Link to part one: here Previous episode: here Wordcount: 1,195 Part: 3/9
Synopsis: The mysterious hooded person tells Jasmine his name and a bit about the thunderbird after it almost kills her.
I wandered toward the horizon I could still see. Was that the pale rim of dawn there, or the end of the storm? In an instant, the sky exploded, and the air overhead dropped flat to the ground. My blinded eyes snapped up to the surge of light racing just under the clouds. A tangled mass of purple-white lightning sped through the sky. The light fluctuated, and in a moment of dimness, I could see the bird.
The light went out and the bird flipped over and dove into the clouds as if gravity went the other way. In the wake of the lightning trail, the atmosphere slammed back together almost breaking my mind. I dropped to the ground and grabbed my skull, pressing the heels of my hands into my ears. That was the bird I was supposed to talk to? That weapon of mass destruction was why I was here?
I turned on my hip, dropping my hands against the glassy ground, scowling into the distance. Through the fog I could see another massive surge of lightning falling out of the clouds farther away. It swept through the sky and blazed into a bright raging mass. It was coming at me again. This thunderbird clearly had issues with my invading his territory. Scrambling to my feet, I tore away as fast as I could. No good at all. There was no shelter anywhere. If the bird was intent on vaporizing me, it could certainly do that.
Before it reached its position directly overhead, the bird rolled over and vanished again. Thunder slammed down, and I stumbled and almost fell. The blast pounded the air out of my lungs and I collapsed again, choking. I stayed there, waiting for the bird to reappear. I never would have known what the bird was capable of when I saw it in the ash tree. It looked so placid sitting there.
The thunder must have taken a whole three minutes to clear. Just as I was starting to hope it had gone, daylight erupted, and the air went hot and dry. I jumped and charged out of the line of fire. The bird seared the air thirty feet overhead. Something like a shockwave snapped the ground under my feet and I could hear the crack over the thunder. A jagged line of gray appeared in the dark glass. “Help!”
I saw the bird’s face the moment before it plunged into the clouds again. The toothed beak was open, and the fanlike crests flicked back as it flew. I think it was singing.
I rolled onto my back.My head throbbed. My spine was numb. If that bird dropped out of the clouds one more time—
“I forgot to tell you my name. It’s Tormaigh.” I turned around and sat up. He was sitting on the ground a few feet away. Half his face smiled and he shrugged. “Just so you can stop calling me ‘Help’, you know.”
“What am I supposed to do about this bird?” I demanded, getting to my feet. “It’s trying to kill me.”
“It’s just showing you what it can do,” he said, as if it was rather nice. “You need to befriend the bird. It’s really a very nice bird, as far as birds go.”
“What do you mean, ‘befriend’ it? How?”
He got up. “Like I told you before–talk to it.”
“It’s too busy making its stupid thunder to hear me, even if I knew what to say to a bird.” His gleaming eyes blinked patiently, waiting for me decide to do the only thing I really could–try it. My shoulders drooped and I looked back at the sky, then at Tormaigh again. “Is it a he or a she?”
“Thunderbird.”
“Last thing I knew there wasn’t a specific pronoun for that.”
Tormaigh glanced at the sky. “He. If you express your interest in friendship, he’ll be distracted from thundering, and come down. You’ll see he can be quite personable when he comes down. And he likes to dance. You’re a dancer too. Sometime, you can dance together.”
“You dance with it. How am I ever going to get home? Back to my life?”
“That’s just it. That’s what makes this all very important. If you can’t get the bird on your side, nothing is ever going to make sense again.”
“That doesn’t make any sense in itself. You mean the bird can get me home?”
Tormaigh crimped down the corner of his mouth. “You could put it that way, I guess.”
I sighed and stared into the clouds. It really was getting lighter now. One part of the horizon was growing distinctly pale, even as the mist turned to fog. That must be east. That is, assuming the sun rises in the east here. “I’ll try to talk to him,” I said.
“Good. And one more thing you should know.” I looked back at him. He smiled a little closed-mouthed downward smile. “He likes bells. All different sizes of bells.”
I scowled. “Do those grow out of the ground here, or something?”
His face lightened. “Yes. See, I knew you would start to catch on.” And he was gone again.
It seemed I was going to have to get used to the physics of this place. Until I found that bird and persuaded it to take me home, I would have to explore a bit. At least my encounter with the thunderbird got me over my fear of the ground giving way under my feet. If it took an explosion like that to even crack it, I probably didn’t have much to worry about.A gentle wind began to lift the fog. I could see the whiteness of morning coming through. My hands slipped into the pockets of my jacket and I started walking toward the brightening horizon.
After half an hour or so, the sky was clear. It was a strange sky—blue, but not as bright or as uniform as ours. If I watched carefully enough, I could see the color undulating and changing. It took me some time, but eventually my quiet mind put forward the theory that it wasn’t a clear sky at all. I was looking at very high-altitude blue clouds.
The bird was gone, anyway.
I really didn’t have any way of knowing how or where to find him. Even simply walking didn’t make a lot of sense. With the landscape so level, I would only see anything new gradually. What’s more, I wasn’t even sure that the bird ever landed. If he did, he would have nothing to do but sit there on the ground. From what I had seen, he seemed more comfortable above the clouds than below them. He might still be above them now.
But there was nothing to do but walk. Every now and then I would stop and gaze around me, scanning the horizon for something. Anything. Where did these bells grow? Maybe if I could find the bells, I could find the bird. I must have walked for hours. I got to thinking if I lived in this place, I would probably be quite fond of bells myself.