AN- Not many reviews yet, but I did get three! And because of that, I already get to start handing out comments As for the wait? I’M SORRY! I put it on hold for a long time, because I was re-doing the plot completely from what I had going in the first version. I, frankly, hated the power that I’d given Sky in the initial story. And I’m sure there had to be at least some people out there who hated it too.

SkySailer: Actually, no. Its nothing like DNAngel (I watch that anime, it rocks) as for vampire game...never heard of it, but I can probably assure you that it’s nothing like that one. There’re no vampires in this story, I promise. XP

Rannu: Me? Fall inactive? Oh NEVER! ...

Master Crocuta: As usual, thank you for all you’re lurfly critique. I have to say though, when ‘knees’ had an apostrophe...That was all Word’s fault. IT LIED TO ME WITHOUT ME EVEN KNOWING. ‘Aint that horrible Dani? Oh man, I know...And I’m rambling now, too...sooo...yeah.

On to the story!

Searching the Sky

Chapter 1- Exordium

They say that when you’re about to die...your life...will flash before your eyes...

It wasn’t like that for this one. But then...she hadn’t really died, anyway. The proof in that came with the comforting warmth splaying across her face, stirring her from her not-so-peaceful slumber. A dream, again. There’d always been dreams, for as far back as she could remember. She ran her hand through her hair from forehead to back. Her thin, choppy, shoulder length, light-blond dark-brown and-almost-tan-in-some-spots hair. As she did so she gave off an appreciative yawn, stretching her other arm out with a closed fist and arching her back in a full body wake up stretch. You know the ones.

Pushing aside the bedspread of motley sewn together leaves (They were autumn leaves, not the green that everyone else in the city had. Autumn was so much more exciting, more filled with color), she swung her legs over the edge of the grass-lined stone that served as her bed. It wasn’t much, surely, but it was enough to give her a good night’s sleep after each day. Or rather, as good a night’s sleep as she could get, what with all those dreams flitting around her head like a firefly on mushroom dust. Or were they more like nightmares? It varied, she decided, from night to night.

The girl pulled on her soft, black cloth squirrel fur lined boots, sighing contentedly at the comforting soft texture. It just so happened to be early winter, no snow yet, but it was still cold enough to cause the girl to reach over to a bin by the side of her bed, made out of piled together pebbles, placed in such a way that they made four straight walls which in turn formed the bin. She pulled a long sleeved jacket out of it, made out of a soft dusty brown cloth lined with yet more squirrel fur, and slipped it over her white materialed short sleeved shirt. She’d worn her pants to bed the night before – dark oceanic blue pants, made out of a sturdy enough cloth, and just baggy enough to be comfortable.

The jacket was a somewhat strange one; at least she assumed they’d be strange to someone who lived in a world without wings. In the back, starting at about where her shoulder blades were, there were two slits in the cloth. They ran down to the bottom hem of the jacket, sewn around the edges so that it wouldn’t fray, and with ties at the bottom of each side of the slits with which to tie them off. She did so now, flaring her wings up and open to get at the ties beneath them and fastening the holes of the jacket shut to keep out the cold winter air. The white shirt she wore underneath the jacket was tailored in the same way, although the ties on that article of clothing had already been tied. Her wings were a sort of a sturdier, larger version of damselfly wings, the veins of which were a deep gold color, and the semi-transparent flesh of the wings between were a deep cerulean blue.

Shifting her shoulders lightly to let the clothing settle comfortably into place, she started across the room where there was an indented basin of sorts embedded into the wall of the trunk. It looked to have been carved inward, a simple square at first with the basin shape carved out and the entire structure sanded down to a smooth surface. A knot in the tree was on the front edge of the basin, removable so that at any point the water inside could be drained and replaced with fresh water. The girl leant over the basin now, dipping her hands into it and splashing the cool liquid across her face.

