71 Black Birds

Nelda wandered listlessly in the somewhat mussed and messed up vegetable-medicinal-flower garden wondering what, if anything, she could eat from it.

SmithGuild stayed inside the open doors of the hall, almost lost in shadows. "Be careful of the manticores," he said.

"What?" she looked around, panicked,

"No, not here right now. But they have been around."

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"You've been seeing them too? No one else seems to."

SmithGuid sighed. "I think we see them because we are afraid, so we are looking for them. And it is right to be afraid of manticores, among other things."

"Oh." Nekda stood still. For a moment all she could hear was leaves and grasses scratching and whispering in the slight breeze. [That was obvious true, but something about the fantastical nature of Mirth somehow made it easy to forget.]

"It is only rational to be afraid," the gryphon added. "There seem to be folk trying to kill us. The centaurs, certainly, although I don't know why. The mermaids when it comes to you. Manticores kill people all the time just because they like to, they like to hurt people and like how people taste after they have been tormented. But it is unusual for them to be watching a group of people persistently, rather than just picking of the lost and stragglers…" He seemed to drift off into thoughts about the cannibalistic ways of manticores.

SmithGuild sighed and his sigh seemed to blend with the sound of the win in the peaks that towered over them. Then some small strand of that sound seemed to separate out, and grow to be something apart, something sibilant and sinister.

Raising her hand over her eyes, Nelda peered upwards. The hills around them formed a cool-colored letterbox view of the sky above. There were flickers of movement that were hard to make out against the blown-out white of the morning sky.

[Is it birds, like a flock?] It moved more like a swarm or what they called a murmuration. The shape seemed to be starting to swirl inwards like a tornado starting to form. There was a small void in the middle tat was white, but not sky.

Nelda could hear a buzzing in her head like someone was trying to tune her brain to another channel. It was becoming hard to think. "SmithGuild," she said. "Is that a fluck of cows. I mean a fuck of clowns." She staggered backwards, feeling like the ground was tilting under her feet. "What is happening to me?" [Am I under attack? What should I do?]

As her ass hit the ground an intuition washed over her like a sea wave. Cold and focussing. "SmithGuild, get the unicorn horn! Quickly!"

As she scrambled to regain her feet, Nelda did not dare to spend even a moment to look back. As she looked up the great pale form rushed towards her. It had a wingspan like a Dash 8 aircraft. And in the middle a horse big enough to carry and armored night.

The great wing didn't even need to strike her to knock her down again, the wind from its final beat tossed her like a tumbleweed although only the lightest feather tip actually touched her.

The great creature started to turn back towards her, folding its wings up and backwards so they dragged behind it like the plumage of a monstrous peacock of its shire-horse-like body. Sitting, petitely, between these wings on the creature's back was the unmistakable form of Angry Brenda.