theresnodoor | (no subject)

When you fight for three years, you get used to the aspects of it. The secret keeping. The sudden pounding rush of adrenaline. The constant thrum of fear under your skin. The exhaustion. The rage. The helplessness and the power.

There are different kinds of 'get used to,' though.

There's the kind where, free of those constraints, you can relax. It never leaves entirely, but it ebbs. You don't miss it exactly but you recognize that you could go back to it in a heartbeat, if you needed to - and you tell yourself you don't want to.

There's another kind. Less readily admitted to.

The kind where you relax immediately. And slowly, surely, the thrum under your skin comes back. But the fear has a different flavor this time around, more restless than anything else.

The nice thing is, the solution is obvious.

The bad thing is, it's a solution you can't admit to.

Rachel does a lot of things to channel that thrum. Waking at dawn. Gymnastics routines. Runs around the lake. Training with the punching bag. Reading with Tobias. Talking, talking, talking to people. Morphing for fun.

But they're only channels, and none of them for much purpose.

There's only one thing that's given her true relaxation, release, since Milliways.

An afternoon walk in Milliways' forest and Rachel finds herself standing before a tall rock face, more than a hill but not quite a mountain. An opening several feet taller than she is - a rock cave.

Carved into the stone, a symbol she won't readily forget.

"...Daedalus."

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There's no need to wait, so far as Rachel is concerned. The morph takes less than a minute, especially one so often used.

Which is, of course, a bird. Dark brown body and stark white head, bright yellow beak. Sure, it'll be difficult to get up off the ground when it's flat like this, but it's not impossible.

Having checked that a bird is a coming, Mel manages to use the very tips of her left fingers to help her scaling, and she makes quick work of the rest of the wall.

Well, not very quick work. It's still a relief to be sitting on the top, straddling the stone, and taking a breather.

Turns out, using her left hand? Had in fact been a terrible idea.

It's not the morph that makes Rachel take so long to join Mel on that wall. It's all the flapping flapping flapping it takes to get off the stupid ground and then find a good thermal to ride. Bald eagles weren't born for humid jungles, but at least there's plenty of hot air.

She flares, catching the wall with her talons and peering at Mel. <So?>

She can see the individual blades of grass on either side of the wall - she's not asking about the new landscape, but if Mel would like to respond as if she is, that will work, too.

Really, would Mel take it any other way.

"Looks like the scopes," Mel says. "Like that one where it's all grass then it gets into colour and she's attacked by Loompas. Only without the colour."

Seriously, it's all just grass. What the hell?

"Least I'm not gonna be sweating up a storm."

Though she doesn't move over the wall yet. She's still nursing her hand.

Rachel takes a moment to try and translate that, silent while the eagle takes in their surroundings. Jungle and trees on one side of the wall, grassy plains on the other.

She's still trying to decide between The Wizard of Oz and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory when something calls her attention to the new side of the wall. Grass waves in the wind, no differently than it had a moment ago. Only now she's looking at it, great white head pointed away from Mel, eyes scanning. It's just there's so much of it, all moving with the breeze, and she can't be sure what got her attention in the first place.

<How are you doing?> she asks after a moment. There's no great need to rush off the wall - it might actually be the safest place they've been since entering the Labyrinth. But it's hardly the most defensible.

"Jake."

That means she's doing well. And she's not going to admit to anything else anyway.

"I'm thinking we pick a direction from here."

And she nods towards what looks like a large standing stone heading out of the grass. "May or may not be an exit?"

<...yeah.>

There will be a day when names that have nothing to do with her won't distract from an important mission.

The standing stone is... a really, really big rock in the grass. There's movement in the grass surrounding it as well, but again, only the breeze. So far as Rachel can tell, anyway. And since the rest of the landscape is simply plains, the best place to find a Labyrinth triangle is probably carved into that stone.

<Yeah. Okay. Can you get down?>

Mel nods, and shifts her weight on the wall, by picking up her far foot to put it on the top of the wall. It also involves putting her left hand down and bracing to jump.

She winces.

"Gimme a sec."

<I'll take a look.>

It's a relief, after the land take-off she did before, just to jump off the wall with wings spread and let the air take her. There isn't much to see, but that isn't the point. It's more about giving Mel the time she needs and taking a rest of her own in the process.

Mel sits for a few seconds, watching Rachel over the field.

The grass ripples with the wind in waves like an ocean which seems much bigger for the level of the wind she's feeling up here. Mel figures either the wind is much stronger down there or that she has no idea how wind is supposed to react to fields of grass.

Her money is on the latter.

Weather isn't Rachel's strong point either. The grass is long, the day is breezy, surely it's supposed to move.

The eagle notices the movement, flickers of not-quite-grass beneath. It could just be mice, snakes, the normal things you find in tall grass.

Or they could be acid-spewing caterpillars.

<Hang on a little longer.>

"Alright."

She can hang on as long as she needs to. 'Sides, Mel is high up, and she's never more comfortable than when she's high up.

She doesn't know if Rachel can hear her, but she shoots a lazy salute in the eagle's direction.

Mel's already injured. Rachel's not impervious to it but this adventure has already proven her chances are good for morphing out of any injury.

She lands on the rock first, peering into the grass. A flash here, a darting shape there. Could be anything running from a predator. If she gets down on the ground, getting back up again as an eagle if she's attacked will be nearly impossible. Better to demorph first, keep her options open.

A six foot wingspan spreads and Rachel coasts until her white feathered head disappears beneath the grass.

Mel is quite comfortable sitting up here right now, one leg hanging relaxed on the grassy side of the wall, the other up on the top edge, taking her weight completely on the ball, knee soft and bent.

She watches Rachel disappear, then her vision pulls out a little to watch the wind moving in the grass.

"RACH."

She hollers out the name, quick and urgent, at the same time as her bent leg snaps out and she rolls off the wall, throwing herself into a dive, straight into the sea of corn.

She's already closed her eyes, started the morph. Mel's yell is irritating, distracting, and she calls back a quick <What?> while she's still able to thoughtspeak.

Rachel figures Mel is shouting just to be heard from the top of the wall. She's been an eagle scouring these plans, what sort of danger wouldn't she see?

What Mel saw was a twitch in the corn. Probably nothing. Probably just the wind. There are plenty of ripples from the wind, after all.

Except that when you focus on one ripple, it kind of looks like it's moving in a line. And then there's another one, and a third. Hard to make out.

Until something landed in the corn, and then these tiny, barely perceptible lines turned almost as one, and started heading towards the landing site.

Mel tucks her bad hand across her chest, uses her other and the scythe it holds to shield her injury, and tucks and rolls as she hits the corn, racing to where she saw Rachel disappear.

"Incoming!"