She grasped onto a piece of moss from a small clump that seemed to be growing neatly in the back corner of the basin, dipping it into the water to wet it and use it to wash up decently. Setting the damp moss down back against the pile – knowing that it would rejoin the clump and continue growing, the water would be good for the plant anyway – she grabbed a piece of the dryer section and used it to dab off the excess water, though in the end she resorted to simply drying on the material of her jacket. Once finished, she turned her gaze down into the pool, the faint light coming in from the doorway not far away played across the surface of the water, giving her a view of her reflection well enough to catch sight of her eyes.

Smiling wryly to herself and squinting one eye lightly, she reveled silently in the way her eyes looked. The iris themselves were a deep blue color, like the color of the sky early enough in the morning to have a fresh color but late enough for it to not be horribly light, or splashed with reds. Across her entire eye – even spilling over the edges of her irises – were thin wisps of what appeared to be a white sort of mist. Clouds.

“Partly clouded.” she muttered to herself, squinting an eye lightly and dipping her head forward and to the side as she tried to catch a better look of her left eye, which seemed to have a band of darker gray cloud-like images congregating along the far edge. “Hn...Maybe a storm later.” she mused, shrugging it off. Later on in the day the irises of her eyes would morph into a deeper blue, tapering at sunset to mirror the sky’s brilliant oranges and reds, and dimming in the night to follow the sky’s pattern into a pure ebony, dotted here and there with white flecks which mirrored the stars and making her pupil blend with her iris in the process.

Yes, she’d always adored her eyes. Often wondering why they were like that as well, of course...but adoring them all the same.

“Knock knock.” a voice called from the entrance of her home, drawling out the second word lightly and causing her to shift her gaze towards the source. The doorway to her home was nothing more than a large knothole, emphasizing even more so the fact that her one-roomed home was nothing more than a hallow in a tree. The source of the words was another female figure, standing in the doorway with one leg straight and outside the door, and the other kneeling to support herself against the bottom of the knothole.

The girl’s eyes were the color of a fire opal; and her skin was a darker color than the other’s, resembling the color of milk chocolate. Her black hair was the sort of curly that could easily become unruly, but on this girl was cut short, and held at bay with a wooden hairclip on each side. The hair itself reached to the level of her chin, the small and tightly wound curls held behind her ears by the hairclips, and protruding back out very slightly underneath her ears.

She wore a simple materialed shirt, died a deep red by the juice of local berries, and tailored in the same way that the other girl’s shirt was. The sleeves were long, flaring out towards the end to hang in somewhat of a bell shape down from her wrist. The bottom hem of the shirt hung loosely over her hips, draping over the top of black pants that were comfortably baggy at the top and around the thighs, but clung lightly to her ankles towards the bottom. And like the other girl, she wore no shoes.

Flaring out from her back where the shirt had been tailored to fit them were another set of wings, currently folded neatly against her back. The base color was a deep red color, matching the color of her shirt almost to a T. The wings flared upwards, a long thin trail of a black ‘string’ of the wing continuing on while the rest of the wing turned to a point. The edges of the wings were almost tattered looking, though each edge was outline in the same black, making it certain that they were just as they should be. The black continued along through the wing, dipping and curling to form intricate designs against the maroon background.

“It’s about time you were up, Avari.” the fay in the doorway spoke once more, moving from the position where her arm had been leaning against the edge of the knothole to where both arms were folded across her midsection, “Second time I’ve come by to check and see if you were awake yet, you know!”

The other girl – revealed to be dubbed as Avari – walked towards the doorway, smiling shyly and bringing a hand up to the back of her head for a moment, “Sorry about that, Vatusia.” the other replied, stepping over the knee-high threshold of her doorway as the other stepped aside to allow her to do such, “I didn’t sleep all to well last night, is all.”

Vatusia blinked once at the reply, her eyes narrowing lightly in a sympathetic expression as the brief wondering of whether or not her friend had experienced yet another nightmare flashed across her mind. “Yeah, well, I suppose you did.” she replied, turning and crouching for a moment to take a grass-woven basket into her hands. “You’re just lucky I had to dash back home for a bit to get the food, else wise I would’ve woken you up myself and dragged you out of bed by that mash of color you call hair!”

Avari shifted her gaze over towards her friend then, dipping her head briefly to let out a light snicker of a laugh. “You forgot the food?” she queried, looking back up to the other faery as she did so, “After all that planning?”

