The snow crunched softly beneath her feet as she climbed the hill, the high
pitched winds ripping through her fur and chilling her to the bone. She
responded by wrapping her heavy parka tighter around herself, and bowing her
head to keep the wind out of her face - or was it to pay respect to the Primes
of Wind?
At that moment, she didn't care. She wasn't quite familiar with Furcadian
gods, having come from a planet very different from this one. But if there was
a Prime who ran the weather, he/she/it was certainly having fun today. The
mother of all snowstorms had rolled in, festooning Furcadia in an endless
blanket of purest white. Even the bright green glow of the dream portals
couldn't compete with the overwhelming sea of snow.
She sat down on a rock, jutting up from the ground. Perhaps it was best that
she was leaving; this place could be a lot colder than it let on, even when it
wasn't 35 below. How much had she endured since she fell through that mirror?
She'd lost her memory, discovered magic and also discovered that she couldn't
handle the responsibility of it, fell in love with a musteline named Dieppe
(and even though he was the sweetest guy, it always felt like she was cheating
on Rick) and got married to him, got turned into a vampire - twice - and
tapped into an energy source beyond any previously known, to the point it
had mutated her form. Then Dieppe had left her to go on a journey - a
diplomat to some foreign realm - and the guild of learning and information
that she'd set up had fallen to pieces. And now, the final insult; she'd
gotten in a huge argument with her best friend, and it was driving her insane,
not being able to help him.
And then there was what had happened before falling through the mirror...
"No," muttered Perri. "He was scared and confused... he didn't mean it..."
She stood up, looking to the sky, as if the answers to her predicament lay up
there. She didn't want to leave; Furcadia had given her a life she'd never
known possible, one where she could be herself and not have people stare at her
or scared of her. A world full of beings like herself; appealing, to say the
least. But Perri had never really learnt to function in society well; it came
from the abuse she suffered as a kid and a life spent knowing that she was
different from those around her. And her ineptitude was hurting others.
And she couldn't cause any more pain. Not if she could help it.
Up the path she stared, was the island in which she'd been found. Allgeria, it
was called. Scarhawks were the only way for normal furres to visit, but having
gliding flaps came in handy when one wasn't available. The realm had portals
and links to countless worlds, including ones that could be forged by the power
of thought alone - "dreams," they were nicknamed. She reckoned that she'd
fallen through one of these portals, and that she could find it again.
Barring that, she'd forge a dream just like Earth, shut herself in it, and
forget about the world around her.
She scrambled inside the building, slamming the door shut. "Pheeewww... oh, lord. Not even Calgary was that cold."
"Perri?"
Perri looked up. Sitting atop a scarhawk, freshly landed, was her friend,
Lygeia. Perri was religious in the sense that she believed that God did exist,
but that she knew next to nothing about Him; Lygeia, by contrast, possessed
religious knowledge and faith that amazed and sometimes shamed Perri. Plus,
she could tell the most wonderful stories, all in a soothing, singing voice.
Lygeia wasn't her real name; rather, it was the name a siren had given her, to
allow the siren to forge a link with Lygeia and take over her body. Lygeia had
fought off the curse, but she was doomed never to remember her past name or
life. What a pair we are, Perri thought. Her old mind was twisted by another
into their own image; my body was twisted by a madman into his. "Lygeia!
Hello..."
"Perri, I heard... are you seriously thinking about leaving?"
Perri's face fell. "You heard... Lygeia, what can I do? I've endured so
much... seen so much... there's nothing for me here.
Everyone I try to help I wind up hurting. Everything I do falls apart."
"Perri, I understand." Lygeia smiled. "I left too. We all leave, sometimes.
The important thing is we come home."
"Lygeia... this isn't my home. I come from a different world... mine is so
different... humans live there."
"I know, you told me."
"Yes. But people here... those that know of humans call them names and hurl
insults at them. It's an attitude I don't really like - especially since I
spent a good portion of my life practically worshipping humans, wishing to be
like them. I don't fit in, Lygeia. I can't use magic anymore - I'm too scared
to, after last time - my marriage fell apart, my guild's in tatters... too much
to endure, Lyg. I have to go home. I miss it so."
Lygeia looked at her friend, and opened her mouth to speak - then shut it
again. "All right, Perri. If that's what you want."
Lygeia took the cross she hung around her neck, folded the chain in on it, and
handed it to Perri. "I suppose you'll want this back?"
"My cross...? No... no, keep it. It's yours now. Something to remember me by."
Lygeia ran a furry hand through her headfur. "I can't believe it... Perri
Larson is leaving... "
"I know... Lords, Earth seems so far away right now... but I should go and see
what's happened. I'm aching to catch the Star Wars trilogy again."
"The what?" Lygeia looked puzzled.
"Star Wars. It's a trilogy of movies - motion pictures - okay, a flat screen,
on which is shown roughly 24 pictures a second, so that the audience is fooled
into thinking it's the real thing. Star Wars is one of my favorite movies.
It's like a modern day fairy tale - good versus evil, the Force, all that
stuff. I wish life was really that simple."
"I wish..." Lygeia shuffled in her place. "I wish I could see this world you
talk about. But I can't leave Furcadia. I'm needed here."
"I know... I used to think I was too."
Perri stood there, for a few seconds, staring at her friend. Suddenly, a part
of her, a part she thought was crushed by the torment that she'd endured in her
life, screamed at her. You want a reason to stay? There it is, right there!
She needs you! They all need you!
Perri shook her head. "I'll see you around, Lyg. Safe dreaming."
