Suicide Archery at Sunset [Open]

[Sira]

Timestamp: 7th Day of Summer, 510 AV

Sira sat on a ledge overlooking thunder bay with nothing more than her Katinu protecting her from the chill wind. It was nearing sunset and most of the riders were on their way back to Wind Reach. Sira was alone, so far as she knew. Her bow and 3 arrows lay beside her, though she had no intention of using the arrows today. It would be a waste if she lost them. Sira stood, swaying slightly as the wind rocked her from side to side. The ledge was very narrow, so narrow that even most Endal would think twice about landing on it. But Sira was no normal Endal. She had no such fears of falling while trying to dismount. Sira removed her cloak, putting the arrows on top so it wouldn't blow away, then threw the bow off the cliff. She waited a few seconds then dove after it, shifting and snatching it out of the air. She began to climb, flying as high as she could, then dove. After a second or two she flared her wings, throwing the bow in front of her and shifting to human form, snatching for the bow as she started to free fall. She missed the first several times she tried this, but caught it on the fifth. She drew back the string as if to fire and let go, then shifted back, trying to snatch the bow in her beak but missing. Even if she had caught it she wouldn't have been satisfied. It took her far to long to catch the bow and fire, she would have hit the ground had she been closer. Sira went on like this for some time, falling, trying to catch, flying back up high and doing it all over again. She was glad she didn't try to use arrows. At best she would have lost them all, at worst she would have hurt herself. From a distance she was likely a strange sight indeed. A massive bird popping in and out of view and going up and down erratically. Someone might have thought her to be in distress had there anyone around to see her. After about a half hour of this practice the sun had nearly set. Sira glided back down to her ledge, shifting as she landed and stopped her momentum with outpressed hands against the cliff wall. Shivering in the cool breeze she grabed up her katinu and threw it on, then sat down, her legs dangling over the edge of the ridge to watch the sun as it finished its descent. It was times like thhose Sira liked best, when nobody could make fun of her for being different. When she could appreciate the beauty of her mountain home without having to worry about her responsibilities. Too bad she always had to spend these times alone, she thought as she let out a long sigh.

[Cyrill]

Cyrill ran her hand down the length of her bow thoughtfully, trying to remember how to properly aim at her target. It has been so long since she’s had a bow in her hand – too long. Archery has never been one of her passions, but it has interested her brother immensely and they had spent whole days practicing together. Beck always won, of course, but Cyrill hadn’t minded. She had her glassblowing and he had his archery. Only now, Beck wasn’t here to goad her into firing straight into the target and she felt just a little lost.

Cyrill raised the bow experimentally in her hand, drew back the string, and squinted up into the sky. Just as she was about to let loose her first arrow in four years, something caught her eye. She blinked, lowering the bow. Were those feathers? There was something else, too. A flash of something that looked human for a second. She took a few steps closer to the ledge and just then, a wind eagle shot up into the sky. Cyrill’s lips parted in surprise and she took an involuntary step back.

Her brow furrowed as the eagle disappeared down below. She hadn’t seen a wind eagle move this erratically through the sky unless it was hunting or training with a rider. And she couldn’t spot any prey in the sky or a rider on the eagle’s back. Except… A bow flew through the air and Cyrill watched in surprised as the eagle dived after it.

Cyrill cleared her throat politely and immediately felt foolish. It wasn’t as if the eagle would be able to hear her from this distance. So, she raised her voice a few octaves and called out, “Is everything alright?”

[Sira]

Sira hadn't noticed Cyrill on the ledge as she shot by, intent as she was on her training. She had already landed on the ridge and was in the process of putting her katinu back on when she caught the last end of Cyrill's words. She cursed silently to herself, having been sure nobody would be out here at this time of day, but apparently she had been wrong. For a moment she considered not answering and just flying away, but something inside her made her answer. Perhaps it was loneliness; perhaps it was curiosity as to what the person was doing out there. Either way, she called up to Cyrill from her ledge below. "Down here! Hang on, I'll come up to you."

