1997-03 may
I was happy of the results. The newly hatched Chinese Fireball was responsive to English. That trick with the potion to learn new languages and a microscopic hole in the shell of its egg worked well.
I twirled the red plume I harvested from the basilisk I bred and killed a few weeks before, focusing once again on the newborn dragon. It was of a beautiful red and was having fun exploring the cave beneath the tower.
With another brilliant applications of runes, and my now deep understanding of souls, I bound its identity to the one of the towers. Fleur had been nervous about my idea of adding a dragon to Dawnshard, but once we went over the rituals, I had been planning to use she was quickly on board. Ans she shared her experience with enthralling dragons to the project. The dragon would never be able to talk, but it could understand, and while it was not strong enough to stand up to the will of a powerful mage yet, it would always obey to Fleur. Since she was the one who held the ward's reins. I threw at the little dragon a sleeping charm and went outside, looking for Fleur. I had another surprise for her.
A few minutes later I found myself rolling on my left shoulder, neatly avoiding whatever the purple light Fleur threw at me was. I would ask, later.
At the moment I was busy dealing with a Veela that managed to swiftly direct her avian form, without losing her higher mental faculties. While her control of her most complex spells and enchantments turned wobbly, the sheer power behind everything fire related was awe inspiring, even if it lacked finesse.
I directed my signature storm of ice and lightning in a way that would encompass and smother the vast wave of blue fire coming toward me. I had to abandon that effort in order to dodge a clawed foot that would have left me a macho looking scar if not for my loyal and battered dragonhide vest. It wasn't the one I would have used for a real battle, but in this way, she could get some experience in using all of her features in a fight.
Fleur was always competitive, but when she let her heritage show she turned almost predatory.
She didn't let me regain my balance and was immediately on me, her wand arm redirecting the blue fire and the other hand slashing upwards, forcing me to bend backward. I used the movement to kick her in the gut, pushing us apart and giving myself some space. Most of the magic I used in a fight was a little on the lethal side, so I was somewhat at a disadvantage. That was the perfect occasion however, to break in one of my greatest accomplishment so far.
I grinned when she came rushing at me once again. I raised my wand pointing it to the sky, reaching for it. I knew that incantations were bullshit, but the more complex the magic, the more giving it a name helped you associate its workings with your intent. With elemental magic was something that worked against you, since giving a name to the act of shaping water, for example, would only restrict your intent. What I was trying to perform however, was as far from elemental magic as a neutron star was from a bonfire.
I called: "Atlas!" and my muscles tensed, while the weight of the sky came crashing down in a seven feet radius around me. I gritted my teeth, enduring the not-endurable weight. Fleur ended up eating the dirt, pressed against the ground, unable to lift even one feather of her beautiful wings. While holding the sky's weight, I took a slow step toward her, then another. By the time I reached Fleur, the transformation had receded, and I was able to slowly pick up her wand from her struggling hand, before taking a step back, and letting go of the weight if the sky.
My spine popped and my knees screamed murder. Without the elixir circling in my bloodstream that effort would have knocked me out for at least a week. It would never get easy, but I could get used to it enough to exploit far better. It had potential.
I helped Fleur on her bare feet, before handing over her wand.
"What was that?" she asked me, panting because of the stress my spell put on her body. I was having a hard time regulating my breath too, but I performed it several times to work out the various kinks of it, so I was used to the strain, and my enhanced metabolism helped process the fatigue.
"That was Atlas. The first of the Titan's Sequence." I told her. I was proud. And I had the right to be! Atlas was not some kind of gravity manipulating charm, since manipulating gravity directly was a recipe for disaster, but the most complex air shaping spell I've ever heard about. I created it after having processed the contents of Mastering the Sky and meshing them with my memories of the physics of the pressure exerted by a column of air. Torricelli had been a genius. "I'll let you know when I ultimate the Chronos Project." I added. I may have been a tad bit smug, but Atlas deserved all the admiration everyone was capable of. My smugness was simply... respecting... yes, respecting my spell.
Since we started travelling together, she learned how to conceal her speechlessness, but I could tell that she was a tad bit envious of my latest breakthrough.
"Is that the reason you insisted we practiced outside today?" she asked me while walking back to Dawnshard. The pretentious name Fleur choose for the tower we built was appropriate, the way which our refuge among the Alps shined truly made it look like the first ray of sunlight encased in diamond. It did help that the Fiendfyre-metal black plaques were disguised, so that the enchanted crystal could be shown in all of its glory. That didn't mean I had to like the name, too much high bourgeois, or even aristocrat. Not really my style, but it had Fleur signed all over it.
