EC - Magic and Mystery

Summer, 328 of the Third Age
Featuring Shaiera
Magical Awakening Quest (Ehretia, Aurora, Shaiera, and Kaeda), Part 12
In response to Temple in the Sky

Wherein Shaiera awakens her magic... and takes a wee detour deeper into the temple just to see what's up.

This was going to be lit only but I guess my brain just isn't gonna let me avoid drawing a temple. 

*****

The temple was miraculously preserved.  Despite her intense eagerness and longing to find what she sought, Shaiera could not help but slow her pace to gaze upon the carvings that had survived gods-knew how many centuries.  Here, high on the mountain, touched by naught but wind and clouds for generations, this venerable place had not known the ravages of time as the Earth and Fire Temples did.  Not that Shaiera had gone inside, of course, and she had never even seen the Fire Temple, but the earth seemed to be retaking its temple, and Khairo had described the one in the desert as crumbling.  Magical as they were, Shaiera doubted that any of them would ever fully collapse, especially after all this time, but she could not help but feel some measure of pride that it was the Air Temple, high in the clouds, that still survived so perfectly.

The hallway stretched long and straight through the core of the temple, an arrow to the heart of the sky’s magic.  Doorways lined the hall, beckoning, clawing at her curiosity.  She paused at one, staring into its dark depths before shaking her head and moving on.

“Later,” she promised herself.  “Later.”

On she trotted, and her hooves clattered a fine melody on untouched marble.  The ancients, whoever they had been, truly had a fine sense of taste.

Through the dimness and the dark she moved, unafraid.  Through shafts of light alive with breezes swooping in from the clouds outside.  As a leaf dances on the wind, so too did her heart, shivering with anticipation edged with fear.  What would it be like?  What would it feel like?  Neither Khairo nor Kaeda reported any pain and yet this was a part of her to be unlocked that had not moved in all her life.  Like an unused muscle, would it ache?  Would it burn?

With a snort and a shake of her delicate head, she moved on.

Finally, she came at last to the end of the hall, and before she could blink the space bloomed wide, into a half circle room that she imagined was once some kind of auditorium or grand space of prayer.  All attention was drawn, by design, to the grand mural that covered one wall: unicorns of old, gleaming gold in the low light, some winged, some performing great feats of magic.  Shaiera laughed, and the laugh caught in her throat and shared space with a sob.  Gods, but her people had made something beautiful, the ancient sages of the mountain, blessed be their souls.  When she had been a foal on the Flame Expanse, running alongside her parents, she had assumed she would be a creature of fire, if she had magic at all.  If magic was even real.  Everything pointed to it - hotheaded, fast as a wildfire in dry grass, fiercely independent… but though she had taken to thoughts of such a destiny easily, the ease at which the shrine had replaced her long-held beliefs made her head whirl.  With a single, brilliant light, the shrine had illuminated a new path for her, one paved with clouds and stardust, with its source perched atop a mountain high in the sky.  It fluttered in her like the wings of a bird, filling her lungs with fresh air and hope.  Now, standing before this mural, in a place above the clouds, she felt as though she could see all her history spread out before her, and that of all her people stretched out beyond that.  No details, of course.  Just a feeling.

The eyes of one gilded unicorn caught her attention in particular, and in an instant she was caught in his sky blue gaze.  As he faced the gale, so too did she fall into it, and fell and fell, plummeting from the peak of the mountain to the foothills below.  

And yet… she was not afraid.

The wind rushed up to meet her as would an old friend, and she laughed as it picked up her mane and spun her about in a beautiful dance.  As the sensation faded, she opened her eyes and gasped with delight:  her hooves were still inches above the polished floor.  She had been aloft!  She had flown!

Breathless, exhilarated, she stood before the mural for a long moment, gazing up at the stallion who had called to her.  

“Thank you, great sage,” she managed to murmur, before giddy laughter overtook her and she bolted from the room.  Oh, she couldn’t wait to tell Khairo–!

She screeched to a stop outside one of the branching hallways, staring down the mysterious path that had so caught her attention before.  She glanced towards the entrance.  Back to the side hall.

“A few more minutes couldn’t hurt,” she said to herself, and trotted instead through this new archway.