Longs and Shorts of Laverito: Step into a Portal - Lyra 1 - Starsong Mountains

Freezing wind whipped past, ruffling through feathers and tugging at the hems of tunics and saddlebags. The snow-clad mountains shrieked from a thousand-thousand glittering throats. Laverito’s ears were pinned so far back that he kept wincing when they brushed against his own neck, but it made the ceaseless noise that much more bearable. 

 

None of the stryx seemed to care about the fractal chorus of the crystalline mountains. That made sense; stryx were, as a species, very shrieky. They probably felt right at home. Personally, Laverito preferred less windy places - the cold didn’t bother him, and never had, but wind was never kind to his poor ears.

 

However, the wind could not blow away all the tourists eager to see and hear the yodeling Starsong Mountains, and wherever there were tourists, there was trash. It was one of the unshakeable laws of existence, and one which Laverito appreciated. A tourist’s trash was a scavenger’s salable. Laverito was hopping up one of the marked paths, searching, because profiting off the shallow pockets of tourists meant going where tourists had gone. His black eyes swept across the trail, squinting through the wind, on alert for any and all unusual shapes that might turn out to be valuable.

 

The stryx, meanwhile, were frolicking pell-mell across the snowy slopes. Badallaioc was the cause of this whole mess - he’d goaded Helagnus into tagging along, and then she’d done the same to Noxin, and now Laverito was trying to look as though he’d never met any of the three in his life. It would be terribly inconvenient if Helagnus ate someone and Laverito were held responsible. He would continue to definitely never have met any of these stryx, unless and until one of them found something with a large and shiny price tag.

 

“What a terrible day to have wings,” Laverito muttered, “Ugh. Hate wind. Hate it.”

 

Badallaioc uttered a shriek which Laverito’s beleaguered ears just barely caught over the constant howling of the mountain. Laverito looked, and beheld Badallaioc and Helagnus trying to kill each other, again. 

 

Meanwhile, Noxin was ignoring the other two, entirely focused on a gap in a cluster of tubular crystals. Noxin tried to hook something with a striped beak. When that didn’t work, the grey talons were brought to bear. Laverito carefully didn’t laugh at the sight of the big, wind-ruffled stryx teetering precariously atop the crystal cluster, glaring venomously and looking very much like that foot had gotten stuck. Noxin twisted and turned and clawed and pecked, tail lashing as whatever-it-was failed to surrender itself. Then, unbalanced by a particularly aggressive gust of wind, Noxin slid off and neatly sluiced through the air to alight in the snow, one blue eye remaining locked on target all the while.

 

Badallaioc, who’d won the brief tussle - he usually did - prowled up and gave the situation a once-over. Badallaioc took his turn to rear up and peer at whatever had gotten their attention. While not a flighted stryx like the other two, Badallaioc wasn’t averse to climbing, and did so. His red beak had no chance of snaring whatever Noxin’s slimmer, hooked beak hadn’t, so Badallaioc gave up quickly. Instead, he began to poke at it with a red wing-thumb, twisting feathers in all directions as he tried to find the right angle. Frustrated, Badallaioc climbed back down and started a slow circle around the structure, searching for a different gap to exploit.

 

Well, there was nothing shiny to be found over here on the path. Laverito left it, and started leapfrogging through the deep snow towards the commotion. If only he didn’t weigh quite so much… His feet were nearly wide enough to allow him to walk on top of the thick snowy crust. Ah, well. Laverito did not regret a single pie.

 

Helagnus took up the post Badallaioc had vacated, squawking a confident, “I’ll get the stupid thing!” But in short order she found herself just as stymied as the other two stryx. Her beak was not quite up to the task of fishing whatever-it-was out of the gap. Her grey claws proved equally ineffective. Helagnus even went so far as to try her wing-thumb, which she made a point of almost never using. Helagnus chattered and rumbled and fussed, all barely audible over the wavering tone of the very crystal she was trying to loot. Never one to give up, she tried using her beak again, pecking and snapping aggressively enough that she must be leaving chips in the crystalline surface.

 

In the few more hops until Laverito finally landed next to the crystal, all three stryx had become severely cranky at being denied their prize.

 

Badallaioc glared at him, glanced at his much smaller hands, and squawked, “Get it!”

 

“We don’t need help from prey!” Helagnus hissed.

 

Noxin lunged for Helagnus without any warning, pecking and snapping and beating with grey-and-black wings, until both rolled off into the snow in a flurry of feathers. “Don’t need help from you!” Noxin snarled. “Lazy, unpreened, shade-that-spooks-prey! Be quiet and let the dirt-bat get my thing!”

 

Laverito liked Noxin. Noxin had seen Laverito’s wings, and promptly assigned Laverito to the same category as Badallaioc. This was not a compliment; Noxin simply considered both of them to be flightless and therefore worthless. But it also meant that Noxin considered both of them ‘too inconvenient to try eating’, and Laverito quite liked not being eaten. So, ‘dirt-bat’ he was.

 

“Your thing? Yours?!”

 

“I found it!”

 

Helagnus rolled off into the snow to lose a second brief tussle. Noxin dodged and wove with agility Helagnus couldn’t hope to match. Both of them screeched insults at each other. Badallaioc clucked in exasperation, and allowed Laverito to use him as a sort of tack-laden ladder.

 

Laverito kept his little wings curled tightly against his back, not wanting to be caught by the wind and tossed somewhere. The gaping mouths of the crystal tubes continued to sing their undulating notes without any regard for his imminent deafness. Retrieving the object of consternation was simple enough. Laverito’s slim fingers could easily fit into the gap that had been too small for the stryx. He pulled it free, and frowned. “This is a sandal.”

 

“A what?” Badallaioc was understandably unfamiliar with shoes. Stryx had no use for them, and Laverito’s feet strongly disagreed with all the most common shoe shapes.

 

Laverito thought about it, and decided not to ruin it for them. They’d all worked so hard for one-half of some tourist’s highly questionable choice of footwear. “Nevermind.”

 

Noxin returned victorious, and laid claim to the sandal, swinging it around and flapping it in Helagnus’ bitter, defeated face. Badallaioc watched the proceedings with great satisfaction, until he got bored and wandered off. Laverito hitched a ride, picking clumps of snow from between his toes, as Badallaioc meandered towards the path and scanned for any other sandals to taunt Helagnus with.

 

The other two stryx would most likely get bored and fly off eventually, but Badallaioc had become used to long days spent on the lookout. Days like these, when they were looking out for profit, and not guards, police, constables, or other keepers of the peace and opponents of pie-thieving - days like these were good days.

 

Even if the mountains refused to stop wailing.