The White Ghost of Hart's Cove

17

.^^ Wooden Acropolis ^^

— Teilin —

The funniest part of the debate, when Avon tried to get me to wear a blindfold, was when I told her that Gwynn and I shared a psychic link, so anything he saw, I would as well, and we couldn't very well blindfold the bird.

Her internal struggle was amusing, and it helped me get over a bit of my annoyance towards her. Common sense got rid of the rest. I was too smart to think that grudges ever helped anyone. And I'd dealt with racism and speciesism for all my life. My skin was too thick to let mere words from an ignorant Druid girl hurt my feelings.

When she made up her mind, finally, we dove off the edge, her riding on her own mount, a large tiger made of some kind of ink, which proved capable of walking/swimming on/through air.

After a few hours, as she'd said, it disappeared from under her, and I nudged Gwynn under her, letting her weight land on his back, just behind me. He grumbled, but wasn't otherwise affected.

We flew on for another six hours or so, lazily catching thermals, and I noticed we were crossing the Boiling Strait, what used to be the water border of France and England.

"Are we going all the way to Old Wales?" I asked, intrigued.

Avon nodded. "To the northernmost point, yes. It's a Gateway, really, not a place."

"Ooh, new dimensions. I dig it." I grinned, and Gwynn felt my excitement, pumping his wings a bit faster. The hot air above the Boiling Strait was enough to give him a few thousand feet of altitude, and so he coasted the rest of the way up Old Britain's shoreline, veering back into the sea for more altitude regularly.

I woke up after my nap, as we reached Scotland, and hummed, stretching. Avon was still awake, to my surprise. "You're not tired?" I asked.

"I don't sleep much. You'll find it's quite common, amongst Druid's. Our energy comes from our Homelands, and with it, we do not need much rest or recuperation." She smiled, smirked is more the term, really.

"That's simply unhealthy. Your brain needs to rest. Too long awake can cause everything from hallucinations to permanent brain damage." I shook my head at her ignorance of basic biology, and was shocked when Gwynn started his approach, diving straight at the ground, to build speed.

He leveled out slowly, his wings straining, and whipped through the Scottish air, scaring the cows and horses below with the harsh whistle of his passing.

A sudden flair of his wings signaled we'd arrived, and we hopped off as he landed, and then Gwynn took off after a cow that had come too close.

Avon shivered a bit, watching him tear into the beast. "Why would you ever bond with such a savage beast?" She murmured, morbidly curious.

I laughed. "He's not necessarily savage, just relying on his instincts. Would you rather he eat with a fork and knife? I thought you Druid's were all about natural order?"

She snorted softly. "We are. And bonding your soul to a beast is not natural, in the first place."

"It is, actually. Entirely natural magic. You have a lot to learn, before lecturing me on magic, Avon." I said seriously, and looked at what she was drawing in the moss of the rock under her hands.