Dragoncrest Cliffs & Lord, if I’ve never had courage in my life before, let me have it now —

Dated for 3/24th! Everyone following Vaure to Diaspora will be tagged.
I’ll post once/twice more towards the end of the thread, after everyone’s gathered. (A follow-up thread at Diaspora will be written soon.)

Everything had led up to this morning.

The silver was cinched with both a resignation of the cliffs and an anxiety for their pilgrimage to begin. Her warbling, airy peal had flourished some while ago; unfurling towards Hougeda and for those who knew of the exodus. Now, she waited at the hillocks of Drageda’s perimeters, argent eyes watchful of the redwoods. If not all would come, then surely some would.

A now-familiar, faint furrow resided at her scarred brow, coaxed from how worn and weary the past weeks had left her. With this migration southbound and her impending delivery, patience was an element that had begun to fade from her. But Aure knew that the more kru who straggled after them, the more they would endure, and thus have a more favorable voyage in the end. It was well, too, that there would be those other than herself who knew the way towards the Valley.

So wait and waver she did, for @Isleña and her cousin; for Dio’s children, perhaps?; for @Blodreina, who she’d learnt had become with child, too. Yet, after several heartbeats of no arrivals, Aure waddled her resolute way back up the spring knell, digging claws into new loan and growth.

@Vercingetorix had since waited with her — and now she leaned, stretched up to him to press the pink of her now absently, ardently to his own. A mumble of soft nothings, foreign and incoherent fluttered from her lips. Regardless of these misgivings, her night-of-life was with her; his dark presence now kept her tethered, as it had when she’d first come across Takiyok.

Like that meeting, too, she was fraying; but she needed to remain some sort of porcelain pillar for those who deemed to away with them. It was all Aure could do — knew to do, because no eloquent tangents would be waxed this morning. Not as she settled at Verx’s shoulder, feathered her tail about her, and became somber and silent and ponderous once more.