Perri went to turn around, when suddenly the doors blew open. A blast of
inhumanly cold air screamed into the hall, covering the floor on snow. The
scarhawk screeched, and it jumped up through the skylight - taking Lygeia
with it!
"Lyg! Lygeia!" screamed Perri, and a second later Perri leapt for the wall,
scaling it with the surefootedness of her native species, the flying squirrel.
She scampered up the wall, then grabbed and ran along the ceiling, and grabbed
onto the hole the scarhawk entered through. Usually it was enchanted not to
let cold air in or out, but she could feel the chill as she got closer -
something was amiss.
Perri flipped up through the hole, landing with fluid grace. A quick look
upwards with her sharp eyesight showed that Lygeia and the scarhawk were a fair
ways away already, out past Theiropolis and heading out to sea. Lygeia
wouldn't freeze to death - over the sea, cold winds rarely roared, and those
that would would never penetrate her fur - but Lygeia would be terrified, and
if that scarhawk panicked or for any reason did something unexpected, Lygeia
could find herself careening towards the ocean floor. And three hundred feet
up, whether you landed on water of concrete was really a moot point.
"Perri, your luck is incredible," she grumbled. She cast aside her parka, and
spread her arms wide - revealing giant fur flaps that reached from her wrists
to her ankles. The things had caused her as much trouble as they'd given her
freedom - wearing normal clothes over them was difficult, as best - but she
was never happier to have them than now.
Almost immediately, the wind caught her and she took off like a shot, careening
towards the scarhawk in the distance. She has a chance to catch up, even
though the scarhawk was many times faster; she was striving to catch up, and
the scarhawk didn't seem to care about outpacing her, just about bucking
around and scaring Lygeia to death.
She barreled in, her mind making a dozen minute adjustments a second, and her
body twisted and angling her fur flaps to match, to squeeze every inch she
could out of the strong winter's wind. And inch by inch, she slid through the
air, closer and closer to the renegade scarhawk.
A quick look down, and Perri's heart rattled in her chest. They were directly
over the clear blue, stretching straight to the end of the world. She's glided
to Allgeria from time to time, but mostly by leaping on a magic-born wind blast
or leaping off a scarhawk in mid-flight. She's never been this far over the
big blue before, and suddenly she realized that if she lost altitude, there was
no way to get it back. No buildings, no magic, no scarhawks, no cliffs to
climb, nothing. And all that water down there would stick to her fur like
glue; she'd weigh a ton, and drown that much faster.
She shot her head back up, her glance down only having took a second. She was
closing in, and now she could hear the loud bleating of the scarhawk and it
screamed its terror to the heavens. Lygeia, for her part, was holding on and
not screaming, but not getting the scarhawk back under control, either.
She swooped up, catching a back beat from the bird's wings. Then she bore
down, landing right on the back of the scarhawk. The bird screeched in shock,
and Perri had to fight the urge to cover her ears - her hearing was quite
sensitive.
"Perri! What-"
"Shh! Hold on! Big Bird here's gonna be no help!" Perri scanned the ocean
down below, and smiled: an island was beckoning down below. "Perfect!
Allgeria! Hold on, Lyg! This is where we get off!"
"Awwwpp!" screamed Lygeia as Perri grabbed her and leapt off the bird, diving
down into the vast, infinite blue. Perri opened her fur flaps, and caught the
wind, and carrying Lygeia in her arms, slowly glided down to the island.
"My... my God... it's so quiet up here...!" exclaimed Lygeia in a hushed voice.
"It is. Oh, you should see Calgary! Wind like you wouldn't believe, and
updrafts and down drafts as common as slat... hold on, we're coming in for a
landing." Perri stretched her arms out, and held Lygeia vertically, by her
wrists and palms. "See the beach?"
"Yes..."
"I'm gonna slow down a bit, and let you go. I can't land safely while carrying
you like this. Okay?"
"... sure."
"'Kay." Perri glided down to the beach, and gently let Lygeia go. She had a
bit of a soft running start, and Perri wasn't going too fast, and she was only
dropped from a few feet up. Nonetheless, Lygeia felt her heart skip a beat
when Perri dropped her, and for just a second, she wasn't being held up or
rooted to the earth.
"Uff!" she said as she hit the water, and splashed into the shoreline.
"Ughuh... cough... guhh... oh, Lord."
"Awp!"
"Perri?" Lygeia's head shot up. "You okay?"
Perri's head emerged from the sand dune, her headfur tussled, her usual cheery
manner gone. "Oh, man! A sand dune! Sand's so white, I didn't spot it... ugh!
Ugh! I'm gonna be brushing this sand off me for weeks!"
Lygeia began to chuckle.
"It ain't funny! I got sand in my teeth and sand in my ears and sand in my
eyes and my swimsuit's starting to cut into my-"
"Hey!" said Lygeia, trying to steer the conversation away from where she sensed
it heading. "Wasn't Allgeria... you know, under two feet of snow?"
Perri stood up out of the dune, and spat some sand to the ground. "Hmm...
yeah, it was! but if that's the case... and we're not on Allgeria... where are
we?"
Lygeia's eyes darted upwards for a second... and then her jaw fell slack, and
she pointed over Perri's shoulder. "Ummm... errr..." Perri whipped around.
Standing about fifty feet tall in the distance was something out of Indiana
Jones. The cave's entrance was concealed by the trees from the air, but on the
ground it was clear as day. The visage carved on it was horrible. Carved
into the cave's face was a gigantic cat's head, with the mouth serving as the
entrance. And in the eyes of the cat's head were two glowing, scarlet rocks.
"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Lygeia."
Lygeia looked at her friend. "Kansas?"