now become a lake. And there were animals and debris floating in little eddies formed by terrain.
There was no sign of the Tundra Wolf Queen, or her servant, the red-cap, and there was no sign of the Bogart or his goblin army. The faeries that were summoned by the Queen right before she was washed away by the currents(or consumed by fire?), were all still mulling around and creating quite a cold wind. But they were all very excited to meet Azra whom had defeated the Tundra Wolf Queen. Although many even had a great love and affection for their Queen, all the faeries had felt sorry for Azra and were kind of glad to be liberated.
The other survivors were the six-legged wolves, who had had their silver collars washed away, and had swam ashore. They were also happy to be liberated from the red-cap and thanked Azra for freeing the last of their kind. Also, in the night, they're fur had changed colors to a redish-brown, (much like the color of the new landscape).
News of the previous nights events had traveled through the forest very quickly, and by the morning the wood elves, who had been battling with the bogart and his army, sent a messenger to thank the brave warrior-bird who slew the Bogart and the Tundra wolf queen. The emmisaries arrived and invited Azra to come to a celebration in her honor. She of course agreed, requesting that all of her new friends come as well. So the selkie and the winter faeries and the spider-wolves and Kipoko, all went to the elves border fortress to celebrate.
The celebration was surrounding the dismantling of the fortress. Since there was no goblin threat, there was no need to live in fear and hostility. Soldiers put down their swords and armor, children were allowed to play in the forests again, and some of the logs(elves are never wasteful of trees) used to build the fortress were symbolicly burned in a bon-fire.
Of course the other center of the party was Azra, she told everyone her story. The forest people were even polite enough to not ask too many questions about the parts of her story that seemed secret or too sacred to tell. Azra got to meet all the elders of the forest tribes, not only the elves but the other forest peoples, big and small, who had banded together to do battle with Bogart. Later on there was even a mock-wedding with Kipoko, who then put on a magic show for everyone. There was a funeral for the rock golems, and the two magic stones buried in a monument to their courage. Of course as the night progressed, the faerie wine took its toll, and most everyone fell asleep on the forest floor.
During the party however. A little faerie, named Burning Autumn Leaves, fell in love with Azra. Of course Azra didn't notice, nor did she have more than a couple words with her even. But Burning Autumn Leaves had decided that wherever Azra went, she would go too.
In the morning(which was cold like a winters morning, possibly because of the presence of winter faeries all the night before. But because of this, whenever there is an abnormally cold winterish morning, when its not winter, the elves and people of the forest tell stories about Azra the bird-girl) all of Azra's friends had to return home. Everyone parted in sweet company, and promised to return again sometime to each other's homes, and to call on each other in times of need. Azra however had a long way to go. Before he left, Azra asked Kipoko how she could get across the sea of endless storms, which was the only thing in her way.
"The winds and currents will prevent any ship from getting very far across it," advised Kipoko, "however, my cape is enchanted with a spell that will make it flow against whatever current pushes it. You may have it and maybe it will help you get across my domain." He gave her his cape, which was the length of a banquet tablet-cloth, an absurd length for a tiny little otter.
With that they parted company. Asking around Azra soon found a Gnomish engineer who was willing to build a hot air balloon out of the material given to Azra by Kipoko. Of course during the production, Burning Autumn Leaves hid herself in the balloon. Because of the quick work of the Gnomes, Azra got to traveling soon. It was a pretty balloon with a basket for her to sleep in, and it was fueled by the heat produced when she broke in half a goblin fire arrow. Of Course the magic of the cape made the balloon go against the direction of the wind, which was into the sea of endless storms.
Azra (plus one stowaway) was carried through the many layers of clouds. At night the moon lite up the clouds, and made the them look like a landscape of their own. The high strong winds(working backward of course) pushed the balloon farther and farther away from land. Sometimes the balloon would dip into one of the storms, and Azra would have to get up and put more broken hot-sticks into the opening above her head. But there was a developing problem that Azra did not know about. While she was sleeping in her basket, Burning Autumn Leaves was sleeping in the balloon, lying on the internal stick structure.
Soon the clothe and stick and twine structure of the ballon started turning red.
See, because Burning Autumn Leaves was the faerie that would go to each leaf during the fall, and turn them red. It was her job. And it was actually the red streak she painted in the leaf that eventually killed the leaf. So the as the clothe and stick and twine started turning red, it aslo started deteriarting.
And, Ahhhh! There was suddenly a small hole in the balloon and they started sinking back through all the layers of cloud, and splish! They landed in the middle of a (surprisingly) calm sea. Azra found Burning Autumn Leaves rapped up in what remained of the material and was like, "Who are you?"
