FIGHT BY RIVER
Aariah decided that the moment was safe enough to fly up and scan her vast surroundings for Fire. She fluttered her wings slightly before she took off into the sky just above the river. She only went a few feet above the treetops, for she knew that would be enough of a view. Surprisingly, the flash of the fire she was looking for was much closer than she had believed. On the opposite river bank, the dead campfire kicked back into life as a large pillar of flames. Aariah had to swoop out of the way quickly, and she ran into the trees behind her. Falling to the forest floor, she looked up to see the pillar of fire whip around in the air like a giant snake. "Oh no!" She cried as it whiped her way. The flames barely missed the soaring Aariah and instead ignited the forest and its floor. As she tried desperately to fly down river, her wing beats fed the fire in its pursuit of her.
Fire was faster and easily passed her up. It charred wood and trees causing a heavy limb to knock her to the ground. Aariah looked up and watched as a wall of flame was barreling towards her over the river. Thinking quickly, she saw a small waterfall and ordered, "Water! Flood the river! Air! Give me something to breathe!" She jumped into the water and buried herself as close to the waterfall as possible. Water had made the few inches of trickle over her into a ragging flood of several feet. Air had created a pocket underneath the current, so that Aariah could move her wings to shelter herself and breathe while the fire ragged above the water.
The wall of flames torched across the river top and the trees surrounding it. An abundance flame blew down on the little waterfall that Aariah took shelter within. Every buffeting burn steamed away the water, but more water continued to flow in its place. Time had seemed to stretch on forever as she sat curled beneath. She could tell the Fire was getting through. The water was becoming more and more warm as the seconds ticked by in a crawl. Then the wall of flames ceased. No more did it heat the water and no more did water reflect it's rich orange color.
Aariah paused questioningly at its disappearance. "Where?" She spoke the obvious. Standing, she broke the bubble of air that had been supporting her and displaced the flowing water that had covered her. Fire seemed to lay weak upon a single tree; smoldering quietly in agony. It had worn itself out in the way Aariah had plotted to do, and had done with others before. "Powered by my might of will, I challenge you to show your face, there will be no need to kill, my power will take your power's place! What I see will become mine, and in my eye I seeFIRE!" She called out its name as if her soul was a match for it. The flames curled and reached for the sky as Air soothed it with fuel. The fire came upon her staff like a flying mystical nymph before it, too, changed into the power joining lightning. Aariah quickly braced herself, but it was painful. She could not stand any longer and as her wings wafted into nothingness, she collapsed to the forest floor. Surprisingly, she did not feint. Her own strength, built up from capturing two other elements, had kept her awake and aware.
She did not move, for fear of causing an unconscious state. She could hear the birds coming back in their whistling tunes, and the squirrel rustled leaves as it went back to the acorn it had dropped. Many animals had begun to move about in fact. For there was rustling coming from many directions. Surprisingly, another squirrel came up next to her as it picked up a different forest scrap. As it scuttled away, she could hear another forest creature trample through the trees where it had gone out of sight.
**********
Night had fallen before she finally mustered up enough courage to move. She was comforted when she could turn her head and lift her arms without any resistance. She propped herself up on her elbows and stretched her back until it cracked several times. After rolling onto her side, she got to her feet. On the ground beside her was the pendant that had been her staff earlier. She stooped to pick it up, but heard a crackle of leaves from within the same woods the squirrel had disappeared into. Aariah couldn't see what was inside the woods at the time, but she knew that nightly animals were out on their way out of their hiding places and that they probably wouldn't bother her.
"Fire" she muttered under her breath as she remembered what she had just accomplished. She proceeded up river back to where she had left her things along the river bank and was annoyed to find them soaking wet several feet closer down the river from the flooding that she had ordered the water to do. She dug through her stuff to find that her magic book had lost all its lettering due to the water and that the pages were in fact dissolving from the rather weak paper they were made from. She had to remember that it was not her teacher's fault for making a shoddy book, for if he had made an accurate one for an apprentice, the man he got the paper from would want to know who his new apprentice was.
After she had properly buried the book -- and checking the pages for all their blankness -- she decided to continue up river, away from Mataria. She hoped in that direction she might find some where less noticeable to camp and prepare for Wood. It took her but a few hours to find a nice camping place not too far West of Fight Lake to set up her camp and settle down for a quiet few hours of peaceful, deserved sleep.