"Well, I also didn't want to ruin the first floor, and we would have spooked the deer. But maybe... yes, Atlas won't work underground, and it would probably be nullified by the kinetic energy redirection process of the tower." I answered, before going on with the interesting things I noticed during our spar.
"Your blue flame is coming together quite smoothly; you don't seem to need to focus on it so much anymore. Learning Fiendfyre and mastering Gubraithian Fire will probably give you another angle from which you can approach it. What was that purple thing?"
And so, we went on, discussing the finer points of our magic and the best parts of our duel. We reached the high stone doors that gave access to the Tower, waiting for a couple of seconds so they had the time to open, turning outwards silently on their foundations. On my insistence, we designed the doors so they could resist to battering rams or even giants swinging their clubs at it. There was no reason for not making sure the beautiful tower would also be un-assaultable.
I took a moment to look at the snow that melted on the surface of the imposing Dawnshard. I knew the liquid was being collected beneath the tower to be used to water the fields and greenhouses inside. And the pool floor wouldn't be filling itself otherwise. I recognized the balcony of said floor, from which a waterfall came crashing down, only to turn into mist after the 150meters of free fall. Mist that was redirected around Dawnshard and became part of the concealing enchantments.
"I think Luna would like it very much. Filius and Minerva too." I told Fleur conversationally while we were walking over the gravel pathway that crossed the grass field that covered the entirety of the first floor. Cherry trees in bloom stood at the sides of the path, and dozens of deer could be seen in the distance. It was one of my endless loops, running into the same direction would make you return at the starting point after 21 kilometers. The ceiling was 17 meters higher and obviously enchanted to show us the sky. Say what you want, but Hogwarts had the coolest things. Until I and Fleur came around, that is.
"Gabby would love this. My parents too." answered her, she was smiling faintly, perhaps picturing her sister face.
I grimaced a bit, causing her to laugh. "You know that you will have to properly talk with my parents again sometimes, don't you?"
"I already did, thank you very much." I snapped back, causing her to laugh even louder.
We reached the Stairway to Heaven, which was a spectacular giant open double-spiral staircase in what looked like white marble. It ran for the entire length of the tower, ending up on the roof terrace, where I suggested Fleur to place her Perfect Gubraithian Fire once she mastered it. The two spirals ascend the first three floors without ever meeting, illuminated from above by a sort of Lumos without a well-defined point of origin. That had been one of Fleur's original works. She took the runic plaque Babbling gifted me for Christmas what seemed to be a lifetime before, and tweaked it, before applying it over all the staircases, and there where 81 of them. And obviously the single steps were smartly enchanted, like hell I was ever going to use a staircase more than 300 meters high. There were localized expansion charms on the height of each step that worked only when you started walking on the following step. Fleur applied those, it was a very well tried procedure that I never heard about, but I couldn't deny it worked like a charm. The upper floors were a mind shattering maze for anyone but Fleur and I, and that was without the confunding enchantments that would assault everyone that didn't have Fleur's permission to be in the tower.
I helped her a lot with that work, however, she was the Lady of Dawnshard, and the tower answered first to her, then to me. Even if the underground system of caves was of my creation, and the 79 iron golems I stacked in should have preferred me to Fleur. Giving names to places was a curious thing, while it was a necessary component of the whole 'I ward what I own, and I own what I give a name to', when applied to a place with such a high concentration of magic, around that name and place an identity started to coalesce. That's not to say that the tower was sentient, no, but in 300 hundred years it would probably develop its quirks. Very much like Hogwarts, in fact. That's to say that the act of naming something was important, and while I jokingly called the system of caves Root, it was still a part of Dawnshard, and the shifting wards we put even down there would choose Fleur over me. Choose means that if we ever were to enter in a true conflict, the wards would see me as 'intruder' and her as 'rightful owner'. In the same way Hogwarts recognized Voldemort as the 'true professor' of DADA.
"They had just seen you kidnapping me to have your way with me, it's understandable if there has been some misunderstanding." she teased me, again. I was never going to live it down. Perhaps it was time to go tinker with the basilisk ritual. "It's Luna's OWL year." I said instead, choosing to abandon the embarrassing topic. "With the war and her father outside of the country already, maybe I can persuade Xenophilus and Luna to go around without her NEWTs, that she could sit independently." I ventured.
