Apache Winning Entry

Wind raced around her, sliding over silky smooth feathers of shimmering white. A Gourix plummeted down from the cliffside. The moon cast molten dew upon her coat, giving her a striking glow. But no ordinary Gourix was she, for Kachin was different. She had wings.



Kachin's wings flattened against her, only the tips pointing out above her to part the air that bit painfully from the rate at which she dropped. Eyes closed, she grinned ravenously and bellowed out a silent laugh, the wind stealing her voice and breath away. She spun, twisting her tail of scales, fin and feathered tip around at an angle. A spinning bullet, deadly as any of metal but this of flesh and bone, was plunging its way towards the heart of its mark.



Her eyes flickered open when the tang of the salty liquid became too much for her sensitive nostrils to handle. She saw water and rock come up to greet her. Without an instant's delay she snapped her great feathered limbs outward with a deafening crack. She flew up, howling with glee and taunting the crags below, denying them their meal.



Kachin quickly leveled out above the glittering obsidian sea. Shivering, she dropped her clawed feet, allowing them to flutter across the skin of the cool, shining glass of the endless ocean. Without much thought, she continued the path her jump had taken her and she drifted away from the cliffs behind, letting her wings carry her out to Mistica's seas.



Black torrents swirled beneath her, crashing unsteadily as waves broke across the craggy, murky depths. Like a behemoth monster rising from an ancient slumber, the ocean groaned and growled, rolling and twisting in its dreamy state. Then the endless darkness spoke: demons whispering, lurking just beyond sight. Unease clawed its way to her heart, slowly poisoning it with ice. She began to believe the sea would reach up... and tear her down. Terror bloomed and all she saw was danger.



Kachin shook, the wicked stab of fear throbbing painfully. Flinching, she drew her soaked claws up and out of the frigid water and thrust her wings sharply forward, backwinging and rising above the softly rocking ocean. Quickly she swung back the way she came. Yet the sea below seemed so enticing. But she refused to dive closer to the gaping, crooning jaws below. They sung to her, drove her closer, just to snap a hair's breath from her heart as she would tear away from them with irrational fear pumping strength into her wings.



Deliberating, she let the smells that the wind carried touch her nose and calm the raging fear. So she allowed her warm, iridescent sails to stretch out and catch the illusive wind that fueled her flight.



Cutting through the air like a razor, she headed back to the lighthouse that blared its silent call. She refused, stubborn as mountains, to slow until the still earth was well beneath her, and all she saw was land.