She wrapped her bow and arrows in her clothes then jumped off the cliff, shifting and catching them in her talons, then flew up to the ridge Cyrill was standing on. She circled once to make sure it was just the two of them, then landed and shifted in one smooth movement, dropping her bundle on the ground in front of her. "Sorry, I didn't know anyone was out here," she said as she knelt to pick up her clothes, pulling on the katinu and wrapping it tightly around her. She wasn't sure what to say to this person, she never was. Sira had always been terrible with introductions although most people already knew who she was, for better or worse. Hopefully this person was one of the better ones. Sira turned around after pulling on her clothes, slinging her bow across her back and holding the three arrows in her hand.

"Hi, I'm Sira, although you might already know that." She sighed a bit. She had seen this lady before, though she couldn't place her. She obviously wasn't a hunter, though she carried a bow. Most likely Sira had seen her at the festival the other day and just couldn't remember. "I was just practicing.. something. Nothing to worry about." She eyed the bow in the woman's hand curiously, "So what are you doing out here? We're kind of far from Wind Reach, and you're not a rider that I know of."

[Cyrill]

Realization finally dawned on her. So, this was the wind eagle kelvic. She had heard about the woman, of course. She was a frequent subject of gossip in the workshop. Cyrill rarely paid attention to what was said, but she had caught a few strands of conversation. She must have even seen Sira a few times, but never in eagle form.

“Not a rider, no,” Cyrill said, shaking her head. “I’m Cyrill – an artisan, a glassblower, actually. I just wanted…to practice a little archery, I guess. I’ve been spending entirely too much time indoors.”

The truth was, Cyrill didn’t exactly know why she’d made it out here. She had no place here. These wide open spaces were too devoid of rules for her to be comfortable in them. Everything was up to the wind. She had gone here with Beck so many times before, stealing away in the early morning to have a childish archery competition. But, she wasn’t here because she missed her brother. She kept telling herself that there was no way that could be the reason.

“I’ve never seen anyone practice something like that. What were you trying to accomplish?” she asked, curious about this strange training routine.

[Sira]

Of course, that’s where I've seen her. She probably had something on display at the gallery. Sira was quiet for a moment. She didn't have a name for her technique yet, and she was kind of embarrassed about it because she didn't know if it would even be possible. "Well.. I was trying a new technique with my bow. I don't know if I'll be able to pull it off though, its very tiring." Sira could feel the fatigue coming on. She wasn't supposed to shift that often at once, and if she couldn't overcome that obstacle then there really was no point in pursuing it further.

She turned away from Cyrill, continuing her explanation, her eyes drifting skyward. "See.. the problem is, the Endal and their eagles work as a team. The eagle flies them around, do the heavy lifting, and the rider usually takes the kill. I can do one or the other. As an eagle, I can snatch smaller kills right out of the water, but I'm not very effective when we're trying to catch bigger game. If I want to use my bow I have to land, shift, fire, then shift again to fly away. Its exhausting too, so I really can only do one or the other."

"But if I could do both, all in one fluid motion. Shift, fire, and shift again without ever landing, I could be just as effective as the other Endal. Maybe more..." Sira took a deep breath, shivering at the possibilities. "If I could do that, then they would have to respect me. They couldn't make fun of me anymore for not being able to keep up. Maybe we could even become friends.... I don't know." Realizing that she'd been rambling, Sira turned back to the woman next to her. "Anyway.. that's what I was doing."

[Cyrill]

Cyrill listened intently to the woman’s explanation, amazed at how much thought went into a deceptively simple training exercise. Of course, she had seen the Endal hunt, but it has always seemed effortless to her. The eagle and the rider functioned so fluidly together, she had never stopped to think how one could work without the other.

“It’s like working with glass,” she murmured, partly to herself and partly to Sira. “There are glass pieces that are just too complicated to work on alone, so two glassblowers will work together. Even the Masters ask for assistance sometimes.”

She didn’t know why exactly she was saying this, but it was always easier for Cyrill to see life in terms of what she knew best, and that was glass.

