Tomate

Scenic: Whisperwinds (Tomate, #38088968)

Even if she missed the carefree breeze that used to always swirl and rush around her old home, this one was new, singing promises of warmth and sunshine and past aeons. It was the same wind that beckoned her to fly higher, to take to the sky and see the world again.

For ages she swept up, higher and higher until she was above the clouds, lazily swooping across the skyscape towards her next destination. She hears paper flutter against her scales as she strains against gravity and dips down to speed across Sornieth, but knows that the two scrolls are tightly bound to her sash. Out of a three years’ habit, she feels the light package tucked deep into her vest. All three of these are bound for the Starwood Strand, and she decides to take the southern route- across the Sea of a Thousand Currents, past her old home, and to the Starfall Isles at last.

She needs neither compass nor map as she zips across the clouds, occasionally dipping below them to survey the ground far below. Despite it being close to midnight, the Hewn City is bedecked in as many lanterns as the sky has stars. Softly flickering lanterns dot the paths and roads of the city like lifeblood, providing both direction to her and illuminating the ground in a beautiful glow. Spellbound, she races across the night sky, watching as the lanternlight zips by and blurs into others, creating trails that move as fast as she does. She laughs, the sound carried by the wind to distant lands.

The sun only begins to rise once she nears the Windswept Plateau- her old home. She catches glimpses of colourful banners flapping in a gentle breeze. With a joy in her heart she realises the Mistral Jamboree starts today!- chiming bells and spinning pinwheels, soaring kites. Songs played on flutes and laughter, all picked up by zephyrs and delivered to the rest of Sornieth like messengers of joy. Curiosity gets the better of her and she yet again dips low enough to smell the familiar scent of roasting fish, sweet flowers and pickled bamboo. Of an old home, neither lost nor forgotten, of a place just as valuable to her as her new one. She stalls for a moment, taking in the sights, and some dragons look up and wave at her- old friends, mail clients, even strangers. It snaps her out of her reverie, and she waves back before peeling off across the steppes. She makes a promise to herself, whispered so quietly not even the wind has a chance to pick it up and pull it away from her. She promises that she’ll return for the festival, but first- the sky is calling, and she has a parcel- well, three- to deliver.

Story: A Messenger’s Oath

Plague clans always made her nervous. She supposed it was since nature and plague never got along even from ancient times, but sometimes she wondered if it was from something else.

She’d been in the coldest areas of the Frostwarden’s Icefield and braved countless lightning storms of the Shifting Expanse: but she had to say, she was most uncomfortable standing in front of the plague clan’s entrance as she judged the uncommonly heavy package in her arms.

Outwardly, it looked the same as any other: bound tightly, marked with an address and the seal of the courier. She’d stamped it onto the package herself when she accepted it two days ago, but now, she eyed it with suspicion. Something felt wrong about it. Nothing rattled inside. It felt… squishy. Like a soft toy that hatchlings were given as birthday gifts, but heavier. And more ominous, she supposed.

She’d handed it over to the stone-faced guardian that arrived a few moments later, a little too eager to mark it as having been delivered on her list she kept on her at all times working as a courier. She’d been a little too eager to return home to her clan and enjoy the lighthearted banter between the bickering dragons as was customary after five years together.

She’d been a little too eager to get rid of the memory, but fate had other plans. Not when another package, addressed to the same clan, made its way onto her list two weeks later. She hesitated when she was given the task, wondering if she should decline- but the Messenger’s Oath she’d signed those so many years ago was void. She had no ability to refuse a job without proper suspicion: and there was none, just uneasiness. And it also prohibited the opening of packages by couriers, so really, she couldn’t do anything. She stamped her seal onto the package with a pit in her stomach and yet another sense of uneasiness.

When she made the trip from the Sunbeam Ruins to the Scarred Wasteland, she didn’t let herself think about what could be in the packages. Couldn’t let paranoia and suspicion get the better of her as a courier, potentially sabotaging her job. Rendering her unable to ever traverse the skies she loved so much, unable to feel the howling winds as a second skin high above the clouds. She landed at the front of the familiar clan with a dull thud and a blank mind, and greeted the guardian already waiting there with a polite yet impersonal greeting.

She struggles to let any expression of disgust mar her face, any hesitation show in her trembling hands. She knows it, she knows it, something wrong is in them, something that tells her light and nature and wind self to back away and take to the skies. But she remains fixed, for a single misstep might lead to a report to the Messenger’s Committee and her being stripped of her courier title.

Unfortunately for her, a single misstep is what she makes when she blurts out, “What’s inside these packages? I-I mean… they… they’re not...”

The guardian fixes her with a glare that neither shows anger nor empathy. Stone cold. Calculating. You already know all you need to know, it seemed to say.

She chokes, stumbles away and in a heartbeat, spreads her wings and takes for the skies. She flies straight home, neither seeming to think nor breathe. She beelines for the river, where she washes her hands until she can neither smell the slight tang of decay emanating from those packages, nor recall the feelings of the slightly squishy packages. She supposed she’d been right: there was something terrible inside them, but she was done with prying. The knowledge of what was inside, what was being done, where they were sourced- it was too great a cost to put her job and her life at stake.

She decides, sullenly and full of regret, that she must honor the Messenger’s Oath.


Thankyou to the wonderful Dragonairia