“That’s enough out of you!” her friend countered, playfully hitting the back of Avari’s head before leaping off the thickly grown branch they were standing on and letting herself fall off the edge, the woven basket tucked neatly under her arm. Seconds later the fay rose back up, hovering for a moment and rolling her eyes as she saw that the other was still there, “What, are you planning on going back to sleep? Let’s get going already!”

Shifting her gaze towards her friend, Avari quirked a brow lightly, shifting her head to a sideways tilt as she did so. “What’s the matter?” she asked, crossing her arms in a nonchalant way as she did so, “Can’t stand waiting a few seconds?” The faery paused for a moment then, and upon receiving a playful glare in response, went on. “Personally,” she began yet again, “I could wait here all day! What with it being such a gorgeous day out. Of course, sure it’ll probably start pouring later on, or at least drizzling, but for now-”

“It’s gonna rain later?!” came the sudden voice of Vatusia, cutting off her friend’s ramble quite abruptly. “No way am I gonna let you stand there going on about nonsense and waste our picnicking time if it’s gonna rain!” The fey had darted forward as she said this, grabbing a hold of Avari’s wrist and pulling her up and off the branch. Instinctively, Avari’s wings flared up behind her, carrying her easily to fly behind her friend as the two of them darted off into the forest canopy.

The day, at current, really was quite a wonderful setting. Like a detailed picture hanging on the wall of an art museum that one often thinks looks so real that you could reach out and pluck a leaf off of the tree. The only difference being that, unlike the painting hanging on a wall, this forest was as real as it could get. The words ‘picture perfect’ would possibly come to mind for many, but not for the faeries that resided there; because quite obviously, they weren’t aware of what a picture was.

For quite awhile Avari allowed herself to be mostly pulled by Vatusia, enjoying the way the sun felt splaying across her back at various intervals where the tree line would open up; how the wind that swept past her smelled of dirt, of plants, and of the earth in general; and how the scent of the air underwent a smooth transition to include the smell of water and mist as well. The few opened her eyes at that point, grinning wryly and bringing her free arm down to her side. “Hey Vatu.” she called ahead the short distance to her friend, receiving a short glance back in reply, “Up for a race?” she finished.

As soon as she’d finished speaking, Avari darted ahead of her friend. The mist clinging to the air around them came together in the trail of air current created by her flight, making a sort of misted trail through the air. The thrill of flying gripped her suddenly, and all she knew was the rush of air through her hair, the currents breaking and twisting around her wings. ‘Born for flight.’ her mother had often said she was, as if meaning it in a different sense than the way most faeries were born for such endeavors. Her eyes were what earned her name: of the heavens, from the sky; and so she was.

Often times, she imagined that flight must hold some greater meaning for her. As if, aside from being her mode of transportation, it was her way of life; a part of her. Often times...she felt as though her wings were not hers, as though they belonged to some other being. Half hers, and half not. She would sometimes awaken from her nightmares, startled to find that she expected to see something else attached to her back than the damselfly structure that was there. But just as often, she would try to grasp a hold of the thought. What exactly had she expected? The thought of something soft, something lighter, something white would flash through her mind; and then it would be gone, just as quickly as all the minute details of those dreams that so often plagued her in her sleep. The dreams that had plagued her in her sleep for her entire life, since she was but a child.

“Avari!” her name was called from somewhere not far behind, drifting up to her and dashed back by the wind whipping past so quickly she thought she must’ve been imagining it. “Watch out!” it called again, bringing the fey’s eyes to open suddenly. Looming in front of her was a grand oak, seemingly coming for her in the illusion that the speed Avari was flying at created. The faery veered quickly to the side, barely missing the rough bark even to the point of feeling the material of her jacket barely catch along the structure.

As she looked back to the oak she just barely missed, the turned to fly backwards, smiling appreciatively and waving to the friend she saw behind her still attempting to catch up. “Thanks!” she called back, turning once more to face forward. As she did so she realized that looking back at all had been a mistake, a brief wondering of why she was being so careless in her flight that day flashed through her mind as torrential water from the falls in the clearing that was their destination crushed her wings to force them against her back.

