Neverwinter Forest spitfire

Lucy’s was a flighty spirit, and Cypress found himself holding his breath, sulphureous eyes locked with bright intensity on her long runner’s legs and slim, streamlined physique; he feared that his sharp command, despite being hastily covered over with an entreating “please,” would drive her from his side. A strange combination of greed and triumph squeezed his young heart as she submitted to his will, and he stood a little taller. The wild fur that covered his nape and shoulders billowed like a cape as he turned to lead her further into the darkness of the forest. Despite knowing the wood as intimately as he did, Cypress was forced to admit a growing boredom with seeing the same surroundings time after time; he harbored an awakening itch to explore and discover as his father and mother had. “I don’t have a favorite place,” was on the tip of his tongue, but he stowed the comment, feeling that it would detract from his credence as a storyteller.

He thought for a moment, then cast the girl a wicked, mischievous grin. Without preamble, “I’ll choose the first location,” he bargained, “but then you have to take the lead. We can take turns if you want.” It seemed a good game that would combine fact with fiction, reality with fantasy, and memory with suppositions about what might take place. His meandering path led them back towards the birthing den, but veered just northwest of it — he steered the girl along the path he and Rannoch had taken the day they’d confronted the butterflies. “It was a warm summer morning,” he began, his tone colloquial and uncontrived, “and the great king Scimitar had left the den before dawn, leaving his beautiful queen and a wandering princess in the capable paws of two strong warriors. They patrolled with vigilant… — ” he paused, catching his tongue between his incisors as he thought, “ — well, they patrolled with vigilance. One warrior was heavy and strong, and his fur glowed like sunlight, only silver instead of yellow. He was obviously the king’s son; they looked so much alike, and their eyes were the same shade of turquoise. The other warrior…was different.”

It had never settled well with the young raven that he was so strikingly different from his agouti family, and perhaps Lucy, a little blackbird born to a family of doves, would understand this feeling of otherness better than anyone. “The second warrior was leaner and quicker, and definitely just as fearsome,” he said, “with black fur and yellow eyes. The two of them would willingly give their lives to protect the queen and the princess in Scimitar’s absence. When they suddenly heard the sound of wings from above, they became suspicious right away — and the sound of the wings, that whirring sound, got louder and louder and louder until it filled the whole sky.” For the purpose of telling a good story, Cypress exaggerated and embellished. “The warriors had to squeeze their ears against their heads just to keep from going completely deaf,” he said, “but they kept patrolling anyway, even when they felt the wind of the wings pushing them backwards. Like this!” He sidled up alongside the girl, blowing out a soft breath along her spine and shoulders, then attempted to nudge her sideways with a gentle buffet of his hips and shoulders against hers.

He lost track of time as he wandered with the cosmic-eyed girl through the trees he loved, and all too soon it was time to return home. Still, the intimacy of shared thoughts and feelings sparked the beginnings of a deeper affection for Lucy that he had not previously recognized.