Burning Autumn Leaves explained that she followed Azra, and that she had met her at the party and that she was hiding in the balloon and that she was probably what made the balloon explode and that she was very sorry. And somewhere in that she also said that she was in love with Azra, which made her stop, realizing what she had said. There was an aqward silence until Azra started laughing.
"Don't worry, I'm not mad at you for popping the balloon. I'm sure we can still get to the other side of this sea somehow." she said.
Of course this confused and hurt Burning Autumn Leaves, she had just accidently confessed her love, and the only reaction she got was laughter, which was not the reaction she expected. She wondered if this was how people normally react to that kind of thing. Either way they were both now distracted trying to figure out how to keep moving before it got dark.
They made a sail out of the remaining magical material, and Azra made a paddle out of some sticks and things, the basket was water proof, and not very much splash was getting into it, but there was still a thin pool of water at the bottom, and so they slept that night on the outside of the basket, huddled together for warmth, they would tell each other about their lives and family. They woke up the each morning and had no way of knowing how far they had gone, but each night the sail got more and more ragged and hole filled until it had almost all but withered away.
One morning Burning Autumn Leaves noticed something that instantly filled her heart with dread. Azra's feathers had started to turn red on their tips. This made Burning Autumn Leaves freak out and start running around frantic-like. She was talking and crying so fast that Azra couldn't understand what the problem was. Azra also didn't notice the red feathers, and was just trying to calm Burning down so she could understand what was going on.
Burning Autumn Leaves was so hysterical and panic-y that she couldn't handle being around Azra. She knew that because of her touch Azra was now going to die. She didn't want Azra to hate her and was sure that she would if she knew that this too was her fault. So Burning flew away.
Within minutes Azra already lost sight of Burning, but she knew which way she was going. Azra was fairly concerned for Burning, being that she didn't know what sort of things faeries did, and didn't know if this was a normal thing for faeries to do. So she steered her boat after Burning.
But Azra didn't know if she should just continue her coarse directly or move around, she couldn't see Burning Autumn Leaves and didn't know which way she went. However Azra noticed that there was some algae floating in the water that was red. She guessed that maybe while Burning Autumn Leaves was flying away, her tears would have dropped into the water and turned the algae red. So Azra folled this red path until she came to the shores of some island or continent(they had been pretty close to shore, but it was obscurred by mist).
There was however no sign of any faeries or even red grass to follow.(this was because Burning Autumn Leaves had flown up into the sky, but we'll get to that later) There was however some sun-bleached ruins at the top of a hill. Azra thought that maybe Burning was in them so she went inside them. At first the buildings reminded Azra of the Tundra Wolf Queen's tower, but the stones were fit together smoother, and there was different writing on the walls.
Azra felt a strange presence in the ruins, but she didn't bother herself with it, because she felt like she was being pulled deeper into them. Soon she found herself at a throne room, and without knowing why, Azra, whose whole body was now covered in deep red feathers, collapsed to the ground from fatigue. And she started to dream.
But the dreams were not like her normal dreams, they were more like other people's dreams. Or like other people's memories of their own lives. This was because the ghosts that still walked the ruins were entering her dreams and trying desperatedly to all tell their stories at once, sometimes disagreeing and so the stories clashed and that hurt Azra's brain. And as each new ghost entered her dreamscape, it left a layer of ectoplasmic cobwebs on her crumpled sleeping body.
What Azra could decipher from the images was that these people had a powerful empire that stretched across the sky sea and earth. It was a great culture that made wonderous art and scientific and magical developments. But soon the people of the nations they had conquered rebeled and there was a great war in which many innocent people perished.
Soon Azra had gotten the ghosts to calm down and each tell their stories together, so they ran together, overlapping when their stories had each other in them. Each story ended in the same way and in the same place. At this castle-city, a last outpost of sorts, they all had died suddenly centuries ago. Some of them had seen their assailants coming and others just died by fire or explosion. Their grand city which had been their home was destroyed.
And there were also angier ghosts of warriors from far off lands who had come here to exact their revenge. Anger ghosts that still thought they were at war, and had been fighting all these years. They told the same stories, but spoke of the hard hand of oppression. Of their culture and ways of living being stripped away from them.
Azra began to cry, even in her sleep. There were so many stories that all these people had. And they were all so sad because of how much was destroyed when they died. And Azra also knew that she couldn't possibly remember all of the stories even though they were all so important and people everywhere needed to hear them so they could remember all that had taken place there.
But as each story was told, and its owner was satisfied that someone would remember the lessons they had learned in their life, they let go, and moved on to the next world. And one by one they passed on their stories to Azra. And Azra cried for each one of them.
Azra had seen the history of this long dead empire. From the kind-hearted buy short-sighted royalty, to their servants and workers within their kingdom, to the great wise-people who spent their lives making beauty, and from the insurgent masses that eventually toppled the empire. And Azra cried for each one of them.
