Soaring

At first she wasn’t sure she had heard the faint emotional call, but when it came again she was able to determine that it was coming from one of the smaller islands some distance out from the coast. Banking to her right, Eirlan glided out to sea at deceptively sedate pace. While she was anxious to locate whomever was in trouble she didn’t want to approach so quickly as to alarm them. Even though her people didn’t hunt other sentient beings for food there were other races that weren’t quite so… discriminate. She reached out with her thoughts to see if she could establish mental contact with the person who had called out but without success. Either they were from a race that had no ability at mindspeech at all, or they were too far away for her to establish a link. As she closed in on a cluster of small islands Eirlan hoped that whoever was in trouble would call out again. There were more than a dozen of the little outcrops of land, and though they were small when compared to some of the other islands around them, they were large enough to be time consuming to search.

She was beginning to wonder if she should send a call back to the Clan and request a rescue flight be sent to help when the cry came once again. This time she was close enough to determine which island it came from and that the caller was getting increasingly desperate. She increased her speed and soon reached her destination. As she turned to circle the perimeter of the island, she saw the broken remains of a small boat strewn along a narrow beach. She was pleased to note the faint, but readable tracks that lead up the beach towards the tall cliffs that ringed the island. That gave her a direction in which to start her search.

Again she sent out a mental call in an effort to reach the caller and again she received no response. She also considered issuing a vocal call of her own, but she was still concerned that even a moderate roar from her might cause undo alarm in those she was searching for and might even drive them into greater danger if they sought to run from her. Eirlan lined herself up with a tall spur of rock thrusting itself up through the dense vegetation of the island so she could use her distance from it to establish a spiral search pattern around the island. She once again considered calling back to the Clan for assistance, but until she was able to establish just who was in trouble and how they would react to Dragons she was still reluctant to do so. Settling herself for a potentially long search Eirlan banked to her left and began circling the island in a clockwise direction.

She hadn’t gone quite half way around the island when she spotted a bright splash of reddish-brown against the dark gray stone of a cliff the looked to be several hundred feet tall. It was one of the Sionnach Daoine… the fox-like people whose lands bordered that of her Clan. As she got closer she saw there was another Sionnach laying across the top of the cliff, hanging slightly over the edge and straining to reach its companion. Judging by their size these two were young, out of adolescence, yes, but not yet fully adult. That explained why there was no response to her mental call. Either neither of these two had the gift of mind speech, or their gifts had yet to fully manifest. But at least she knew that they would recognize her as an ally if she were to verbally call out to them.

Just as she prepared to do so, a sudden gust of wind surged up the cliff face and knocked the young Sionnach from its tenuous hold on the rock face and it fell towards the rocky beach below. A roar of dismay from Eirlan echoed the cries of fear and anguish from both of the fox people. She dove down the face of the cliff after the plummeting form and snatched it from the air, being very careful not to puncture it with her sharp talons. As she had done earlier that morning Eirlan snapped her wings open and pulled out of the dive just as the other Sionnach cried out in despair, convinced that both it’s companion and Eirlan were destined to crash. Eirlan then pumped her wings and soared back up the cliff face and with her free hand plucked the startled creature off the ground and flew towards the open beach. When she reached the spot where she had seen the remains of their boat Eirlan cupped her wings and came to a gentle landing.

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