"We could spend all together the summer here, before we start again traveling, I miss my family, and you miss Filius and Minerva too, not only that girl. And frankly I want us to show off Dawnshard to our families." Fleur offered.
"Sounds good to me." I answered, swiftly ignoring that she placed Filius as my father and Minerva as my mother. "I don't think Minerva will have much time, but she should be able to take a couple of weeks off work. I'll write to them in the protean charmed journal we share, and set up a couple of origami albatross, one for Luna and one so you can reach your family. Ask them to find you a couple of house elves for you to breed here, if we plan to leave Dawnshard for some time, I can't leave Tummy here on his own, since the tower recognizes you as the rightful owner." I sighed, when Raven found her way onto my shoulder, she probably had an answer to the last riddle I gave her, and it was her turn to ask one. However, she controlled herself and didn't interrupt me, gracefully allowing me to finish my speech.
"Probably I should go back to Rabbit's Hole for at least a couple of weeks, to restock what we hadn't been able to grow here yet, finish making copies of the books I own for Dawnshard's library, make sure Winky and Tummy won't have problems into getting together, and getting Wonderland started. At least the self-sustaining underground forest." I added. She looked at me, going over what I told her. A brief frown crossed her features at the thought of being separated, but it melted into a smile. She turned her nose up, assuming an imperative tone: "Take two months, when you're back I'll have mastered Gubraithian Fire."
I would have laughed at her boasting if I didn't know of her quite scary affinity for everything fire-related. I doubted she could master it, but casting a rough approximation of it? It was well in the realm of possibilities.
"And the Chinese Fireball hatched, she's asleep and waiting for you to name her." I answered, changing topic.
I sighed. I probably had to modify the Root so a grown dragon would be able to fly in it, even with a loop expansion charm, it would be a nightmare.
1997-15 June
The forests grew fast. No, that was not entirely correct, since I took the Time Room and applied it to the much larger system of underground caves. It took me a month and half of pure digging, and three whole days to enlarge what I obtained, before linking it to the mass that stretched the whole Wonderland so that the time would flow so much faster that it would have looked like the world outside creeped to a standstill. It was a gradual process: the deeper into Wonderland you were, the faster the time flew, that allowed me to make it always accessible. I could enter or exit my Time Room once at the end of each hour (of normal time flow). Here, on the upper levels the difference was barely noticeable, but were I was walking a whole week was barely a second of normal time outside.
Rabbit's Hole was so structured: after my loft, there was the fields room, in which I placed a staircase that went spiraling down, ending up in a clearing on the top of what looked like a mountain, 15 meters below. I placed there the great stone basin in which danced my Gubraithian Fire.
The time in that point barely added a minute for every hour of normal time flow, and because of that, it was only a grass field, with few trees I transplanted from outside. There were firs, oaks, maples, some fruit trees. You get the idea, it didn't really make any sense, but the point was that it didn't need to. I inscribed a few runic arrays around the trees, making sure they would grow like they would in their optimal environment.
The mountain was only 800meters high, but that was before my expansion charms. After having walked all the way down, there were grass fields over the bedrock, with titanic sone pillars that rose into the ceiling, that was obviously charmed to mimic the sky. That worked only in the immediate proximity of the hill however, since the time flow difference would make it a mess everywhere else. But I played with it, turning Wonderland in a place where the time that the sky was set upon depended entirely on the where, and not the when. There was a region of dawn, of mid-day, of dusk, of night. In the last one the moon was always changing, but it somehow reflected enough sunlight for the plants to grow. That fucked up considerably the animals I set free into Wonderland. And so, I ended up digging some more on the outskirts of the forest, adding a layer in which the cycle day-night matched the time flow. I had all the time to do it, after all my enchantments were somewhat dynamic. Meaning that they adapted to the modifications I placed on the enchanted object. I let myself be swallowed by the work, I would probably end up dead from exhaustion, or aged 20 years, if not for the Stone that I held disguised in my empty orbit. I managed to tweak the elixir, so that it would also provide nourishment to my bloodstream. The four seven years old elves, born from Winky and Tummy, also helped a lot. I had the couple of house elves breed into the depths of Wonderland, and raise their first litter, that I bound to me soon after, before sending the couple back up to Rabbit's Hole.
