Azure shuffled in amongst the mosses, a sense of studious determination about her.

She was examining Eridanus's plants--and it wasn't entirely clear to any observers as to why. She ignored the herd of cave deer that, startled by her presence, bolted off into the ferns; she disregarded the birds that, by contrast, accepted her--flitting to and fro among the branches above her head, singing their chittering songs.

She wasn't here for them, no. She had something else in mind, instead: Siren's gift, a promise she'd made to her some time ago. Sisters, they'd decided; and she'd been working on her magic ever since, polishing and perfecting her skills.

Azure found what she was looking for only after several hours wandering the forest. She'd picked her way over autumn leaves that skittered underfoot, and looked closely over all manner of flowers: roses, daffodils, wildflowers of a dozen shapes and sizes. She settled at last on a twist of grasses that she found with just the right color of pale lavender buds, and there she lay down. Black claws clasped gently around the base of the plant as she focused, her cobalt eyes staring at the buds with intense concentration.

Right, here we go; she thought to herself, taking a breath: step one. She fought to bring her shimmer of magicka to the surface, to imbue the plants, to flower their growth a few stages further with her willpower alone.

Slowly, the plant buds swelled, twitching and spreading, until their delicate petals parted. To Azure's delight, the plant (blue-eyed grass, though she couldn't possibly have guessed the name) had golden centers to the petals: a perfect mirror of Siren's hues.

Lavender, like her skin; gold, like her freckles, her eyes, her ornamentations, and her stone.

Azure allowed herself a moment's satisfaction in happily examining the successful results of her magic. And then she studied the flowers more closely: looking over their shapes, their symmetry, looking for the most perfect of them all.

And when she'd found it--when at last she'd picked one, as flawless as she could find--she sent her magicka out in a shimemr again. This time, the intent was to halt it as it was: a flower, delicately preserved as it was, for--she hoped--all time.

Pleased, she felt her magicka flow outward, well-formed and -shaped to her desires. "Perfect," she murmured. "And that's step two."

Azure delicately plucked the flower away from its stem, mentally thanking the plant for being so wonderfully cooperative. So far, so good, she thought to herself, and then pushed up--carefully carrying the flower in her beak--to take a few steps back.

She then lay back in the dirt, digging a little until she exposed stone beneath: and then she lay the flower there.

This would be the hardest part of all, she knew: the magic she would attempt was delicate, difficult, and took a great deal of mental control. Her intention was to pull forth from the stone a perfectly clear gemstone--something rounded, in the end, perhaps a quartz--with which to envelop the preserved flower in a tiny amulet, of sorts. And, to make it even more difficult, it had to have a small loop at one end: a way to thread a cord or chain through, so that Siren could wear the flower as a necklace.

She was hardly surprised when it didn't work the first time.

It wasn't, as she knew, an easy sort of magic to perform.

The hybrid gave herself a few moments' rest, then, her eyes closed and her concentration laying on nothing in particular. She took note, though--as she'd learned to do, these last few weeks, to clear her mind more completely--of the wind rustling the leaves overhead, of the sussuration, the murmuring of the trees and plants. It was calming, soothing; she took a deep breath and felt the autumn-chilled air entering her lungs.

Once she felt herself more relaxed, she tried again: blue eyes slipped back open, found the flower, and her mind strengthened into concentration.

She felt a flicker, this time--a glimmer; and then nothing, as the magicka faded.

"Third time's a charm," she murmured to herself, though the distant exhilaration of exertion--like strenuous exercise, but from her mind, rather than muscle--gripped her now. And this is step three, too; double lucky.

Her brow knitted, her body falling still as she wrappd her mind, again, around her intentions. And this time, slowly--but almost painfully--the rock began to shift.

Crystalline growths, small (but large enough for her purposes) gradually erupted, and crept upward; one engulfed the flower, and she slowed it even further. Very, very carefully, Azure settled the gemstone around the preserved flower: and even more cautiously still did she add the loop, at the top, as she'd wished.

But the magic had been taxing, and more than that it wasn't quite right. Azure turned the gemstoned flower in her talons. It was a little smaller than she'd imagined, and lopsided, and cloudy on one side, though at least limited to the surface. She'd need to polish it, though--but that would give her magicka time to rest and to recover.

The next hour or so the Hybrid ended up spending in trying to polish up the gemstone.

She carried it about Eridanus in her beak. At first she rubbed it here and there on the rough, exposed cave rock where it was visible: pausing frequently to examine it with a critical eye.

Then she found sand, and clasped it in her talons. This wasn't easy, and it took more than an hour to get the results that she wanted.

Off it went, then, in her beak: and she traipsed around the cave, somewhat weary but excited with her progress, and spurred on to complete it. She found dry grasses, rough ones, and rubbed the stone around in these. And when it was smoothed enough, to her satisfaction, she took it last to one of the quietly-babbling, icy brooks that wound, spiderlike, through the jungle cave.

Smoothed and washed, then, the stone was ready for its final touch.

She'd spent most of the day on this project: and now, she was on the final leg. She wandered the cave carefully, searching over the grass once more. At length she found what she was looking for: dry cords of grass that could serve as fiber. They were light, dead, but still fairly soft, and she plucked a number of long strands before settling down for what was perhaps the most intricate part of her craft.

Everything else thus far had been magic use and judicious choice: this would take intense mental focus, and long concentration, to perfect.

Azure lay down, the cords beneath her talons, the gemstone to one side: and she concentrated on using her magicka like hands, like hands she did not have, to weave the fibers carefully into a cord.

It took a long time: and there were mistakes, missteps, that she had to go back and correct. She found it to be, to her surprise, one of the most frustrating things she'd ever had to do: but the final result, as she used her mind to tie the cord through the gemstone's narrow loop (and she never wanted to use telekinetic magic to essentially thread a needle's eye again) was more than satisfying.

She sat back, eyeing over her work, and found herself incredibly pleased. All this effort, all her creativity and diligence, had finally paid off.

"Yesssss," she half-murmured, half whispered.

It was perfect.

After turning the amulet this way and that, Azure decided on a final, finishing touch. A faint glow: golden, like Siren's shades, here and there. But she didn't want something all that bright. She wanted something subtle, something to enhance rather than to eclipse the flower's beauty. Perhaps it could, if she did it just right, be used as a very dim light source in the dark: but more than that, she wanted an ethereal glow that would glimmer through the polished stone.

This was the last thing that she had to do, and she gave it her all; there was no reason to hold back, now, no more magic yet to perform.

And, to her excited glee, it came out perfect. The shimmer wasn't too strong, but it was noticeable after a first glance; the golden eye of the lavender-hued flower seemed to shine with its own light. It seemed holy, somehow--a sacred bauble, twisted on its length of cord.

The end result, then, was a preserved blue-eyed-grass flower, small and pale violet in hue, with a golden center: locked within a polished circle of clear quartz, and threaded through with a woven-grass cord. The flower, as Azure lifted the amulet in her talons, glinted and glowed with that golden light--sometimes as if on its own, sometimes as if it absorbed and reflected the light given it by its surroundings.

Satisfied, feeling as though her heart could burst now that she could offer her close friend such a gift, she hurried off toward Orion--to give back to her 'sister' who'd given her so much.

exit Azure