The ocean stretched before Keiro, waves lapping gently at soft sand. He wore heavy clothes, fur-lined, but they didn’t completely fight off the chill in the air. Still, the cold was worth it—he didn’t want to miss a moment.
Out in the water, sea monsters frolicked. At least, that was what the locals called them every time they caught a glimpse of the mravigi playing in the waves.
They had taken to the sea of their new home more happily than they ever had to the grass of the Plains. They could burrow into the soft sand, or bask on its sun-warmed surface. The forest nearby was full of tall trees that never lost their foliage, no matter how cold it got, no matter how deep the snow that covered the sandy beach. Their claws were good for climbing, too, and for perching. Keiro knew that the higher they climbed, the more they could feel the sea-born wind racing past their faces.
There were some in the trees even now, no doubt, but many of them had taken to the water, slim bodies winding like otters, diving down and then surfacing with great sprays of water. It would be too cold soon even for them, winter on the approach, and they were enjoying their fun while they could.
Keiro watched them, smiling, one hand shading his eye from the orange light of the setting sun. Its reflection stretched across the water, and turned the waves into the bright colors of a painting—yellow turning to pink as one of the Starborn breached, ripples of orange and purple to mark where one had disappeared.
The Starborn were in high spirits. Across from the slow-setting sun, a pale disk against the pink sky, the rising moon was full.
The sand shifted behind Keiro, but he didn’t turn. He knew the sound of those feet. The familiar form lay down beside and behind Keiro, curved loosely around him, and Keiro leaned back companionably against Cazi’s flank. The Starborn made a good cushion—he’d grown over the years, and was now nearly as big as any of the others.
“You should be out there,” Keiro chided gently.
The forked tip of Cazi’s tail flicked against Keiro’s knee, less gently. “I am fine here.”
They watched together until the sun had gone beyond the far edge of the sea, and pulled its painted blanket behind itself. There was always a small, quiet moment of fear in Keiro’s chest when it left, even now.
The mravigi emerged from the water, singly and in groups, the salt sea traveling in rivulets among their star-dotted scales. They flowed by Keiro with murmurs or nods, all moving toward the forest at his back. Cazi rose to join them, wordless, but Keiro waited a few moments longer. The beach was quiet and peaceful, and the cold had sunk into him so that he could hardly feel it.
Keiro finally stood and stretched, shaking feeling back into his hands and feet, and turned to the forest. The moon, nearly at its zenith, showed him his path. His bare feet slid on the sand, and crunched over twigs—old habits were hard to break, though he had boots at home awaiting the first snowfall.
Within the forest was a clearing, and in the clearing, the mravigi gathered.
Their black scales were turned gray by the moon’s light, but the white scales glowed to rival the moon. They stood eternally patient, faces turned skyward. Keiro did not cross the border of the tree line into the clearing—this was a part of him, but he was not a part of it.
When the moon hung directly above the clearing, broad and beautiful, its light shining down like a gentler sun—then the Starborn began to sing. At their center, voice raised proudly, loudest, was Straz, first of the mravigi, who had spent centuries below the earth guarding his bound gods. He sang of lost years and found hope and the ever-flowing tides, and his vast family sang with him.
The locals might hear; let them. Let them hear beauty. Let them hear the sound of joy.
At the height of the song, a small form shot up from the center of the Starborn. The gray-scaled body of a youngster, though her white scales glowed as brightly as any other’s. Breathless, Keiro grabbed at his throat, at his pulse pounding a frantic hope. And as the song crescendoed, the young mravigi’s wings snapped out and caught the breeze from the sea. They bore her ever upward, and her happy scream threaded through the song below.
Keiro fell to his knees and could not help the laughing sob that burst out of him. If he could sing, he would have sung with them. Instead, he simply watched the young mravigi discover the joy of flight, of the wind racing past her face. He watched her discover the wonder she had been made for, and in that moment, nothing else in all the world mattered.