Letter Bee - The Symphony of Storm

The rumble started long before she set eyes on Magpyr.

A storm had been brewing within her from the moment she’d poked her nose out of her egg, all long, gangly limbs and oversized wings. It waxed and waned but never fully broke, caged by Jack’s expectations and her own need to please them. Keshet had bitten it back, swallowed the bitter medicine, and tried to ignore the lightning that rippled under her skin, the blizzard freezing in her lungs, the dust devils held fast beneath her hooves, the hurricane that howled in her heart.

She’d satisfied herself with minor mischief, never demanding too much, never daring to push Jack with the determination they’d needed. Too soft, too accommodating, too proud to admit she’d been handling this wrong.

Even now, she’d made concessions, a plan that unfolded behind her eyes, endless permutations, most of which involved leaving as soon as she started to get what she wanted. Too dangerous, too erratic, too much, Jack insisted, as if not realizing what they were speaking to, how terrible and powerful she could be, if she weren’t holding herself back.

Keshet had sat and listened, proposed ideas of her own, teased lightly, and agreed to all of Jack’s terms in the end.

She had no intention of following them. She’d known that from the start. If Jack hadn’t, it was because they’d chosen to look away, to believe whatever new lie they’d come up with about how they were helpless to the turn of time, the whims of fate, at the mercy of whatever forces they pretended controlled the universe.

The moment she’d flown away from Threvilla, the storm had started to swell inside her, baring jagged ice-sharp teeth, a final warning to turn back, a sign saying Welcome home.

She dipped into the space between worlds and came out above a mountain range, into thick clouds of smoke.

The rumble was no longer inside her. It vibrated through her, into the mountains, reaching out, calling to her chosen mate. Magpyr wouldn’t need use of their deafened ears to hear her, to feel her, asking for a chance to show them that she was worthy and demanding, equally, that they prove their worth.

Thunder rolled overhead as the earth trembled. The gnarled craggy peaks of the mountains shook, cascades of snow rolling in small avalanches.

In the distance, a streak of red took to the sky, and from this distance, Keshet could feel Magpyr’s eyes on her. She swooped low over the mountains, beneath the roiling smoke as the earthquake reached its crescendo.

An explosion wracked her ears and rattled her eyes. A thin whine drowned out every other sound, and Keshet turned her head in time to see rocks flying through the air, a mountaintop missing and revealing the boiling magma beneath. She ducked and wove around the falling debris, turning her attention back to Magpyr a second before they collided into her.

In a tangle of limbs and teeth, they plummeted down, only pulling apart moments before impact and soaring farther from the erupting volcano.

Keshet couldn’t hear the thunder boom, but she saw the flash of a lightning strike and felt it shake through her bones, the cold of the storm colliding with the heat from the volcano, brewing a nasty tempest in a matter of moments.

Just free of the mountain range was a cliff, and at the bottom was a lake. Keshet lunged towards Magpyr, digging her teeth into their ruff of fur and twisting with the full weight of her body to knock them off balance. Magpyr pushed her away before they could hit the water. The ripples rolled into tall, terrible waves, which froze in a flash, sharp-edged and as dangerous as either of them.

Flames licked at the edges of Magpyr’s mouth, and Keshet fell just before the fire roared overhead, singeing the edges of her wings as ice formed under her hooves, giving her a foothold to push from as she launched back into the sky, barreling full-force towards Magpyr. A sharp wind rushed with her, pushing Magpyr back before she slammed bodily into them, static dancing through their velvet scales which rose in response, standing on end, and Keshet realized what was coming almost a moment too late.

The deafening thunder roared between them as she pushed Magpyr away, narrowly out of the bolt of lightning that appeared and disappeared in the space of a heartbeat.

Keshet bared her teeth, knowing that kindness, mercy, would not be rewarded here. Magpyr’s slitted pupils trained on her face, chest heaving for air before they launched forward, twice as fierce as Keshet, their clawed feet raking along her more delicate and unwieldy legs. One gripped her firmly, pulling her closer as Magpyr’s teeth ripped through the air inches from her face.

Keshet brought her other leg up, shoving the hoof against their body. Their wings beat against each other: inelegant, brutal, perfect.

They landed on a thick layer of ice that flash-froze over the lake beneath them. Magpyr hit harder than she did, but Keshet skidded into the waves that had frozen earlier, shallow cuts open along her scales and a gash torn in her side.

Still, she stood, dyeing the ice red. Wind whipped around her as she scrambled to her hooves. Keshet flared her wings as rain began to fall on them both, made dirty and brown by the ash in the clouds.

Distantly, Keshet realized that she could hear again: another rumble of thunder, ice cracking between where she stood and Magpyr lay, Magpyr’s heaving, bruised breaths as they slowly braced themself on their wings and stood to face her. Their body shook with the finest tremor. Satisfaction boiled in her blood, knowing that regardless of anything else, she had pushed them to their limit, had met them and matched them evenly, indisputably.

The rumble Keshet had harbored her entire life escaped her then, thundering through her chest, subvocal, meant to be felt rather than heard. Another call, left for Magpyr to answer.