"Clouds come floating into my life,
No longer to carry rain or usher storm
But to add colour to my sunset sky"

-Rabindranath Tagore

~

MIKAELLO

The Land of the Aurae. IS. ABSOLUTELY. FREAKING. BEAUTIFUL.

If I could settle down and build a house, this is the place I would choose. It's so beautiful I want to cry.

And no sir, I am not a crier. Okay, maybe a little. Don't ask Riya for proof.

That's how amazing this place looks. Or maybe I'm just biased to it because of my wings and air abilities.

There are a few wind spirits (the Aurae) with pale faces and glittering robes bustling around us as we look through Lia's wall of invisibility around us.

Yes, we are invisible right now, Rachelle thought it was important not to startle the locals right away.

We are standing on the ground. And I have no idea what it's made of.

But I'm sure it's not ground.

Does that make sense?

It feels solid under my feet, yet I have the constant uncertainty that if I move, I'll fall. I have no idea why. I just feel like spreading my wings and travelling through the air like the creatures around us were doing.

The Aurae have this creepiness about this. They did not make any noise. Just sounds of winds rushing by.

All of them have similar big blue eyes, silvery, metallic coloured hair glistening in the sunlight and enamel white skin with glittery flowing robes covering their bodies, every inch on them. And their wings. Oh how do I begin to describe them? They look life solidified wisps or air with different shades of blue, like the ones in that human... Van Gogh's paintings.

Everything around us is either white, light shades of blue or transparent and glowing. Everything. Even the sky is pale, bluish shade of white.

At least the sun looks the same it did in Neraida.

And everything is floating. The buildings made of white marble are all at least a feet above around. There are little marble steps. floating up in the air where sometimes the Aurae step from time to time. Maybe to boost their speed? I don't know.

Their settlements spread in all directions except for below us. Left, right and up in the sky towards infinity.

"Where do we begin?" Lia asked from beside me.

"Well we need to get to the Palace," Simba said, looking around uncertainly, fear evident on his face.

"And where would that be? These creatures are heading anywhere and everywhere. If there was a Palace, then there would be some sort of trail of people leading to it," Arbor grumbled.

"You make the Aurae sound like ants," Augustine said with a bored voice, making Avalkyra snort beside him.

But Arbor had a point. Usually a palace would have some sort of procession of people leading to it, or some pattern to give it's location away. Like, the quality of houses would get better the closer they got to the palace. Or the amount of soldiers would increase. But over here, all the people and buildings were indistinguishable. Everywhere I looked, I was greeted by the same scene of endless rows of similar looking buildings.

Damn these people don't have to worry about caste system or inequalities or anything?

"You think we should spread out and search?" Meenakshi suggested.

"I don't think it's a good idea to split up in such an unknown location. And how will we communicate if we even find something?" Rachelle said.

"How about we just ask one of them?" I suggested.

"I don't think they are used to having alien creatures such as us here," Coralline said shaking her head.

"Leave it to me," Augustus said, before he closed his eyes and his entire form glowed so brightly that it temporarily blinded me. When my vision adjusted itself again, there was an Aura standing in front of me, instead of Augustus. Pale blue eyes, enamel coloured skin, glittering white robes and sky blue wings stood in the place where Augustus had been, a few moments ago.

"You can fucking shapeshift?!" Rey exclaimed from behind me.

"What the-" I began.

"Yeah I can, be jealous all you want you low lives, I'm gonna go ask them for directions," came Augustus' voice. Now the weird thing was that Augustus pale blue lips didn't move at all. Instead I heard a voice resonate in the back of my head.

That would explain some of the silence. They spoke with their minds.

So. Effing. Cool.

Damn I wanna be an Aura. The only problem is that their figures look so sickly...like Andy would look when he was throwing up after drinking too much liquor. The hollow cheeks and the slim figures of the Aurae are so...I don't know how to describe it.

"Woah I spoke without moving my lips," Augustus' voice echoed in my head eeriely again, "There goes one thing on my bucket list."

"You could have just tried to be one of those ventriloquist dummy controller people, if you wanted to speak without moving your lips." Minakshi chimed in.

"But you still have to move the corners of your lips for that," I argue.

"True," I hear Augustus's voice in my head again.

"Can you stop wasting time, you idiots?" Augustine's irritated voice reaches my ears the normal way.

"Calm your panties Pink Boy I'm going," I felt another whisper in my mind. Yeah I think I'm done with this kind of stuff. It just feels creepy now.

Augustus flew out of our bubble and towards one of the unsuspecting Aurae. They faced each other for a few moments, the expression on both their faces not changing even a bit. Then suddenly the Aura began moving his or her hands around and Augustus then gave them a nod before flying back to us.

What the hell happened between the two?

Augustus the Aura returned to us, looked around to check if someone was looking in his direction and then entered into our invisibility bubble. And after a flash of blinding light, Augustus the Asshole was standing in front of us, his golden wings flaring out this time.

He has these cool, come again go again sort of wings which just appear on his back when he wants them to. I don't know what it would feel like to ever not have my wings on my back.

"Yeah we gotta go directly up," Augustus said, jarring me out of my thoughts and all of us, except for Kaito who kept staring at Gus, looked up to see nothing but a bunch of mist and clouds.

"It has a spell of invisibility cast on it, stop staring directly up ahead you morons," Gus said, a hint of irritation in his voice.