It had been easy enough dig a tunnel that led to the sea. Wonderland had its own little sea, and the air circulating enchantments, with the heat brought by my fictitious suns, caused the water to evaporate, it would coalesce into clouds, that would either condense against the outer borders or on the titanic pillars that literally held the sky in place. The water ended up collected in little basins that overflowed into creeks, that merged into little rivers, that would end in lakes, from which bigger rivers that would make their way toward the little sea of Wonderland. Obviously, I enchanted all the pillars, no earthquake or nuclear bombing on the surface would ever destroy Wonderland. The titanic columns rose from the ground into a pattern that had been entirely determined by the structure of the rock. I followed its ventures, I could have used magic to stabilize a pillar that I put somewhere random, but why work against nature in this case?
The clouds also were subjected to the occasional column of cold or hot air, and sometimes it rained. There were no thunderstorms, and lightning was rare.
Around the pillars I amassed some of the dirt I dug, placing in some of the clearings near the top sources of clear water, they condensed the humidity from the air. So, I ended up having even waterfalls here and there.
From the outside world I brought in owls, several of my talking ravens, ducks and geese, seagulls, even hawks and eagles. Mice, rabbits, squirrels, bats, deer (I brought dozens of them from the Alps), sheep and horses (I stole them from farms around all England), even some goats. Some lynxes, bears, and wolves, along with toads, chameleons, lizards, salamanders, and snakes. I had to enchant areas of Wonderland so the environment would be right for the various kind of creatures. I brought in butterflies, cicadas, crickets, fireflies, moths, ants, and several hives from the Fields Room of Rabbit's Hole.
I planted all over the place berries of every kind, roses, daffodils, and dozens of others. Flowers are cool. And after having directed the rivers into a lake big enough, I placed in there few algae and fishes like trout. Some mushrooms found their way in too.
I put to work the other three children of Tummy and Winky. The older four oversaw Dawn, Mid-Day, Dusk and Night, while the younger three had to keep track of Flora, Fauna and Waters. I named them after the seven kings of Rome, modified in case they were females. Respectively the elves were: Romulus, Tulla, Numa, Ancus, Tarquinius, Tarquinia and Servius. Pretentious, I know, but they had been deeply honored, and humbled by the trust I showed them giving them such great responsibilities. Being in charge simply meant that they had to make sure the enchantments kept running smoothly, that the trees weren't going to be killed by a too much enthusiastic parasitic mushroom, that the animals kept a balance in their numbers, that the lakes did not undergo eutrophication. Once I started bringing in magical creatures, they would start collecting lost hairs, shed skins and harvest the bodies once that the creatures died. At some point wand trees would naturally start to grow, and I would put in magical plants too.
One of the side effects of digging after having put up the time flow changing enchantments was that in those areas time flew faster or slower than the rest of Wonderland, in a random pattern. It was a very Fae like thing, I loved it.
Having created it, I had a feel of the where I was in Wonderland and when I was in relation to the outside, but anyone else would probably get lost in five seconds flat.
I dug cave system around Wonderland, so that my 'basilisk' could reach everywhere without difficulties.
I modified the ritual to hatch a basilisk, starting with one of the Raven's eggs that I fecunded in vitro [what does this mean?]. Having a cock killing it with a crow would have annoyed me greatly. Raven could kill it with only her voice, but she had to mean it, and wouldn't do it unless I ordered her to. I wrote the runes on the egg with my blood, so it would be loyal to me, and its gaze couldn't kill me or my future children. It had orders to not kill the elves, and the magical creatures I would one day bring in. It would be the apex predator, and one elf would direct him to keep under control the number of predators.
I looked at the basilisk with a grin. Miðgarðsormr had scales of a green so deep it almost looked black, and he sprouted over his head a single plume as white as a Patronus, while his eyes shone of a molten silver. I hatched him under the full moon, pouring an English potion into the basin where the toad had been brooding over the egg, poking a microscopic hole in the shell, careful to not damage the yolk. I brought it in the deepest parts of Wonderland, and even with the different time flow, he was barely 4meters long. He would grow up to 30meters, he probably would not die from old age, and was even able to understand English, even if he would only be able to be understood by a parselmouth. To my great dismay, he had inherited his mother passion for riddles, and making those work in parseltongue was very difficult.
"I'll have to depart soon." I hissed to Miðgarðsormr. He wrapped around my waist conveying his sadness at the thought without words.
