It was in the way he walked.
He was lithe and robust. Gracefully slithering towards the brink of a sheer cliff. She could sense it in him. Her fear spoke. He was someone to be weary of and yet ... she smiled. For some enigmatic reason she smiled at him. It was a blithe smile and she knew misfortune was etching at the time they shared, like the emerging dawn in the distance. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, his eyes heavily resting on hers.
‘Seraphina,’ she whispered, her voice fading away in the early morning breeze. She didn’t know why he had to ask and because of that she couldn’t help but feel a little concerned. She was strangely relaxed around him; it was scarcely unlike her—why? she wondered. He wasn’t anything special, if anything he was someone to run from. Within a fleeting moment, she saw his cold icy blue eyes and the lonely emptiness there, the ineptly pulled at her already fragile heartstrings. ‘Altair?’ she carefully asked ... afraid ... one wrong move would push him off the overhanging cliff.
Altair glanced down at the sharp jagged shingles, several hundred feet behind him.
The drifting abyss flowered in a shade of warm colours as native birds in a base of their own enchanting colours cried overhead in the sky above showered in a gradient of various crimson pigments. Yet, before he could speak, thundering footfalls sliced the air between them.
Seraphina’s nerves sizzled. ‘You need to leave.’ she stated, concern weaving every note.
With a stern nod from him, he turned his heel and dropped.
Shocked, Seraphina reached for him but it was all too late. She defencelessly watched as he vanished from sight—his form slowly fading away like the unbroken zephyr that surged around her.
Relieved he didn’t hit the bottom, she turned around, her chin held high and anxiously waited for every dark foreboding monstrosity that would stumble before her. She didn’t know why but a part of her felt sorry for him. She transitioned into her Nefaliem form—a form different from humans—an alien form; concealed in majestic tight azure scales and silvery armour with a cloak and belt that tallied the tinge of her wrap as she stood grounded waiting for the footfalls to approach. ‘He’s not here.’ she heard one verbalize, in a foreign accent.
Summoning her sword upon her back, she drew it from the metal sheath and listened to the chime of the sword bounce around throughout the rocky clearing warning her opponents not to tread another step.
‘No he’s not.’ she deterred, her eyes narrowing at the trees in the distance. ‘If you want him, you’ll have to come through me!’
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