It dwarfed in comparison to their current positions, however, so perhaps it was not so very terrible.
Penryn seemed intent on looking out at their surroundings, but she made the mistake of tilting her head too far beneath them, and he remembered his earliest lessons, when each time she jerked back to bury her head at his shoulder. He doubted it was solely due to fear, as he often remembered making himself dizzy, unused to such a view at such altitudes.
“Look where we are going, not directly at the ground,” he suggested. His father had taught him that, his mother anxiously drifting along much lower to the earth itself, certain he was going to fall. He had acted as if he was insulted, being the small boy that he was, that his mother should doubt him so, but secretly, and something he had never admitted to anyone but her, he was glad. That if he made a mistake and his father was a bit too slow to act, there would be someone else to help.
Until he learned that his wings were enough on their own. That he was enough.
An important realisation, he supposed, when both his parents doted and spoke of their pride in him.
He remembered the swell of warmth he felt at their words, to be the source of their excitement.
Only later realising that every fledgling masters flight eventually, so there was very little to fuss about. But for a time, it mattered.
And it was their dedication that led him here.
To showing a not-quite-woman the joys of the people she did not quite belong to.
If she could only learn how to appreciate them.
She took another breath and tried his approach. He wished he had a hand free to point out specifics, but he was uncertain she would be able to notice such details. It was a part of training, to focus on an object that moved while managing one’s own speed. Some initiates had excelled while others called it a terrific waste of time given how they would be landlocked for the whole of the Journey.
Not so very true, was it?
There was a herd of beasts a ways off. Brown with thick hides, though he could not immediately tell the specific name of them. Some kind of bovine to be certain, as he could just make out the horns on bowed heads as they grazed on the golden grass.
He almost asked her about them, to see if she could make out more detail and relate it to one of her many books, but she was occupied with something else, her face tilted upward rather than down.
A look of wonder as if he had given her a great gift by bringing her here.
“The sky seems bigger up here,” she declared. “And smaller all at once.”
He knew what she meant. To turn and face an endless blue, only occasionally punctuated by a puff of white, was to be a part of it, if only for a little while.
“Aye,” he agreed, heartened that she had finally found some pleasure in the experience and not simply terror and a dizzied head. “Thus the urge to go higher. To fly longer.” He shook his head. Self control was one of the first things taught to new flyers. To know their limits and to anticipate exhaustion. Do not attempt a flight that couldn’t be finished, lest there be hosts of stranded children trying to trudge their way home.
Penryn turned her head, trying to look at the ground once more. Their belongings were still within view, although at this height her cloak was the easiest to spot, a speck of red amongst tans and browns, the occasional green a welcome respite. “I wish,” she breathed, a soft smile about her lips. “I wish we could keep on like this.”
“I know,” he answered, because he did. The speed, the freedom that came with it. Walking simply did not compare.
They turned in his wide loop, and they looked where they had once been. The path they had taken was obscured, just as it should have been. No others would be able to follow their tracks, not even to find their camps. They were to leave no trace behind, although even as he had made such careful certainty of following such a command, he realised he was hiding himself away from the next Guardian. The next Lightkeep to come and make this same trek.
What purpose could there be in that? He could not begin to say.
“I thought we would be able to see where we started,” Penryn commented, almost too softly for him to hear. “But it is too far.”
That should have been an encouragement, that they were making good distances each day. But there was something wistful in her tone that surprised him, as he had been very certain she disliked a great deal of her life amongst the sages. The thought was a difficult one, and he could not pretend that he did not wrestle with it often. There was much that she was supposed to like given her position. But Penryn, who she was and what she desired, often did not seem wholly compatible with the Lightkeep she was meant to be.
Was he too lenient with her? Perhaps. They were flying, after all, rather than walking. Wasting a precious early hour on indulgence rather than progress.
And yet he could not bring himself to mind.
“We would have to go a great deal higher to see so far,” Grimult explained. “I am not certain it is wise.”
Or feasible even then. They had come a long way and it was likely to only be a speck on the horizon rather than a recognisable landmark.
Penryn nodded. “You are right,” she agreed. “I just wondered.”
Grimult tilted his head. One more go around, then they would land. Continue on and forget how far they might have been by wing rather than by foot.
