Calm in the Storm (Khida)

[Colt]

Summer 61st Thunder rolled overhead, but its attempt to terrify the plains was lost in the pouring rain. Sheets of black beat the ground endlessly, drenching anything and everything they toughed. Anything that breathed had taken shelter beneath whatever they could find to escape the sky’s assault, unwilling to take the violent pounding. The hunter woke as his shelter shifted. Tucked away in the corner of his cave, he was safe from the rain and thought of nothing but of how damp it would be in the morning. His makeshift home was shielded by a small bulge in the wall, so whatever stray mist was made by the fractured water had no hope of reaching him. The nest in which he was embedded was little more than a collection of cloth piled into a small mountain and burrowed into. Some was soft, some was tough but all was warm. Akaidras stood a few paces away, still and silent. He might have or might not have been sleeping, but the man gave little care. His horse could take care of himself. The man shuddered back into place, then closed his eyes to drift back to sleep. He was disturbed by a bright flash of white as lightning struck the outer rim of the crater, and a heartbeat later the air was shaken by a roll of thunder that sounded like a cliff shattering in two. Akaidras shied away with a startled neigh, but nothing else followed the sudden destruction of the peace. After a few moments, the horse pranced closer to his rider nervously, eyeing the entrance to the cave with distrust. After much circling and deliberation, the horse knelt, then lay his great body down to encircle the pile of cloth. Just as disconcerted as his horse, the man shifted closer to the horse’s stomach, watching the roaring rain with wide eyes.

[Khida]

She had expected this to be a bad storm, of strong winds and torrential rain, but the intensity which it realized still unsettled her. Khida had been through storms on the grasslands before; she didn't have to like them. She didn't like this one in the least. The falcon hadn't trusted the shelter of the trees for weathering this storm, prone as they could be to tossing about and even snapping limbs in the wind. Not to mention the poor protection their foliage provided against the downpour. Instead, she had taken refuge under a small overhang on the inside of the crater wall, where the rock projections blunted the force of the wind and the overhang shunted aside much of the rain. Much. Not all. Khida was still out, where lightning spattered across the sky and winds at times blew the rain sideways to pelt her feathers. It was altogether unpleasant to be out in. She had an alternative, one she had considered during other storms but not taken, less confident of how the accustomed resident would react to her intrusion. But tonight? This storm was altogether awful. Tonight, she decided, he could just deal. The falcon pushed off from her perch, leaping out into the full force of the rain -- though not, thankfully, into the full brunt of the wind, due to baffling effects from the wall. Her waterlogged feathers made flight less graceful than she liked, even to the point of hazardous if she'd tried to really fly -- if she'd been foolish enough to dare the rage of the storm, out in the crater's heart or above its sheltering walls. She had neither need for nor intention of trying. All she needed to do was glide down a few moments, roughly mirroring the curve of the wall, until she could swoop in through the mouth of the cave. Proper shelter, this was. Landing on the rough floor of the cavern, the falcon glowered over at the man in his corner as another bolt of lightning flashed actinic illumination. She fluffed out her feathers and half-mantled her wings, a momentary hiss daring him to protest her intrusion into what was normally his private space. As miserable as the outside was, on this night, she would absolutely contest his claim.

[Colt]

He tried to close his eyes and sleep, but the flashes of white demanded that they remain glued to the entrance of the cave. He watched, flinching as another flash hit, then another. And then a third, illuminating a silhouette. He blinked as the dark figure emerged from the torrential downpour, feathers wide to land on the stony floor. Another flash showed her half-open wings. Her gaze was hard and her mouth was agape in open challenge. He found his own mouth dropping slightly in disbelief. Had she been outside in that storm? She glittered with water, feathers ruffled and stuck together at odd angles from wind and rain. Even now, though she was out of the falling water the mist it threw into the air enshrouded her. No, that would not do. He shrugged out of his nest, nose flaring as the cold hit his skin. He kept on all fours and moved slowly, not wanting to create conflict with the she-falcon. He moved to the side and into the spray next to her, again tensing at the chill but managing to ignore it. He inched behind her and stood slightly to shield her from as much as he could, then carefully walked back into the cave in an attempt to herd her towards the much drier interior where Akaidras still lay.

[Khida]

She couldn't see much in the gloom, cavern darkness compounded by the shrouding storm. Flickers of lightning showed her the man rising, approaching on his hands and knees, but failed to let her catch his expression or attitude. He moved slowly, intentions obscure to the falcon; she scuttled away from him, wings still held out, dripping water all the while. She hated being on the ground, slow and vulnerable, but didn't dare take flight in the confined darkness of the cave. After a few moments, Khida noticed that moving away from the man and into the cavern were one and the same -- she wasn't even having to work for the second, as she had half-expected. She paused and considered the man, silhouetted against the vaguely lighter cavern mouth, his form momentarily backlit by another vivid flash. Maybe he didn't mind, then? She took his actions as such, the lack of shouts and flailing arms, and chirped quietly at him. Then she continued farther back into the cavern, feeling marginally better at being earthbound in the confined space. The falcon knew the horse was also in the back, having seen the profile of his great bulk; his extended legs, however, she found by the expedient of colliding with them, voicing a surprised squawk and hopping back from the obstacle. Khida proceeded to grumble her annoyance and work her way around the horse's hooves, picking her way over to one side of the cave, away from the entrance and the mist which splattered in through it. With the wall a not-entirely-reassuring presence just behind her, the peregrine shook herself out as best she could, then settled in to try and preen the water from her feathers -- but before she started, she looked up once more, checking on what the man was about.

