Shelter
{Aza + Shara}

.:+:.

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There comes a tiny whisper, a call from a voice that has not yet tasted air and sky, a minuscule beating of a heart enveloped in darkness and water, aware of some faint light though their eyes have never opened and seen it.

They both hear it, wispy and faraway, lingering on their minds rather than their ears and tugging weakly, desperate. It's barely there, so small it nearly seems nothing but a stray gust of wind tickling feather and fur- but all the same it's prodding deep in their centers, a thin string tangled around the essence of their beings from something somewhat out of place in the balance of their haunt, but still tethered to the old ruins all the same.

At an unspoken whim they both begin to search, cautiously as Aza winds his way through the familiar skeletal halls and corridors of weathered and crumbling stone, Shara taking to the sky, a dark shadow blotting out a crimson red overhead as the sun slips further down the far horizon. The haunt is familiar, ingrained, they know each turn and bend, each fallen stone and cranny hidden between columns and faded walls being slowly swallowed by sand. Finding anything within their haunt is no more a challenge than breathing is to the living, each pawstep, wing stroke, wayward gust of wind, and tumbling stone is felt by both of them innately. But there was a conscious effort on Aza's part to let things wander this place without any over-attention to them, so as not to be some unwanted voyeur where most came for peace, calm, and solitude.

All the same, it takes little for Shara's keen eyes to turn toward the very top of the tallest tower left standing, and even less for Aza to catch a look of its figure through her eyes in a flash of gold. Her trusty sight remains focused on the topmost section, her flight winding and languid around the tower while Aza trods slowly up toward the top, slow and careful, and then urged on a bit more firmly for another tiny call from the ether.

Help

Shara lights down upon the edge, sunlight blotted out by her wings and casting deeper shadow upon the tangled nest of dried grasses and twigs tucked between loosely cemented stone. Aza draws to a halt, lingering near the edge and stopped by a hitch- a flinch that comes inward from the singular egg in the center of the next, where that unborn and tiny voice shrinks for a moment in the minuscule deepening of black from her wings.... Before it leans back in, stirring faintly where it floats, hopeful, pleading, and tired.

Please

"The mother is gone." Shara murmurs softly, the statement a fact as she swivels her head in a rapid scan of the area, miles of emptiness and even emptier sky until it settles on the bent feathers and crumbled heap of a life lost too quickly- Aza does not allow them to linger on it, his attention focused more upon that tiny life still hanging on and calling weakly for aid. He need not see the unfortunate end, nor have Shara say it so plainly, a simple brush of a paw against the edge of the nest and the emptiness and cold left from that severed line between here and there would have told him as such. The singular tether between that life and this vulnerable one has been snapped, leaving the smallest of the two adrift, helpless, and alone.

"It will die." Shara murmurs next, another truth, another thing that needn't be said but it is still voiced nonetheless, because surely Aza is thinking it. He knows it, without a mother and no tethers left to this life to hang on to, there is no doubt that is what the end will be. It is, after all, the way of the cycle of life to be so tightly wound with that of death.

It's a thought that keeps Aza from moving. One that puts up a wall in the way of any inclination toward doing what the voice asks. A thought that urges him against defying that law of nature, and holding him steady against what other part of himself that Shara embodies that wants to do as the tiny life pleads- that part of him that is manifest enough for her regal form, and one that wins so easily when the next ring of the voice comes;

It's cold

Shara's wings glitter in gold as she pushes off the edge into air again, the spindly fixings of the nest rustling in the wake of the air under her wings and Aza's careful shuffling through them both. The world grows darker as Aza holds the tiny bundle to his chest, the descent down the tower swathed in shadow broken intermittently by holes in the unsteady foundation- but though the shadows have deepened, the chill does not come again. No, there's a steady warmth now permeating the darkness as the world around that frail little life sways to and fro, gently.... And a warmth that grows all the more for each step down, and step further taken to the heart of this old place with the flame eternal waiting there, fueled by the very same warmth and peace in the chest of the one who used to keep others out, now holding that little life to his chest.

Shara's outline follows Aza across a barren courtyard and through an old archway toward the promise of flame, following the esk like his own shadow as they continue further in away from the fringes where the nest sat, settled within the boundaries of the haunt but only just. They go deeper, through open entryways and old corridors, spaces once filled now empty of little but remnants, unhindered, welcome, warm.

What is a temple, if not a place to go when all the world has fallen away, and what you knew has slipped through your fingers as quickly as loose sand? Sinking away under your feet into dark and cold depths, with no foothold nor grip that can save you, or anything you can grasp firmly to when all you had in the world has been cut off? Somewhere you can go when you are lost, broken, alone, vulnerable and cold?

"What is a temple, if not a shelter?"

Shara's voice echoes off old stone and sand, clear as day even as she flutters lazily overhead, and otherwise her voice should have been lost to the wind. Aza spares her figure a fleeting look as he continues on, his Familiar dipping down gracefully through an archway and weaving around a column, her wings churning up air as she flies over and head of him that ruffle Aza's fur, and send embers dancing every which way.

Aza hummed, holding the egg closer to his chest and the gentle flames flickering deep within, nodding once. That was the word for it, the truth of it, and more so for the little life they were bringing into its heart for that one very simple, and very crucial thing.

Shelter