Disclaimer: See Prologue (Part one)
Prologue Part Two
Ebon Rih - Riada
Orian stood in the doorway of the cozy hut that had been her home for the past few months and looked up at the swirling gray sky with a small, innocent smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. The small house was only temperturary….or at least that's what she thought her father had called it. Soon, he had said, they would be in a real eyrie, but it was still being built, so they would live here until it was done.
Behind her, she could hear her mother saying something to Alanar, but she wasn't paying much attention. She would have to go back inside soon, but no one had noticed her absence yet, and she planned to make the most out of her few minutes of freedom. Hugging Woofer tightly to her chest, she stepped through the door and into the small garden behind the house, her gaze still locked on the battle that raged above her.
Most other children, even Alanar, were scared of storms, but she thought they were fun. After all, how often do big, shiny things hit the sky and make it go BANG? Yesterday, she had hit one of her mother's pans with enough force to leave a large dent, but for all she tried, she couldn't make a noise as loud as the shiny things could. When her mother had seen what she'd done, Dorian had shouted loud enough to make Orian's ears hurt. Orian had stared up at her mother in awe, wishing she could make a noise that loud. But it still wasn't as big as the bang the shiny things made, so she started screaming along with her mother to see if they could be that loud together. She had to stop when Dorian smacked her, though, because she couldn't see anything but black for a few minutes afterwards.
Now, in the early hours of the morning, she had a huge headache and a very sore eye, but when the distant rumble of thunder reached her ears, Orian giggled with gleeful anticipation and forgot all about her aching face. She walked farther into the garden and settled down next to a rosebush, tucking her legs underneath her and holding Woofer in her lap. The wind picked up slowly, at first only causing the leaves to dance on the trees in pretty waves. Soon, however, some of the plants were being ripped from the ground and those more sturdily anchored were bending over so far that they almost snapped in half. With the wind came a keening that seemed to rise from far below her. It was like nothing she had ever heard before.
Sure that she was going to be knocked over, she grabbed the nearest plant to anchor herself to the ground. Pain shot through her hand and she quickly let go of the rosebush. The wind did knock her down then, but she didn't really care. She was staring at her right hand with a mixture of childlike awe and fear. The fingers and the outer edges of her palm were covered in small scrapes that were barely bleeding. But in the center of her hand, blood was rushing from a tiny hole quickly enough to soak the sleeve of her shirt in just a few seconds. It was fascinating, and at the same time, very scary. Orian had never seen this much blood before, and it frightened her.
She opened her mouth to scream, but for some reason, no sound came out, or if it did, she couldn't hear it. Disgruntled, she tried again, and this time she screamed loud enough to make her throat sore, but the sound was ripped from her mouth before it could reach her ears. The wind, now strong enough to make her hut and the other homes around it shake and creak, was roaring loud enough to block out any other noise. Wind had always sounded sad to her, like it had lost its stuffed animal and was looking for it, but this one sounded happy too. Maybe it was happy because it had seen Woofer and wanted to take him! Well, Woofer was hers, and he wasn't going anywhere.
She hugged the toy wolf to her chest in a vice grip, determined that the wind wouldn't take him away. Thunder seemed to boom not above, but around her, which was odd because the shiny things were hitting the sky, not the ground. But she didn't let it bother her for long, because it was still thunder, and it was still loud enough to make her smile. She had never heard it make such an earsplitting noise before, and when combined with the howling wind, it was near deafening.
For some reason, she did not feel threatened by the storm. Normally, even though she liked the shiny things and the loud noises, she always felt somewhat afraid that maybe the shiny things weren't very nice and they were hurting the sky. Now, however, she felt like she was being cradled, protected maybe, and the shiny things were caressing the world, not hitting it.
After a time, the thunder didn't seem so menacing, and the wind didn't seem to want to take Woofer anymore. When she looked down at her hand, she could see the scratches and the hole where the thorn had punctured her skin, but most of the blood was gone. The wind must have blown it away. Even the pain in her head and hand seemed to dwindle into a dull, tolerable throb. But it still hurt, and Orian then did what children who are hurt always do. Slowly, her eyelids started to droop and her chest rose and fell in a leisurely, quiet rhythm, and she entered a world of soft, fuzzy dreams. As the witchstorm raged around her and cleansed the people and the land, Orian lay in the small garden, asleep and comforted.
Review Responses:
KLMeri: I really wanted to have her join Daemonar too, but I figured since in the book she didn't, I'd better keep it that way. It would have been soooo much fun, though!
kesterel2106: Thanks so much! You're probably right, I won't make her Marian's sister. It would be kind of weird and it would screw up my story, lol.
Thanks for reviewing!