[Colt]

It seemed to work. She moved steadily away from him, and after a few moments realized what he was doing. She chirped, almost questioningly, and he chirped gently back.

Deciding that he was not trying to attack her, the falcon moved deeper into the cave. He watched her go with a tilted head, blinking every once in awhile when lightning flashed and reflected off of her soggy body.

No, that would not do, either.

He made his way to the cave wall where his supplies were in a haphazard pile. It took a few moments of scrounging to pull out suitable deadfall from the pile of brush had collected from the crater, and then more scrounging to locate his spark-tools. They had remained dry, thankfully, and he dragged them over to Akaidras’ resting place in time to hear a surprised call from the falcon.

He situated the wood a yard or so away from the Strider. It took a few tries, but he managed to summon a spark and light the tiniest twigs on the branches. He blew gently, coaxing the smoldering embers into a solid flame, and soon enough a small fire was crackling merrily.

He slipped over to his nest and took a small amount of cloth from it. The scraps were still warm from his body heat, and he carefully arranged them a few strides away from the fire, close enough to feel heat but not close enough to burn.

He returned his attention to the falcon, who had taken residence in a small spot by the wall. The hunter stepped away from the smaller nest and uttered a call, much softer than the usual one.

Ke-ke-ke-ke-ke, he chirped, looking awkwardly at his feet.

[Khida]

He seemed busy with his things, the myriad parts and pieces which a human needed to get by in the wilderness -- even he. Khida paused to watch him, so much as the flickers of light allowed her to, and wondered for a moment what had stranded him out here. All other humans she had met lived in the city, with buildings and tools and marketplaces; and then there was this one, braver or more foolish than she, living alone in a wilderness where the Kelvic wouldn't even take on human shape without dire need. After a few moments, she put those musings from her thoughts and turned her attention to preening. Satisfied that the man was busy with his own concerns, she focused single-mindedly on that task, working through her wingfeathers one by one. It didn't help much, given how much rain had been pouring down outside, but a little was better than not at all. The falcon's concentration was disrupted when she realized the lighting had changed; no longer was she relying on feel, muscle memory, and the occasional flash of lightning. Instead, a warmer light began to suffuse the cavern, faint in absolute terms but profound compared to the darkness outside. Khida lifted her head and blinked over at the man, seeing him arrange a pile of cloth beside the fledgling fire. Now what was he about? He stepped away from the scraps of fabric, staring down at his feet, looking altogether awkward and uncertain. It seemed to be directed towards Khida, from the way he faced her; the low and quiet chirping, a variant of the call he used when desiring her presence. But she was already here. Did he want her over there? The falcon tilted her head and considered this for a moment, eyes glinting in the firelight. Her presence was clearly accepted in his roost; she was no longer worried about her welcome. The fire even provided enough illumination that she thought she could fly, inasmuch as anything done within this confined space could be called 'flight'; but despite the impracticality, the possibility made a significant difference to her mind. Feeling more confident, she bobbed pensively, then began to pick her way across the rough floor of the cavern. Khida stretched up to peer at the fire from a remove, then the makeshift 'nest' of cloth pieces nearer to her, reaching out to hook one with a talon and pull it free. If this was supposed to be her nest, she wanted to inspect it first.

[Colt]

There existed in all creatures a dichotomy of this and that; good and bad, wanted and unwanted, safe and unsafe, and all things in the world fell into one or the other. Or perhaps they fell in the third category of not at all important, but the very nature of those things meant that they slipped beneath notice until they happened to fall suddenly into one of the first two slots.

The majority of creatures smelled fire and went on edge; when they saw fire, they fled. The hunter himself was not one of those creatures; he knew fire to be hungry and painful to the touch, but also to be an ally if treated properly. He knew and feared what fire could become, in way of great bellowing infernos when let loose upon the dry grassland, but he did not fear fire inherently––not when it was small and controlled and when his cave was so cold.

Akaidras, too, was one of those creatures that respected fire for what it could be. He always kept a careful eye upon the hunter’s little flames, but was wise enough to know what was dangerous and what was not. While the horse looked up at the first flicker, he relaxed when it became clear that the hunter had it under control.

And the falcon, too, was one of those that did not fear the flames.

Birds, he supposed, were the sorts of creatures that were not threatened in the same way that four-legged beasts were. A bird could fly above the heat and find somewhere safe, but the falcon did not even spare the fire more than a passing glance as she shuffled closer, much less haphazard after a stretch of preening.

She seemed to be ultimately more concerned with the pile of cloth than the fire itself, and pulled at the material with discerning intelligence that surpassed any bird he had ever seen. Unusual? Perhaps, but no more so than his horse’s calm tolerance, or his own ability to make the stuff in the first place.

She was entirely beyond other falcons of her breed, but it did not make him question––if anything, it made him proud that she had chosen this cave to take shelter in, and chosen him to attach to.

The huntress examined what he had offered her, and he left her to it. Quietly backing away, the moved over to his horse and draped himself over the animal’s side, keen to take advantage of the heat. Akaidras snorted and nosed the hunter’s foot, but did not fuss about it.

The hunter settled in, then turned to see what the falcon thought of her gift.