Cirrus the WindDancer

The storm raged on, and within it, two souls laughed and rolled and tumbled. How they did not die or take on damage was a mystery - a mystery woven into the magic that they weaved, the magic that sung from the tips of their feathers to the magic that danced between the heartstrings that slowly and yet suddenly reached out to one another. The cloudmare was not the sort to think such ponderous, deep, emotional things - she was ever the being who thought her heart quickening its beat as a warning, or simply due to physical activity. Never would she think it was simply because he was near her, he with the golden locks and beryl eyes, the lightning dancing its static dance from his wingtips and the laughter rumbling like thunder from his masculine throat. Such thoughts of courtship never crossed her mind, at least no more than once - she accepted their partnership in this storm, it simply was - like falling asleep, it happened slowly at first, and then all at once, until suddenly you were dreaming with naught a memory of how you got into the dream.

This was her dream, this perfect storm of electricity and clouds, this wild dance, this tango of souls and feathers and laughter and them, wings beating rapidly as she raced ahead of him, breaths coming in heavy as the humidity of the clouds closed in around her - but she lived it, she loved it, it simply was - she simply was, and he with her.

He came closer, their forms like spinning magnets in the air, unable to touch yet unable to stay away from the other. Somehow their wingbeats allowed them to get close enough that she felt the wind generated by his powerful downstrokes caress her cloudy, lightning sparked form, her own cerulean eyes looking up at his lightning-framed form, feeling deeply and wholly - what, she could not say, for she simply did not know. The affection and joy that caused the blood within her veins to run at lightning speeds was like everything else about her - it simply was, and so she accepted it, without question.

At his jesting question she laughed, lifting her ears from their hiding place amongst her tresses and tossing her tiara about in a wild shake, a declaration of no, she could definitely do much better than that. With another surge of magic, she felt the winds rise beneath her and his wings, and she matched his beats so that they rose together. She felt herself be pushed up underneath him - his forelegs draped around the base of her neck as her crest pressed against the thundering heartbeat that hid behind his pectorals. Up, and up further, she urged the wind to take them, while they did nothing but beat their wings in unison, a perfect hover, together they became a new kind of beast, with four wings and two hearts, meeting each other in a synchrony no others could ever hope to match. Further still they rose, the clouds soon thinning, the static in the air lessening as they rode this windy updraft together - and then, they were perched above the storm and the clouds, her wind holding them steady as their matching eyes drank the world beneath them. Rainbows stretched across the horizon before them, and sketched themselves along her hide in a wondrous, colourful display of the sheer beauty the elements that made her could conjure.

The air was thinner, and the temperature much colder, yet Cirrus felt the searing heat his masculine, muscular form like a hot iron against her. She did not feel the cold as she might have, she felt only the searing passion that filled this potentially deadly dance keeping her alive. If they ever stopped, she wondered, would they die?

Looking up at him again, with her tiara tilted and her eyes searching, she felt a sudden, new sensation start from within her stomach and travelling rapidly to her loins - an urging, a primordial and instinctual calling that she could not define - for again, she had never felt it before. It wasn't unpleasant, but its unfamiliarity irked her. Still, she looked at him, and said softly, "That's my best." Her words might have been stolen by the winds, his senses too full of wonder to hear her.

They could not linger long at these heights, this arena was truly only meant for the Gods, who did not need air and warmth to survive as these mortals did. It happened suddenly, the cessation of her magic, as suddenly and instantly as the realisation that she could no longer breathe - the atmosphere was too thin. Black spots appeared in her vision as her posture sagged, her wings fell out of unison with his, even her rainbow hide seemed to drip away to reveal nothing but roan beneath. A chill struck her as their forms parted, her own peeling away from his like a seedling being wisped away from its dandelion head. In giving her best, she had almost given her all.

She fell.

It was a freefall, and she was barely conscious as her wings and limbs grasped hopelessly at the sky, her form falling down through the clouds and storm, her lungs filling with the wonderful burning of oxygen again. Consciousness returned, and strength and balance with it, her own magic soon followed. She did not have enough of it left within her to do any more than coax the wind to fill her wings once more - and Kaj's, as she feared he might have found the same fate that she foolishly pushed upon them both, she rushed to fill his caramel feathers with the comforts of a steady wind beneath them. The storm continued to rage on around them, its strength far outweighing her own now. They had to land, they had to survive this the same way they had started it - together.