Soon they were all gone, but Azra could still remember their lives as they had told it to her. When she awoke she was covered in red feathers, which had fallen off of her body, and she was rapped in a thick gooey cob-webby cocoon. There was also a faerie who was franticly ripping at the cob-webs.
During Azra's dreaming Burning Autumn Leaves had been elsewhere, as a matter of fact, she didn't even go into the ruins. When she reached the shore, she decided to fly high into the sky and then down again, and crash herself into the rocks, and then she could die quickly, and before she had to watch Azra die. But as she flew up, she hit her head on something.
It was a floating peice of rock. Apon further examination, the floating rock had grass growing on it, and it was rotating around the sky with other rocks, some larger, that had twig houses on them, and others smaller, just pebbles that were slowly rotating around an empty collum. The rocks were the broken peices of a floating tower, and in the twig "houses" lived little birds.
These birds looked like Azra, and even talked like Azra. But they also flew from rock to rock, and other things Azra could not do, like take off their feathers and turn into people!
Burning Autumn Leaves was so excited by this, she didn't know how these people were or might be related to Azra, but suddenly Burning Autumn Leaves thought that maybe these bird-people could help save Azra from the red feathers. So Burning Autumn Leaves ran around and asked the birds if there was one amoung them that knew how to heal Azra.
Soon Burning found an old bird-womyn who was at the top of the collumn whom everyone said was very old and wise and could probably heal Azra. She however seemed kinda preoccupied. She was saying goodbye to all of her friends and family and it looked like she was going to go on a long trip. Burning didn't want to be rude, but she also knew that Azra didn't have much time. So she interrupted the ceremony and explained her perilious situation.
The old bird-womyn gave Burning a back feather which had a tincture in the tip. She told Burning to squeeze the contents of the feather onto Azra's lips, but also warned her that it might change Azra forever because it was strong medicine and did unpredictable things.
With that the old bird-womyn flew into the sky. As she flew her wing span increased, and her whole body turned white. By the time she had flown out of the circle, she had become a cloud. Now Burning Autumn Leaves understood why there were so many storms that came across the sea. The bird-people on this side of the world turned themselves into clouds when they died.
Burning Autumn Leaves did not take too much time contemplating this reality, instead she sped quickly to find Azra. When she got to the ground she found their balloon/boat on the shore, and a trail of red feathers going into the ruins. She followed them and eventually found Azra's cocoon.
Burning Autumn Leaves had a bad feeling about the Cocoon, and was for a second scared that Azra had been trapped by a giant spider. But she bravely continued to open the pod. Once she finally reach Azra, Burning Autumn Leaves squeezed the feather out into her mouth.
This was just as Azra was waking up. Azra, who had been dying of the poison that had turned her feathers red, woke up almost instantly refreshed. Refreshed but somehow different. When she when to stand up she instead flew up. Not with wings, but she flew through the air like it was water. Then when she looked at her body, she could she that she was changed, instead of a bird-girl, she looked more like the people in her dreams, lithe and humanoid.
Burning Autumn Leaves, who had been flying non-stop for a very long time collapsed with fatigue, in the same spot that Azra had herself collapsed, in a pile of red feathers.
Then two of the bird-people who had followed Burning Autumn Leaves, arrived and escorted Azra to up to their homes in the sky after putting Burning Autumn Leaves into a basket, feathers and all. Azra who was not much of a bird-girl, but something else entirely, followed them and learned about the beauty of their way of life. She also learned about her own people, and how they had once been the same, but a long time ago some of their kind had fallen from the sky and hit their heads, forgetting how to fly, and how to turn into humans and eventually clouds. And thats why Azra's people were now walking on the ground confused and obsessed with finding and remembering secrets.
Eventually Burning Autumn Leaves woke up and they both embraced and talked about how close they both came to death, and how crazy all the things they had seen were. They were soon welcomed by the sky-bird-people, and quickly got to learn about their way of life and culture Of course both of them did not know what they were going to do now that they had ended Azra's quest.
And of course Burning Autumn Leaves was now much closer and more of Azra's friend.
But this just made her more confused as to whether or not she was actually in love with her. Azra, who was still sorta obvious to her friends feelings (she still thought Burning Autumn Leaves was just a faery and thought maybe faeries just fell in love with everything) was occupied by a different dilemma. She knew that her quest was now finished, but did not know what now her role in the world was. She was no longer a bird-girl, and looked nothing like her people anymore. She also didn't know if it was her responsiblity to go back home and tell her friends and family about their relatives.
But of course this is all the matter of yet another story...
See also
— AeGeylwynd? - 28 May 2003
