Idlebones

Tiny Dancer 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

High on the highest turret of the castle, Dromad, the black crow
picked at his stone black feathers with an old, cracked beak,
momentarily letting his piercing gaze fall from the splintered window
that looked down over the great hall. Righting himself, he flustered
his long narrow feathers and peered back into the scene below. His
old crow bones creaked as he leaned further in as he watched the tiny
dancer disappear beneath the beams of the steepled roof. He snorted,
and tested the air with his beak, throwing his black ball head back
and letting out a throaty Caww that threatened to rattle the very
tiles from the roof tops. Dromad was announcing his presence to the
sky. He turned, and unfurling his great dark wings to beat the wind
beneath them. The wind seemed to pause, then turn and then push it’s
silent form beneath his wings to lift the fearsome creature into the
night.

Dromad swooped down, low above the rooftops of the sleeping village,
cutting an arc through the tendrils of smoke that drifted from
charcoal burners and rose towards the shadowy mass of the forest. High
above the tree tops Dromad could see the tiny pinpricks of light from
within the high branches, over to the grassy meadow where a line of
smaller pricks of light began to flicker and quench as his immense
shadow cast itself along a line of hunting wood elves as they scurried
for cover as the sight of his ominous form eclipsed the moon. He
soared up, cawing at the wind that summoned a breeze that warmed the
thinning feathers of his torso, lifting him up over the great oaks
that surrounded the meadow, on passed the cutting V of the river
valley that sliced a jagged swath through the forest. On he glided,
beating his torn and ragged wings to rise above the tallest trees,
until he came to the foothills a barren mountain, where the forest
edged nervously onto black, firmed and broken rock. The rock face rose
and compacted into an impossibly steep muscular mountain that seemed
to block out the very stars form the sky, and it was here that Dromad
curled his old, mighty wings to lower himself down onto the highest
outcrop of its dismal face. Perched high on its tallest gnarled rock,
Dromad turned his black head to see the far turrets of the Kings
castle that jutted above the horizon in the distance, before swooping
down into the black eye of a cave that gazed over the forests below.
The cave where his mistress, the black witch of the mountain sat
awaiting his return with thin, drumming fingers, clacking long yellow
fingernails against the stone arm of her throne.
Claa-aack,
Claa-aack,
Claa-aack,

Midir was growing impatient.