"I'm sure we will, Sapphire," he called to her.
Her massive head bobbed in a single nod, and then her neck carried her head away, faster than Tarrin or Allia could have run the same distance. Tarrin wondered absently what it would be like to be so incredibly immense, to be able to cover in one step what would take a human more than fifty, and move with a deceptive speed that came with the strength and size of the form that could outpace anything else alive. Putting things in a perspective of relative sizes, Sapphire's movements, though stately to her and very graceful from a distance, were amazingly fast when viewed from so close. Tarrin was sure that he moved with the same incredible swiftness to an insect gazing up at him from the ground, who would have to walk along for several moments to cover the same distance he could traverse in a single step. The ground shook noticably when her huge paws struck it, as she turned and walked several steps away from the Selani and the Were-cat, and then her sail-sized wings unfurled from her body.
"Uh oh, turn away, sister," he warned quickly in Selani.
"I want to see her take off," Allia protested.
"You won't see it," he warned quickly. "Her wings are going to kick up their own little sandstorm."
"Hmph," Allia snorted, reaching under her shirt and producing a crystal visor the the Selani wore to protect their eyes from the brilliant sun and the sand-stinging wind, a single piece of crystal that was tinted violet to reduce the power of the sun's light.
"Good idea," Tarrin mused, absently Conjuring a new visor for himself and settling it over his eyes as Sapphire's wings snapped down in the first stroke, even as her legs pushed her titanic frame off the ground. A virtual shockwave of air rushed away, expanding on the ground under her and blooming out, carrying with it a cloud of dust and sand. It blasted over them, pulling fiercely at their clothes and making Allia have to reset her feet to keep the wind from pushing her backwards. The sand and dust concealed the dragon's ascent into the air for a moment, and when the dust cleared enough to see, she was already a few hundred spans in the air and about a quarter longspan away.
"Now that was an experience," Allia said, pushing her turban-like headgear back down over her bangs. The wind had nearly pulled it off. "You're going to make sure that I have an entire lifetime of things to sing about when I return home, brother."
"Who wants a dull life?" Sarraya piped in.
"I didn't know you speak Selani, Sarraya," Allia said with some surprise.
"Neither did I," Tarrin added.
"Triana put it in there last night," she answered. "I think she thought I may have a need for it this time."
"It's best to know that now, I suppose," she mused. "Before I say something."
"You wouldn't talk about me behind my back, would you, Allia?" Sarraya asked challengingly.
"No, I'd tell you to your face, then comment on it to Tarrin," she replied immediately.
"I thought so," Sarraya laughed.
"Well, brother, where are we going?" Allia asked.
"Amyr Dimeon," he answered. "I want you to see it, and I want to see how Ariana's doing."
"The Cloud Spire is only about fifteen days' run from here," Allia said. "Ten if we push."
"It took us nearly a month the first time," Sarraya said.
"Then you weren't going very fast," she snorted in reply.
"I was thinking of having an Air Elemental carry us, sister," he told her.
"Posh. It's been too long since I've had the chance to stretch my legs, and I am not going to be carried like a child. Besides, deshida , we have two months. Does it matter how long it takes us to get there, as long as we get there?"
"Alright, that's a good point," he acceded with a chuckle. He could see her opening up already, shedding the protective manner she kept when surrounded by the others. She was home, she was very comfortable, she was in her own element, and the Allia that he knew when they were alone was going to be right there all the time. She had no reason to subdue her true personality out here. In the desert, she could breathe free, and Sarraya was about to get the full Allia experience. He had no doubt that the Faerie was going to be quite surprised at how playful and emotional his Selani sister really was.
"Come on then, Tarrin," she said with a wonderfully glorious smile. "Let me show you my home. I've waited too long to do this with you, and I won't wait any longer."
"I just hope you can keep up, Allia," he teased as he brushed Sarraya off his shoulder with a paw.
"Well excuse me!" Sarraya snapped, flitting in front of him. "Should I try to sting you now, or just buzz in your face until you swat me?"
"Save your energy, Sarraya," Allia said with a quirky smile. "You're going to need it."
And with that, the sleek Selani female turned and started loping off towards the east, towards the Cloud Spire, in easy strides that ate up shocking amounts of ground with each step. Tarrin burst off after her, catching up with her quickly as Sarraya zipped along behind them, cursing and shouting at them. Together the two of them ran on, in the traditional and effective Selani mode of travel, setting a pace that would kill just about any other living thing within an hour. They ran in silence, but fully aware of one another, and both showed with glances and smiles just how much both of them were looking forward to spending time together, spending time in Allia's home, renewing a bond of love and trust that often defied rational explanation. Tarrin's relationship with Allia was one of the main cornerstones of his life, and without her, he wouldn't know what to do. Time and need had separated him from her more than once, and his amnesia had made it difficult for them; harder on Allia than it was on him. The journey before them, those two months, would renew the ties that bound them soul to soul, forever together as brother and sister.
For them, there could be nothing better than what was right now. Together in the one place where Allia felt relaxed and open, with nothing but welcoming desert before them, and all the time in the world to spend with one another.
Allia set a murderous pace, but Tarrin felt she did so not to punish him, but to get her legs back. Two years of comparatively sedate inactivity had marked his sister, reduced some of her endurance, and he could tell that she meant to get it all back as quickly as possible. They moved across the windswept fields of stony rubble at a fair speed, up and down the rugged hills that surrounded the ancient Dwarven city. The heat of the day cooled into a somewhat pleasant afternoon, and as the sun crept closer and closer to the horizon, the winds began to pick up with greater and greater force. They blew in from behind them, rasing up a low cloud of sand and dust that dimmed the light of the sun and made the Skybands almost invisible.
They decided to camp for the night near a wide, broken rock spire, one that Tarrin remembered passing some months ago. He'd passed it in midmorning then, however. It was a quiet campsite, because Allia was a little tired from her running, and Sarraya was a little put out with him for brushing her off as he did. Tarrin didn't mind the silence, however, because it was a silence filled with the companionship of his sister, and that made him perfectly content. As they'd done the first time, Tarrin and Sarraya Conjured everything they would need for a campsite, including the food and water served at the fire, and the tents were left behind the next morning, still standing, waiting to be Conjured to the new campsite that night.
The pace the next day was just as hard as the first, as was the day after that. Those two days were nondescript, seeing no Selani and no major predators. They did pass a wild flock of sukk grazing in an isolated patch of tough desert scrub, which supplied them with a midmorning meal the first day, and they came across the stripped skeleton of a kusuk. Tarrin hadn't seen one of those on his first trip across the desert, but Allia had no trouble identifying the remains because of the large, heavy plates of what looked like bone that surrounded the skeleton. Kusuk meant "shielded," and the animal, a low, squat thing with short legs and overlapping ridges of heavy plating on its body, supposedly looked like a twelve-span high walking suit of living armor. Tarrin envisioned it as looking like a wide-headed armadillo. The thing had a huge bony club-like growth on the end of its tail, a very powerful and formidable weapon used to fight off predators like inu and kajat. Whatever had killed this one had had to literally tear off vast sections of bony plates to get to the flesh beneath.