"Sounds like Aeolus' castle," Rachelle muttered next to me.

Who?

"The Greek wind god guy? But his palace is not invisible Elle" Simba asked.

"Yes but don't you remember it was hidden by clouds and had a trail of bridges leading up to it?" The little brunette responds.

"Rachelle is right," Kaito confirms.

What?

"We're dealing with flippin' wind gods?!" I say my thoughts out loud.

"Calm the fuck down, how loud are you?" Arbor said on my right, running her ears with her permanent frown etched on her face.

"Not exactly...I'm not really sure...I hope not," Rachelle's voice comes out uncertain.

Real comforting there, Elle.

"Okay, so we should make a plan...What do we know about the castle?" Avalkyra finally speaks up, after silently examining our conversation this whole time.

"Aurae don't have solid ground anywhere except the absolute bottom where we are currently standing," Kaito said in his quiet voice.

"They apparently speak with their minds and take easy offence if we comment anything about their wings," Simba said.

"They don't have magical powers like us, excluding the abilities to fly and speak telepathically. That's all we could find in the faerie archives," Rachelle said with a sigh.

"So...We know almost nothing about them?" Minakshi asked, worry evident in her usually cheerful eyes.

"Oh my," Coralline whispered.

"We're all gonna die aren't we?" Zarren raises the perfect question.

***

We have been flying straight up. For a while now. And these people are not very light, let me tell you.

I holding Rachelle with my right arm, who is looking around excitedly as if she is having the time of her life, flying with me.

I too can't help but marvel at all the buildings floating up in the air, each built with a glistening pale blue or white coloured material I have never seen or heard of. They change colour from blue to white as you change the angle at which you have been looking at them.

They have the most beautiful kinds of carvings on their doors and windows, mostly replicas of the designs they show on their wings, but beautiful nonetheless. As we go higher, the houses become bigger, and more decorative. I think this was what Arbor had been implying before. Some buildings have signs floating before their doors with symbols carved on them which I just can't understand. Could be the language of the Aurae. Ooh what if these were shops of kinds?

But what would the Aurae even need to buy over here? What do they eat? Or drink? What kind of toilets do they have? Do they even eat? Do they even need toilets? How do they reproduce?  Do they even have genders over here?I can't see a single body of water around here...

I tear my eyes away from the structures and look at Kaito holding onto my left arm, his eyes looking outward towards the surroundings of the Land of The Aurae, his expression distant, as if his spirit was far away from here.

And I have Zarren clinging onto my back, under my wings, who must be enjoying a very close view of my juicy buttocks, and I can't really see his expression, but from the amount of times he has sighed exasperatedly, I can tell he is not having the time of his life like Rachelle over here.

To my left, Lia is carrying Arbor, Minakshi in her arms and Augustine holding on to her waist. I almost giggle at Augustine's please-kill-me expression as he cranes his neck away from Lia's backside.

To my right, Augustus is carrying Coral, Avalkyra in his arms where as Valerie and Simba are holding onto his legs.

I am so, so jealous of those golden wings, don't even get me started. They glimmer in the faint sunlight of this realm, and reflect light outwards in every direction, making it look like he was the source of all the light in the first place.

And Rey is flying right above us, holding nobody as she needs her energy to maintain our invisibility shield. We all have to stick together to stay inside her wall of invisibility so much so that I keep bumping into Lia, well, technically, Kaito's body keeps bumping into Minakshi's.

"How much longer?" Zarren groaned, his voice slightly muffled by my butt.

"You look comfortable there my dude," Augustus laughed as he eyed Zarren holding onto my ass.

"Shut up," I heard Zarren say. Rachelle giggles near me and I even spot a little amusement lighting up Kaito's eyes.

After a couple of moments, as I was having a wonderful conversation with Minakshi who was holding on to Lia, the air around us began to glimmer, and I felt a force against my wings, as if something was resisting our passage. I looked over to Augustus and Lia for confirmation and they both nodded at me. I got the silent message and began to flap my wings to try and generate more force. I could feel my back muscles ache as I continued to move at a slowed pace through this...thick layer of air.

After a final stroke of my wings, we broke free of this resistance and OH MY FREAKING SYDAN THIS PLACE IS BEAUTIFUL.

There are sparkling waterfalls all around us. They are falling off floating marble platforms falling down in to infinity. But where is this water going?

We are surrounded by these waterfalls which are at the base of the castle. The building itself is made of the same enamel coloured marbles which the houses are made of. But they have enormous pearl like things floating around, lightning up all the walls with an eerie glow. Each wall has different patterns of lines and swirls carved on them, and painted with blue, as if trying to imitate the wings of the Aurae.

There are so, I mean so many Aurae over here, a hundred times more than the ones we passed on the way here. But the special part about this place is that it still doesn't look crowded. It's a little weird.

I look at Gus and then look up, trying to silently ask if we should continue travelling up. And before Augustus could respond, a deep voice cut through my thoughts.

"I've been waiting for all of you. What took you so long?"

~

Hey hey! How was this chapter, yes I know it was a little boring with not too much action, but I swear it will change with the next few chapters.

If you liked it don't forget to vote and comment and tell me how awesome my writing is, it's great encouragement to write further.

Next chapter is entirely in Valerie's POV, and there is a small argument caused by the one and only, Rey.