Long ladies' eyelashes flutter delicately together, an exquisite ballet of pale against a vermilion which reflects a vast and infinite blue. Sometimes they clamp shut, whether in fear or in pleasure it is uncertain, but the ultramarine sky (so finely painted, like the blue of a Monet) beckons to her, and what is a bird-hearted girl to do when the great vault of Heaven calls her, with so much potential for adventure and discovery and freedom?
It was Zaffre who taught her to ride the wind; Zaffre the blue, Zaffre, her mother's dragon. Countless afternoons were spent contemplating the moody void above the churning seas of her home from the perch of a treacherous cliff, imagining the savage mistral in her face, the feral winds whistling beneath her fragile pale wings like steeds of Hell. One day, after an era of landlocked and longing, of practicing with the birds and the dragons, she had jumped, and this was the first time she had thought death was imminent. Down, down, down the burning angel had fallen, like a comet, but once her wits had come to her and the finality of such a demise became clear, she unfurled her baby wings and up she went, carried by a zephyr, like a child of Zeus. She has never told anyone of this experience - not even mother, or Zaffre, for fear that it would become forbidden, and Israfel would hate to disobey mother.
So, today the sunchild rides the northern bora, the frigid fingers of winter creeping into her joints, frosting her whiskers and the ends of her gold-tipped hair. She is very far from home, the farthest she has ever dared to venture, and mother will begin worrying soon, once the sun begins to descend from his high throne, and the little goddess will have no-one else to watch her, and night brings dangers - she would definitely not want to make mother anxious. As soon as she lands for a break, the girl promises to herself and her ash-blessed dam, she will think about getting back to her dreary northern home, but for now, she flies, like she is born for flying; as if instead of blood or liquid light running through her veins and arteries and through her big red heart, she has wind, which propels her skyward and lets her become the boldest person she knows.
All angels get tired, however, and hours and hours of being skyborn does not bode well for the dainty body of a child, however divine she may be.
Gradually, reluctantly, Israfel Azardokht, daughter of the sun and defender of light and fire, begins her descent, plummeting downwards through the atmosphere like an old dog asked to pull a sled through Siberia; and far too soon the girl is where the clouds condense and the haze over the world begins to dissolve, where she can see the faintest pinpricks of trees and the milling about of people.
She returns to Loorien's crust in a pleasant early-afternoon, when the brume of morning begins to fade and the snow glistens like cold daggers in the sunlight. The albino finds herself in a ceaseless plane of graupel, half-melted by a gigantic pit of fire which sits nearby. Plumes of heat caress her, and she imagines it is her father embracing her - is this the place of his birth? She cranes her head to better see it - it is a gaping wound in the brittle earth, and in it lays thick, roiling fire. Attention piqued, the girl wills her long, dancer's legs into a canter through the grass, and as she draws closer to the flame, sweat begins to dribble down her body, but she does not mind this discomfort, for she feels the presence of her father more than ever.
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