1997-05 October Mount Olympus
After two whole weeks of listening, I cleared up two things. One, the Greek's Gods didn't actually settle down on Mount Olympus, or their presence faded to much, or it wasn't linked to a place. Two, I hated tourism. Well, I also learned that chimaeras were awesome. But it was an off topic. Raven flapped her way on my left shoulder, covering my blind side, and croaked:
"I don't have eyes,
but once I did see.
I used to hold words,
that wished to be free.
Once I had thoughts,
but now I'm down deep.
I held my mind,
and now I'm a death sign.
What am I?"
I thought about it for a few seconds, putting away my difficulties in searching for the gods, and found the solution: "A skull." She croaked her laugh, accepting what I said as the right answer.
I reached Fleur, who was busy playing with fire, quite literally. "This isn't helping me. How are you doing?"
She let the white flame in her hands die down, slowly, deliberately, before answering me. "I told you so three days ago." she quipped.
"Yes, yes, you were right, I was wrong, no need to rub it in." I answered, "Shall we leave then?" and without waiting for her assent, I apparated us to the coast, were my boat was waiting. Raven didn't like that.
I crafted it while we were still at Dawnshard, Luna had been ecstatic to lend her expertise on what was the most appropriate way to ask the wood to endure my treatment, so it could become something wonderful.
I used oak for the keel and pine for the single mast. While various hardwoods had been used for carvel-built hull and decking. I took a page out of One Piece and made it, so the deck was covered by grass, enchanted to grab our feet, and keep us from being thrown off board in case of tempest. The inside of the boat had been obviously enchanted, but while it was a very comfortable apartment, it really did not compare to my iron trunk. Building it had been fun, and layering enchantments with Fleur's help had been even better. Once the sail was up, it could navigate the sky. I usually kept it 12 meters from the ground or sea below, since I didn't want to slam against an airplane, thank you very much. While the sail was down, it could navigate like a submarine, holding an impressive, not-poppable variation of the bubble head charm. I carefully painted two eyes at the sides of the runespoor figurehead. I happily named the boat Lookfar, in honor of the Heartsea saga. Obviously, the heads of the runespoor were enchanted, one to blow fire, one to shed light in the depths, and one to isolate us from stray lightning in case we were to fly through a storm.
While setting up the sail, I spoke to Fleur: "I heard there is a tournament in the USA, it starts in January and is sponsored by the MACUSA itself. There will be competitors from all over the world, I bet there will be a place for a Triwizard champion. I know you want to see where you stand in comparison to others beside me. And I wanted to meet a thunderbird."
Her eyes sparkled at the idea, before looking at me while tilting her head. "And you want to cross the Atlantic on board of Lookfar?" she asked me.
"In open ocean you could let loose that variation of Fiendfyre I know you're tinkering with, while I could see if I manage to call forth a proper storm. We could head south after the tournament, reach Chile, and to Australia from there. Maybe we can reach Japan, then cross Asia and perhaps go south to India and lastly Africa" I added hopefully "But we can still make it up as we go." I concluded, with a sheepish smile, I let myself get a bit carried away. But the idea of travelling all around the globe was an old one, and the last time I heard of her, Luna was exploring the rainforest with her father, so I didn't need to stay ready to jump into the fray in England.
I raised my eyes when I felt her hand on my cheek. She was smiling, probably finding my enthusiasm amusing, but it was hardly a side of me she had never seen before. "I'm in." She answered, "Even if you won't be able to participate with the Stone as your left eye, no matter how you disguise it." she added with a light pout, that was obviously fake. We had been together for more than a year, and we dueled each other countless times. She knew how much she got better since then, but I had won every exchange, sometimes by the skin of my teeth, more often by a large margin. She had no idea about where she stood against anyone else, she could only see how far she came from who she once was. And she enjoyed having the occasional chance to shine.
1998-07 January
I was walking around Arizona while Fleur was busy with the papers necessary to participate in the tournament. And she was also required to spend a week in isolation with the ither participants, to undergo a battery of medical tests, so that the judges could be sure that none of the participants had undergone rituals to enhance their powress [prowess or powers?]. Along with a thoroughly examination for potions.