Falling felt...strange to her, as though the water bringing her quickly to the pool below wasn’t there, as if it were only gravity pulling her downward. There was a darkness in front of her that her conscious mind brushed off as being some sort of cavern behind the falls; the light of the morning behind her causing a split effect that left her mind reeling. She felt torn between two worlds, teetering on the brink of darkness and light, and still falling. Avari didn’t wish to fall; she felt her wings instinctively trying to break free of the water’s hold, feeling as if there were a large hand wrapping itself around her very form.

The experience reminded her of her dreams...though even that thought seemed to make no sense. She never remembered her dreams, couldn’t recall the things that hunted her in her sleep and left her quaking when she woke. Couldn’t recall the friends that she knew she must have had, the wonderful experiences she would go through while sleeping, causing her to wake up and be grateful for what she had without knowing why at all.

The experience, the falling, made her dreams feel like something more...something that needed to be remembered. The roar of the waterfall died suddenly and she could no longer breath, the world around her went blue, glittering with the sunlight that shone through it and illuminating the liquid around her. If this was death – if she were to drown now – then the experience, she decided, wasn’t too horrible. The way the water felt around her for those first few moments of impact felt as though she were floating in a vast area of nothing. As if her very being was were drifting endlessly; and it, too, brought the feeling that something needed to be remembered. The feeling that something was lost...

There was a vague thought as her body reached for the surface of the water, a pang of fear as the current from the falls kept pushing her back away from the surface, denying her breath. The world began to gain blotches as she let herself be pushed away from the exit of the falls, her hearing – made better as most hearing is underwater – picked up the sound of a distant splash. ‘Vatusia...’ she thought, letting her eyes drift into a half lidded position. ‘The race is over, I guess.’ the thought continued, the world drifting from blue to black as she felt something clasp around her wrist and begin to pull her up.

The next thing she recalled was coughing, and being able to breath. Her vision came into focus with her friend sitting over her; she felt her wings beneath her and was briefly relieved to know that they weren’t crushed. Avari smiled up to her friend, blissfully unaware of the horrified facial expression on her face. “What a...What a wonderful day, is it not?” she queried, “A wonderful day for a picnic?”

Vatusia smiled weakly as the words were spoken. “It sure is.” she replied, pulling her friend to her feet, her facial expression doing nothing to hide the sheer relief she felt that Avari was still among the living. “And let’s not waste it!” The fey grabbed a hold of grass bag sitting beside them, nodding towards the top of the falls where the clearing continued.

Avari nodded in reply, her feet lifting off the ground as she followed Vatu up beside the falls, both making sure to steer clear of the falling water. She paused for a moment as she did so, her eyes becoming unfocused as she stared into the water. The sensation that she’d had...it had been like a dream; and though she knew the idea preposterous, a part of her was tempted to undergo the experience once more. If only to try and discover more answers...but to what?

“Avari!”came the call of her friend from above, causing the fey to shift her gaze upwards to her as she continued on. “Stop staring and lets get a move on! If you’re right about that storm who knows how much time we’ve got!” Avari smiled in reply and waved to show that she’d heard, stealing one last glance to the waterfall before beating her wings against the air to fly upwards.

By the time she got to the top a few brief moments after, Vatusia was already bringing out the various foods she’d packed. Various berries, nuts, and other such edible plant materials that grew in the forest. “Look’s great.” Avari commented, coming to land on the small patch of grass atop the stones of the waterfall near Vatu.

Vatusia smiled around a mouthful of huckleberry, nodding in reply and swallowing to reply, “Eat up fast, though. It looks like that storm you mentioned’ll be here soon.” As she received a curiously blank look from Avari, she went on to explain, “Your left eye is completely grayed over.”

AN: Mkay, yeah. I know. That chapter ended so awkwardly it’s NOT EVEN LIGHTLY AMUSING, right? But I needed to end it or else this thing would never get done. When I started this, I had no idea what the point was...and truthfully? I still don’t Enjoy anyway, though! :D