[Sira]

Sira nodded, a solemn look on her face. "I don't know much about glass I do know one thing, it breaks. That's what I'm like, a broken peice of glass. But if I could make myself whole I could be just a beautiful as the next piece of work." Sira chuckled and shook her head. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be a downer. I just get depressed sometimes. I wish I could be normal like everybody else, but at the same time I know I am something special and I don't want to lose that. My mother used to say if I had been born a dog or cat, I would have been like any other kelvic, but I was born an eagle. She used to say there had to be a reason for it."

"I don't know, maybe she was just doing what mothers do. But it made me feel better." Sira sighed then changed the subject. "So, you were up here practicing archery? Nothing to shoot at here, unless you were planning on shooting me." She laughs then unslings her bow, "Need a partner?"

[Cyrill]

“Normalcy is overrated,” Cyrill commented with a shake of her head. “Besides, I can’t think of a more exciting ability than being able to fly,” she added a little wistfully.

Cyrill chuckled along with Sira. “Sure, a partner is always welcome. My brother and I used to come here when we were younger. He always managed to find targets for us, but I’m usually at a loss when finding something to shoot at.”

As she spoke, she could almost picture Beck standing at the very edge of the cliff, his shoulders shaking as he laughed. He would turn around to smile at her with his mischievous, boyish grin as he drew the string of his bow experimentally. She tried to picture his face as an adult, but all she could see was that childish grin. As quickly as it had come, the memory disappeared, and Cyrill was left looking pensively at the edge of the ridge.

Her gaze dropped to her bow as she weighed it in her hand, just a tad unsure of how good she would be after not shooting for so long.

“So, since shooting at you is out of the question – you got any other ideas?” she asked with a grin, dispelling the melancholy mood that had swept over her.

[Sira]

"There is nothing like it in the world," Sira admitted to the comment about flying. Flying was by far her favorite thing to do, whether she was hunting or lazily riding the air currents at sunrise. Up in the sky was the one place she felt like she truly belonged, the one place where she felt at home. But she always had to come back down, and that always meant dealing with life again.

Sira wondered what Cyrill meant when she said she and her brother used to come there. Why didn't they do it anymore? Was he dead, or did something else happened between them? But it was not her place to ask these questions, not yet anyway. She barely knew this woman and didn't want to delve into her personal life without permission. So she ignored the subject for the time, turning around slowly and looking at their surroundings.

"Well, we can't just shoot off into the blue, now can we? That's too easy, and isn't really what you'd call practice. Anyone can shoot the sky." Sira glanced over at a few boulders, but shook her head. Arrows would just bounce off of those. She walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down to see if there was anything else they might use as a target when an idea came to mind. Why she didn't think earlier she didn't know, but it was a perfect idea. She spun around, a wide grin on her face and a twinkle in her eyes. "How would you like to shoot at a real target."

Sira took a few steps closer to Cyrill. "We could fly together, you and me." Her voice was almost a whisper of excitement. She had let people ride her before, but it was always business and never in a hunt, just to get them from point A to point B. "You could play the part of Endal, and I your trusted eagle. It wouldn't be real, of course. I don't even know if I could bond with a rider, but it'd be such fun!" Sira was practically giddy, so excited she was at the mere notion of bearing somebody into a hunt. "We could go after one of the smaller sea lions, or a young walrus or something. Nothing to big or challenging, just a small kill. What do you say?"

[Cyrill]

Cyrill’s eyes grew huge and for a few seconds, she just stared at the other woman. To fly? Was she really getting an opportunity to fly? Cyrill had often watched the Endal soar through the sky with their eagles, always feeling just a tiny prick of envy. She knew it was wrong; knew also that she had her own gift and that it was best to be content with it. But now, her gaze wandering over the ridge, the excitement that bubbled up inside her felt almost foreign. She prided herself on being calm and rational, always keeping her temper under control. Now, she felt like a little girl again.

She couldn’t help it as her countenance split into a wide grin and she replied, “That-that would be wonderful. I’ve never flown before though, so I might very well off.”

“But, that doesn’t really matter,” she added, waving away her own concern. “Maybe I managed to inherit some of my mother’s skill as a rider.”

Cyrill found that she couldn’t stop smiling, no matter how hard she tried, as she waited Sira to transform.