More exactly, I was walking through Arizona's desert, looking for thunderbirds. However, I noticed a very interesting tree, that I felt was important in some way. The desert ironwood tree was about 10 meters high, and its trunk had a diameter of about 60cm. It wasn't in bloom, but that was not the interesting part. The bark was split open, like in other old ironwoods I observed during my stroll through the desert. The tree had been split in two, probably by a strike of lightning, and had kept growing. So, from the roots of one single tree, two trunks were still very much alive, with leaves of a bluish green. Raven croaked her approval in my ear. She felt it too.
"Through my eye,
beneath my feathers,
I see where Wotan did die,
from it run the Rivers.
The tall tree, showered
with shining loam.
From there come the dews
that drop in the valleys.
It stands forever green,
over Hvergelmir, Mímisbrunnr, and Urðr's wells."
I glanced at her skeptically, before feeling again the tree. It was special, even among wand trees, no doubt. "I hardly think this is Yggdrasil." I commented distractedly, while walking to the impressive ironwood. I let my hands run over its split open bark, feeling its every imperfection. It was clear to me that I wouldn't be able to leave it alone, and while separating it from the sky was a cruel thing, I could do it without compromising the health of the tree. "It's curious how this stuff keeps happening to me." I mumbled.
I opened my iron trunk and walked inside, preparing a place on the first floor for such a wonderful tree. I went outside once more, and with a wide movement of my wand I cut a large portion of the ground around the desert ironwood. I then levitated it into my trunk, where I put it down, before adding some dragon's dung around it along with an array to keep the optimal environmental condition around it. Raven flew away from my shoulder to perch on one of its branches. I tilted my head, noticing her strange behavior. Then I shrugged, I would study it along with the tree once I was back to Washington.
"Stay inside please." I told her before leaving the trunk, that soon found itself around my neck.
Now, how to find a thunderbird. I mused, twirling my wand distractedly with my fingers. I shrugged. Let's see if it does work.
I looked carefully around me. No muggles or dust clouds signaling an incoming car. I raised my wand, letting myself reach out to the sky above. Feeling the winds that were swiping the desert. I slowly directed the heat the ground held above my head, before twisting the winds so that I would end up in the eye of the storm.
It required several minutes during which I simply stood still with my eyes closed, apparently unaware of the world around me.
Then the sky exploded with a thunder that made my bones tremble, and it started to rain. I directed the falling water into a twister around me, snapping into it a few lightnings only to see if I managed to make them reach the clouds above. I pushed and pulled, and the clouds themselves started to circle slowly above my storm. I didn't contain it's lightnings, happy to redirect them only when I was the target. My long coat in sphinx leather was charmed to be impervious, otherwise I would already be soaked.
I didn't want to cause a hurricane; Merlin knows if the MACUSA wouldn't come breathing down my neck. But a Thunderstorm was a good way to grab the attention of thunderbirds.
Half an hour later I started sporting a skull splitting headache. I didn't know if it was from the effort or from the battering booms my thunders rained down on me. In that moment I felt it, like it was slipping out of my control. But I wasn't even near to exhaustion, so I finally opened my eyes, hoping to spot it.
The sky was dark, illuminated only by flashes of lightning that discharged back into the clouds or on the ground around me, that was full of little smoldering craters. It looked like my thunderstorm had swallowed the sun itself.
There! I thought. And under my eye I spotted a magnificent thunderbird diving and twirling in and out of the clouds, feeling a distant screech that matched thunders that had a different taste in comparison to the rest of my storm. My headache forgotten, I played with the thunderbird, and my mind gifted me the memory of the riddle I asked Raven once:
"I follow my brother,
who is much faster.
You can't mistake one for the other,
if he is the wit, I'm the booming laughter.
Who am I?"
I laughed along the next sequence of thunders, singing with the thunderbird a music that nobody else would understand without an explanation.
We must have gone on for at least another hour, but I couldn't really say, I was just lost in the thunderstorm with my new feathered friend.
At some point, I let it die down, feeling that I was tired and the thunderbird was happy with the fun I had provided.
It descended from the rapidly clearing sky, iridescent white and gold feathers that sparkled of a navy blue, six powerful wings and a head that held the sharp awareness of the predator, with the absolute confidence of someone that has nothing to fear. Magnificent.
I said nothing, letting the thunderbird circle me a couple of times. He was curious and surprised that a two legs managed to play with him. He lowered his head, scrutinizing me with an eye big as my two hands put together. He screeched lowly, before flapping his three pairs of wings and become airborne once more. I did notice however the feather that came down from the sky, twirling in an unnatural wind. I respectfully grabbed it and smiled; it had been a good day.