Kindred Folk - Velvet Wings

[FennWenn]

Trees sulked under the weight of the wind, withered needles and curls of whitening bark flaking off to plaster the ground underfoot.

Fighting against the gales, arms braced headlong against the brunt of the wicked weather, was a figure most small and pale. His feet sank into sticky lemon-colored clay. He had to keep moving; his anxiousness generated a frost at his extremities, his toes white with an icy sheen. He had to keep moving if he didn’t want to freeze to the riverbank. The nearby waters, like his cloak and loose hair, raged against the onslaught of winds. Lightning filled the distant sky. It was midday, but it was dark. It was midday, but it was getting darker.

The shrieking wilds were most unwelcome today. There was a feeling whirling about in the fae’s ribcage. One of change, one of destruction. He assumed it was simply the makings on an oncoming tornado.

Thaynes, he hoped that was all it was.

Against the backdrop of the lashing trees with their deranged and rippling mosses, amid the grey of young light and charged air, Fenn struggled against two itches plaguing his physical form.

His arms were flexible enough to feel his upper back. He knew what was back there; knew but did not know. There was a wrong there. Two lumps, soft and painful underneath the surface, a grinding-up-against his shoulder blades. They had showed up slowly over the last two weeks. It was an uncomfortable feeling, that itching-beneath-the-surface. As if... almost, there was something under there, something moving and quivering and wanting to slide its way out. The fae withdrew his hand and shuddered yet again as he bolstered himself against the weather. This had been going on too long. What was it? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know. He didn’t really want to know. Maybe he needed a physician or a healer; Nevin was an alchemist. Was that close enough to a physician? Maybe the little fae needed to pop in for a visit…

But he was supposed to be visiting Banri now. The alchemist was far, far away. Back in Corone, back on another continent. Not in Raiaera. He didn’t trust many others to be so helpful. Perhaps, the little fae thought as he braced himself against a fir, it’d be best to simply quash his urge to scratch the wrongness; like how one deal with mosquito bites, simply ignoring the itching until it faded away of its own accord.

There was something else that he wanted to scratch too. A mind-itch, for lack of better words. An urge to crawl into a dark, dry space.

That, too, he was uneasy about scratching.

But he supposed it was going to be scratched anyway. Some shelter was sorely needed; soon. Soon. Before the wind picked him off and carried him away...