[Fiction] Flying Buffalo

[Ptesan-Wi]

"Are you sure you want to do this? You would wait, and Long would come to get you?" The huge griffin tried his best to mask the concern in his voice, but it did little good; the worry flowed across the link to his wife's mind like a flooding stream after a spring storm.

"I'll be fine, mihinga ki," Ptesan-Wi replied, checking the straps again as she did so. The oversized snowshoe that she was tying to her boots had been checked and re-checked; it was as solid as it could be, and she had faith that it would manage the job ahead of it. "Anyway, it will do me good to get out there on my own for a bit. Five days to Ibiza, a fun day walking the town, the night at the Phoenix Room, then five days back. Less than two weeks, and there's plenty of food in the larder for you. And I'll be checking with you from time to time anyway; who else am I going to rely on for an accurate trans-Atlantic weather report?" she said with a grin.

For his part, Wakinyan gave a grumble that could have been the leading edge of a thunderstorm. "I'll keep the storms out of your path, and give you favoring winds. But be careful, tawicu. It's a very long way for you to ride that thing."

Checking the straps on the bundles around her feet - a small buffalo-hide for a tent, ample quantities of fresh water and pemmican, changes of clothes, etc. - Ptesan-Wi gave a nod to her mate. "I'll be careful. And I'll see you in a couple of weeks, love!"

With that, she gathered herself for the task. In an example of bootstrapping that would have made Sir Isaac Newton choke on his apple, she reached out with her mind and picked up the wood-and-leather disk - including her supplies, her food, and herself - and rose gracefully into the air. She waved goodbye to the Thunderbird as she arced off across the sky.

[Ptesan-Wi]

The lighthouse at Cape Hatteres had been a navigational landmark for over a century, guiding ships from the east away from the sandy shoals. Today, it serves as a guidepost for a wayfarer from the west.

Sweeping in over the dunes, Ptesan-Wi landed just short of the beach proper, as the last of the sun sank below the land behind her. It had been a long day, but the country she had crossed was beautiful. Crossing the Appalachians had been a joy; the Smokey Mountains had spread beneath her, rising from the mist as though from a long-lost time. And now, here she was at the sea.

Ptesan-Wi had never been within actual sight of an ocean before, and the sight of it sparked something in her heart. As she went to sleep that night, snug and secure on the dune beneath her tiny tent, she looked forward to flying out over the waves when morning brought the sun once more.

[Ptesan-Wi]

Bermuda. The word was magical... and yet, the tourists walking the boardwalk thought that the most magical thing they had seen that afternoon was something entirely foreign to the island, as a young woman in buckskins flew ashore on a handmade leather disk, only to touch lightly to the boardwalk and ask sweetly for directions to the nearest restroom.

Once secluded in the (thankfully) clean restroom and having taken care of biological imperatives, Ptesan-Wi looked at herself in the mirror. Her dark skin was flaked with bits of white - sea salt, she realized - and her hair needed a good washing. Given the facilites, the washing it got wasn't the best, but she did manage to get the salt out of it and off of her skin with a cloth.

Once back outside, she recovered her bundle from the porter who had agreed to watch it, using the simple expedient of floating it in the air behind her until she found a nice section of beach to set up camp. Along the way, she passed cafes and restaraunts, but resisted the temptation; her funds were limited, and she wanted to use them to enjoy her day in Ibiza.

The flight across the water had not been so wonderful as she had hoped; the beauty turned to monotony after an hour, and by the time she had hit land, she was rather sick of the endless waves. Still, she knew that the worst was ahead; it would take her at least until the middle of the next night to reach the Azores. With her first touch of worry, she sent a mental "good night" to her far-away husband, and settled in for an early sleep.

[Ptesan-Wi]

Thank Wakan Tanka... I made it alive. Exhausted, thirsty and encrusted with salt, Ptesan-Wi made landfall on the Isle of Flores, and hugged the sandy earth for dear life.

Finding the island had been nothing short of a miracle, even with the aid of the GPS in her OpNet device; clouds had concealled the bright moon, leaving the ocean black as pitch. In the end, it was a faint light that caught the edge of her tired vision that guided her to the shore after twenty of the worst hours of her life. I swear, if I make it to Ibiza, I'm flying home Air Long. Too tired to even form proper mental words, let alone put up her little tent, she simply opened her exhausted mind to Wakinyan, so that he could feel the land beneath her body and know that she had not fallen into the cruel sea; slumber took her before she could feel his relieved reply.

[Ptesan-Wi]

At long last, Ptesan-Wi walked up to the fabled Phoenix Room in the equally fabled Ibiza.

The trip over from the Azores had not been anything nearly as terrifying as the big gap that had come before; a hop to the Canaries, then Morocco, led to a beautiful overflight of the majestic Rock of Gibralter. From there, she took her time moving along Spain's Mediterranean coast, and finally took one last over-water hop to the famous (or infamous, depending who you asked) island city.

Her plans to spend the day window shopping fell to the wayside; instead, she spent the bulk of her tiny cache on the incredible luxury of a hotel room, where she showered in hot water and fragrant soap for at least an hour before she felt anything resembling clean. The short nap she had hoped to take stretched into hours; the sun came low through the french doors of her room, diffused further by the gauze-like curtains, when she finally awoke. Fortunately, her extra clothes were still clean; the careful layering of soft and oiled hides she had wrapped them in had done its job against the salty sea air.

Crisp, clean, and well groomed, with her "snowshoe" strapped to her back, Ptesan-Wi took a deep breath and stepped inside the ultimate den of these magnificent beings called novas, hoping against hope that she might find out from Samhra this night just what sort of magnificent being she might be.