Sunward I've climbed...
Apr. 9th, 2009 01:12 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
lanfykins.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
zg_shadowsBodmin was a hard place. Always had been. It was the kind of place Shakespeare might have been thinking of when he spoke of the blasted heath; a thin layer of tough grass over unyielding rock, bare and barren and scoured clean by the rain that filled the bogs. And when the fog lay thick on the moor, confusing sight and muffling sound, then the bogs hungered for more than the occasional mouse or broken bough...
Today was not one of those days. It was spring, and the shadows of clouds scudded over the moors, driven by the wind that bent the grass before it and fluttered the tiny flower-heads that clung close to rock. High above, a solitary raptor soared, barely more than a speck in the hugeness of the sky.
Sulien dipped a wingtip and brought her head up into the wind. The sun was warm on her back, easing the twinge in her left wing that always developed after takeoff. How could she stay ground-bound on a day like this? It wasn't, perhaps, quite what the Warder had had in mind, but there were distinct advantages to having eyesight far sharper than even Garou eyes, and a visual range that could be measured in miles.
On the low hilltop, three wolves chased one another in and out of the fallen stones. Down closer to the track, a teenage boy sat concealed in a hollow with a shotgun by his feet, having a crafty fag (and where had he managed to acquire cigarettes? The things were like gold dust these days. She made a mental note to find out).
Tilting slightly she let the wind bring her around, and pumped her wings to gain height. She was fully half a mile above the Caern, and still her eyes could catch the new glint of gold on Allie's finger, the grey in the strands of hair that Memory brushed out of her face as she talked to two of the older cubs.
Two miles from the stones, a small group of wolves loped their laborious way across the rough terrain, skirting the treacherous ground of the tors and bogs. The one in front was a pale grey that shone like silver in the fleeting sunlight. Stooping from here, she could be with them in a heartbeat; she kinked her tail and veered away.
Bodmin was flourishing. She wished Anthony were still alive to see it.
Maybe one day soon what was rising beneath the moor would wake and suck them down into darkness with all the other drowned souls. Maybe one day soon the madness in London would overspill and the mushroom clouds would rise even here, above these timeless moors.
But today the sun was shining, and high above the shouting winds that swept across the tors the sky was a delirious, burning blue. She climbed to meet it.
Today was not one of those days. It was spring, and the shadows of clouds scudded over the moors, driven by the wind that bent the grass before it and fluttered the tiny flower-heads that clung close to rock. High above, a solitary raptor soared, barely more than a speck in the hugeness of the sky.
Sulien dipped a wingtip and brought her head up into the wind. The sun was warm on her back, easing the twinge in her left wing that always developed after takeoff. How could she stay ground-bound on a day like this? It wasn't, perhaps, quite what the Warder had had in mind, but there were distinct advantages to having eyesight far sharper than even Garou eyes, and a visual range that could be measured in miles.
On the low hilltop, three wolves chased one another in and out of the fallen stones. Down closer to the track, a teenage boy sat concealed in a hollow with a shotgun by his feet, having a crafty fag (and where had he managed to acquire cigarettes? The things were like gold dust these days. She made a mental note to find out).
Tilting slightly she let the wind bring her around, and pumped her wings to gain height. She was fully half a mile above the Caern, and still her eyes could catch the new glint of gold on Allie's finger, the grey in the strands of hair that Memory brushed out of her face as she talked to two of the older cubs.
Two miles from the stones, a small group of wolves loped their laborious way across the rough terrain, skirting the treacherous ground of the tors and bogs. The one in front was a pale grey that shone like silver in the fleeting sunlight. Stooping from here, she could be with them in a heartbeat; she kinked her tail and veered away.
Bodmin was flourishing. She wished Anthony were still alive to see it.
Maybe one day soon what was rising beneath the moor would wake and suck them down into darkness with all the other drowned souls. Maybe one day soon the madness in London would overspill and the mushroom clouds would rise even here, above these timeless moors.
But today the sun was shining, and high above the shouting winds that swept across the tors the sky was a delirious, burning blue. She climbed to meet it.
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Date: 2009-04-09 01:22 pm (UTC)I do love that part of the world so very much...
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Date: 2009-04-09 02:39 pm (UTC)I was thinking about what you said in Sulien's DT, and this morning, about the sense of optimism in Bodmin, and what I was remembering last night about how Bodmin used to be under Keston, before the Spirals came. And at the same time I was thinking about what it must be like to be able to transform into a falcon for someone who's kin to the Silver Fangs, especially for someone who's been lame for three years.
And then it all wrote itself.
And then it started quoting High Flight at me, and I'm still trying to work out how to sneak more references in :)